Meet the Blog’s Host
Rolfe Larson provides consulting and training in areas such as strategic planning, market research, feasibility analysis, business planning, marketing, and implementation strategies.[Read more ...]
business planning
Business Plan in A Weekend?
There’s been a fair amount of interest lately in how to write your business plan quickly, say in a weekend. The most well-known is called Startup Weekend, which promises to turn strangers into teams with a completed business plan in an intensive 54-hour weekend marathon. Is this a good idea? There’s also a new book, [...]
Gotta Have A Social Media Strategy
Social media has not been around that long; Facebook is barely seven years old, for example. But in today’s business and social environment, for many companies that sell directly to the public, having a social media strategy is no longer an option. You gotta have one.
Are you an Innovator, an Entrepreneur, or a Manager?
Not everyone who starts a small business is an entrepreneur, nor should they be. Figuring out whether you’re an innovator, an entrepreneur or a manager can save you headaches down the road.
Pricing Strategies (Part 2)
Last week’s blog described the information you need to develop a pricing strategy. Today we’ll talk about several kinds of pricing strategies that are commonly utilized.
What Gandhi taught us about business planning
A reporter came to interview Mahatma Gandhi one day. It turned out this was his day of silent fasting, but the reporter still insisted on getting Gandhi’s message to the world. Ghandi wrote: My Life Is My Message. In a business world where many hours and dollars are often spent crafting that perfect positioning [...]
Implementation: Turning Your Business Plan Into A Business
You’ve gone through the steps. Your business plan is reasonably thorough. So there’s not much to worry about, right? Wrong. If it’s good, it will get you started. But it’s only a plan. The rest you’ll have to figure out as you go. Reality has an annoying way of interfering with plans.
Do “Just Enough” Business Planning
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.
Structure Your Business Plan
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.
Plans for Business-to-Business Ventures
While many entrepreneurs tend to think first of selling products or services to consumers, far larger markets exist in selling to other companies. Those sales, known as business to business, or B2B, roughly account for ten times the sales directly to consumers. So if you are undecided about what kind of business to launch, and [...]
Breakeven Analysis
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 [...]
