Preparing a Business Plan – Components of a Business Strategy
Who do you want to help or serve with your business? What issue or problem does your product or service solve? What is the composition of the profile of the members of your target audience? What do these questions have to do with business planning?
In start planning
All of the above questions should be answered directly or indirectly in some part of the plan that identifies your business strategy. At some point, the plan needs to be as detailed as possible and written down, even if it isn’t initially written down. It is necessary to keep a record of the ideas that are tried and that were not successful due to market timing or lack of resources.
Begin a checklist that builds on your draft executive summary. On the checklist, be sure to include the necessary information for funding sources. Information needed to make decisions to start, develop, and grow the business should also be included. “As texts that represent the strategy of a given organization, strategic plans are, of course, specific to that organization, and yet the notion has a generic quality that is based on shared institutional understandings of what such a text should include ( its substance), how it should be structured (its form) and what it is intended to achieve (its communicative purposes)” (Cornut, Giroux & Langley, 2012, 22). Keep in mind that the time spent on business planning could mark the difference between a successful business venture and one that struggles and ultimately fails Be prepared to do your research to find the information you need Remember that if all you do is copy what others are doing, you may risk ending up with only the level of success of others.
Identify the CEO’s personal brand to ensure it is aligned with the corporate brand. The vision and mission must show its relationship to the target market in the marketing message that is cohesive on the web and in printed materials such as mail pieces, letterheads and business cards.
plan inclusions
The master copy of the business plan will include information and sections that may not be contained in other versions for some audiences. The purpose of having an all-inclusive plan is to create a resource to be shared with specific audiences for specific purposes at the appropriate time. There may be a risk in sharing the entire plan with the wrong audience. Therefore, it will be necessary to remove some of the information from the plan according to the intended audience.
Work in progress
The business plan of a thriving company is expected to change forever to reflect the current operating activities of the company based on ideas that have been tested and adjusted to better serve the company’s stakeholders. When the business plan is no longer a changing document, the company is in danger of stopping its growth and development processes.
References
Cornut, F., Giroux, H. & Langley, A. (2012). The strategic plan as a genre. Discourse and Communication, 6, 1, 21-54.