By Rolfe Larson on April 15, 2011
Creating a business plan takes a lot of time. But you can get help. Consultants can be valuable, but to save money, find out if there’s a qualified college intern who could carry some of the load. Many college courses require students to participate in internships. With the right intern and a carefully structured project, [...]
By Rolfe Larson on March 16, 2011
There’s nothing magical about business planning. At its core, it involves thinking through who your target customers are, how your proposed venture will profitably address their needs better than the competition, how you will communicate with these customers, and where you plan to get the funds to start it all up.
By Rolfe Larson on March 11, 2011
Business plans appear in many different formats, depending on the audience for the plan and complexity of the business. However, most business plans address the following five topic areas in one form or another.
By Rolfe Larson on January 23, 2011
One of the common challenges in business planning is that one often has a better handle on predicting expenses than revenues. It doesn’t mean you’re 100% sure about what your costs are going to be, but for many folks, when they start looking at sales, it’s a crap shoot. As a result, many business plans [...]
By Rolfe Larson on December 27, 2010
One way to develop and test your plan is to submit it to a business plan competition. These competitions are mostly associated with business schools. Most offer winners consulting assistance and in many cases seed money. But here’s the catch: in most cases, only students can apply and competition can be stiff. But check out [...]
By Rolfe Larson on October 29, 2010
Here are five tricks from business planning expert Tim Berry. Excellent advice to follow to avoid getting spooked by your business: 1. Keep the planning simple and practical. Your plan should be measurable, and include strategy, dates, deadlines, metrics, and basic projections, plus a review schedule. This is critical: when will we review and revise? [...]
By Rolfe Larson on September 1, 2010
Lately I’ve been rethinking business plans. On the one hand, in the consulting and academic world, what is meant by a business plan is a fairly comprehensive research project with thorough analysis of issues including customers, markets, competitors, pricing, marketing strategies, risks – always followed with detailed multi-paged financial projections looking three to five years [...]
By Rolfe Larson on July 16, 2010
One of the hallmarks of good business planning is being open to disconfirming information. Now let’s apply that principle to the decision on whether to do business planning itself. We think it’s a good idea, but maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s OK to do what most business owners do all the time: just wing it, [...]
By Rolfe Larson on June 11, 2010
People are always asking us for examples of business plans, which is a bit ironic, in that every credible plan I’ve ever seen has “Confidential” stamped all over it. That said, there are samples out there, which is fine as long as you don’t assume you should do it the way they did it. Here [...]
By Rolfe Larson on June 4, 2010
Sometimes the best things in life are free. So if your preference is to find out what’s available on the web before investing in a business planning book (see previous blog entry for a list of books), here’s a quick list of ten “best” business planning web sites. My next blog will indicate where you [...]
Rolfe Larson provides consulting and training in areas such as strategic planning, market research, feasibility analysis, business planning, marketing, and implementation strategies.