Business Planning

The New Year is always a good time to plan for the year ahead. But it doesn’t have to be all about fresh starts and good intentions. As a business owner, business planning is vital whether it’s planning to continue with something that was successful the previous year or evaluating what could have been better. From here you can set your goals and objectives to help you achieve what you want over the subsequent 365 days. 

But, if you are new to business planning or don’t quite know where to start, here are 5 factors to consider for your own inspiring strategies.

1. Plan your life

Before starting to make a business plan, you might need to know what exactly it is you want. Think about what the outcome is of a successful business and what it means for your life: 

• How much money do you want to make?
• How many hours do you want to work?
• How many holidays do you want a year?
• Are you working to leave a legacy?
• Are you wanting to help your children on to the property ladder?
• Do you want to grow and sell your business so you can retire comfortably?
• Do you want to achieve more of a work-life balance or even better, integrate the two successfully into your life? 

There is no right answer. The answer is simply what is right for you and thinking about your life plan and how to set meaningful goals is a good place to start.

2. Work out the numbers

Once you know what you want to achieve, then you need to work out how much it is going to cost. If you know those numbers, then they will feed into the numbers for the business such as your margins and your profits etc. 

This is where pricing for profit is extremely important because if you don’t, then you won’t have a business at all. But pricing for profit isn’t always easy. Some business owners suffer with imposter syndrome; they feel unworthy or they simply feel they need to apologise for and justify their rates. If this sounds familiar, then you might want to create an aid to help remind yourself of where you want your business to go and what numbers you need to see. 

See my blog, ‘How do you make a vision board?’ to help overcome this hurdle.

3. Identify your ideal client

Now that you know how much you need to earn, you can work out who your ideal client would be. Perhaps you already have them and simply need a few more like them, because believe it or not, the ideal client does exist. They are not mythical or fantastical. They are corporeal beings and while they are going to be different for each business, they are out there. 

For example, a copywriter requires a client who needs a lot of copy creating for blog posts, marketing materials or a website. That client will also lack that particular skillset, either personally or within their team, and therefore is happy to outsource and pay for it. 

But it doesn’t stop there – do you know your ideal client’s age, their gender, location? Do you know their occupation, their level of education or even their interests and hobbies? 

If not, then a good, old-fashioned mind map would be a great place to start.

4. Reach your ideal client

Once you have identified your ideal client, you need to think of how you are going to reach them. This is essentially your marketing plan. Think about where they will go, either physically or online, who they listen to and what they read. 

Think about how you can network effectively with them or get your name, brand or logo in front of them. Better still, think about how you can start a conversation with them and be remembered. 

5. Reward

Every business needs to know what their key performance indicators (KPIs) are so they you know if you are on track or not. 

You therefore need to know what you need to measure: 

• Leads into clients
• Leads into sales
• Chargeable hours
• Non-chargeable hours
• Turnover
• Profit 

Your KPIs go back to knowing your numbers. KPIs are important to every business but are also different for every business too. One thing that is the same for all businesses however, is getting and keeping customers. It is an intrinsic part of growing a business.

For more information on identifying your KPIs, read my other blogs on ‘How to influence your customers’ and ‘How to make more profit’. 

Remember that you will always end up somewhere but is it exactly where you wanted to be? That is why having a business plan is essential. It is you, as a business owner, stating you have a vision for your company, your brand or your product and can see where you want it to go. A business plan is the scaffolding on which you will put the details on throughout the year. 

If you get the foundations right, you can’t go too wrong.