The Major Parts of the Business Plan Are Crucial to Strategic Planning
First: For most sales is scary and full of rejection. “Call Reluctance”. Need I say more?
Second, I see many of my customers not understanding what exactly marketing is and what exactly sales is.
Understanding the concept of marketing and sales allows you to understand how to create an accurate strategy.
This concept exercise is crucial for writing an acceptable business plan.
While there are many subsections of a business plan I write business plans based on 3 major parts.
They are the marketing, sales, and the financial section of the business plan. First you identify your market. Your market consist of consumers that could become your customers. A consumer may not be your customer! A consumer may be your competitors customer.
Second you now must convince that consumer to hand over their money in exchange for the goods or services that you offer. I just asked my friend to define sales to me over the phone and she stuttered. She by the way is a sales person. This is her livelihood. Now she knows what sales is. Sales is NOT marketing.
So if you are a nail salon you are convincing the consumer that your work on their nails is going to be what they are looking for. If you are an insurance rep you must convince the consumer that your insurance is worth paying for. Maybe the fact that you paid out higher than any other insurance company after the last hurricane is a selling point? Advertising to homeowners is marketing. The sale is done by the insurance agent, not the marketing department.
The financial section reflects what you want to do, what you wanted to do and what you actually have done! If you didn’t sell enough your finances on a corporate and individual level will be reflected by this. If you identified the wrong set of consumers as your market or incorrectly thought the market would buy your product or services then your financial plan at the bank will reflect this.
Not having a plan at all is a recipe for disaster. All the major corporations have a business plan. Think about the competition. Maybe they have a plan and maybe because of the time spent on the plan it is better than yours….especially if you don’t have a plan at all. Maybe one day as a result of this they will take enough customers from you or recruit all your salespeople. Try running your business without identifying your market.
Try telling your sales staff to sell your goods or services without giving marketing support. Try financing your business without a plan. Conclusion? Have a Business Plan and never listen to anybody claiming business plans are outdated or not used anymore.!
All this is on one of my websites at http://www.mybuildingfunds.com/howtowriteabusinessplan however this article spared no detail.
Tags: business plan financials
