When you embark on the career path of owning and operating a small business, you will soon discover that there are a number of steps involved in achieving success. One key component of starting a small business is creating a successful business plan. A business plan is a small businesses blueprint to creating a profitable business. It contains all of the criteria that you need to make a business a success. It is basically a blueprint to creating the business and making sure it becomes profitable. Below are key elements one should include in their business plan that will help a small business get on the right track to success.

1. The business plan is designed to outline the type of business you will be operating and how it will generate sales. The mission statement should explain the small business values and objectives. You have to be able to effectively explain how your product or service will fill customers’ needs and wants. You need to have an understanding of your target audience. This includes the type of demographic you will be targeting. You should do some market research that includes relevant statistics. As well, you need to explain how the product or service will be created and what suppliers will be needed.

2. The business plan should outline your marketing strategies. You have to have a plan on how you will attract and retain loyal customers. You must have advertising plans such as where and how you will promote your product or service. That is, what advertising medium you will use such as the internet, newspapers, magazines, television, radio…etc. It is important that you have short and long term objectives and have a plan to meet the objectives. As well, your marketing strategies should be easy to modify in the event one strategy fails. Regularly updating your business plan will ensure you are meeting all of your marketing and promotion goals.

3. Any business, including a small business, needs stable financing. You will have a number of start-up expenses and you will need financing to keep your small business operating until you start making a profit. You have to determine the best finance that meets your needs. Most businesses acquire a loan so you have to make sure you can make the monthly repayments and that you can afford the interest rates. When acquiring a small business loan, you have to detail how you will generate revenue in a cost effective way.

4. Understanding your competition and developing strategies to compete with other businesses is essential to running a successful small business. For example, are there many other businesses in your area that sell similar products or services? Or, are you filling a specific niche market? Your business plan must detail how you plan to gain a competitive edge over other businesses. Basically, you will detail why and how you will be successful and that your product or service is viable.

Without a sound business plan, starting a small business can be a stressful and difficult experience. Creating an effective business plan will allow you to create a step-by-step process that will be easy to follow and help unsure your small business starts out on the right foot and grows to be a profitable business for years.

It is an American dream to own a business. But sadly, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, only 1 in 5 businesses is still in business 5 years after it opens.

A business needs a great business plan, but it doesn’t give management enough information to have a successful, profitable business. You dramatically increase your chance of success with a game plan. According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey, over half of the fastest growing firms not only have business plans, but also have separate game plans to keep them focused on what must be done day to day.

A business plan gets you in the game. A game plan keeps you in the game. To use the sports analogy, it’s easy to see how you are going to win the game in from the locker room. Most businesses don’t have a working plan that takes into account what actually happens on the field once play starts.

A business plan is a sales brochure and a game plan is an instruction manual. You send a business plan to potential investors and others to excite them about the business. A business plan is about strategy. You create a business plan at a management meeting. A game plan is about tactics and is created by and for the people on the front lines. A game plan talks openly about the good, the bad, and the ugly in the business and is used by people in the business to make decisions every day. It talks about what to do in a crisis.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

The CEO takes a look at his balance sheet and decides that his company has too much of its cash tied up in inventory, so he gets his managers together and creates a new corporate objective for the year – to reduce inventory by 25%. If they do that they will all be entitled to a bonus. The managers aren’t stupid – they know the only way to reduce inventory is to sell what they can and not replace it. So they put on a special promotion for their hottest selling items, they reduce the inventory of those to almost nothing, and they get their bonus. But what has really happened here. The CEO’s company is now left with the inventory of the items that weren’t selling, and they don’t have adequate inventory of their best selling items. The CEO didn’t really lead, the employees cared more about their bonuses than doing what was right for the company, and there wasn’t a plan of action that was tied into a meaningful company objective.

A game plan focuses on these things: creating big goals that matter, giving individual employees responsibility to carry out their portion of those goals, creating a budget and a reward system that supports the goals, and tools to allow employees to measure their own progress.

Steps in the Game Plan Process

The game plan requires a series of steps, beginning with the CEO getting in touch with his or her desires for the business. Then, the management team must delve into what is real for the business today – understanding the business model (how the company makes money), having a handle on what is happening in the market, and finally, knowing what is happening in the company culture. With all this background work done, the actual creation of the game plan begins. At best, it is a facilitated process of discussions matching what is real today with what is possible tomorrow, in the long run and in the short run.

A game plan only looks out a year at most, but within the context of a much longer period of time. The company might decide where they want to be in five years – the game plan is just the next series of steps toward that longer-term goal. There is no point in setting objectives for which there aren’t adequate resources, so objectives and budget are discussed in tandem. Another challenge of the game planning process is to define success for each objective and decide how it will be measured.

This is a time for healthy argument as sales wants more resources to increase revenue, product development wants more of the objectives to be toward R&D for the company’s future, and the operations manager wants more staff to improve quality. This is also the time for managers to consider the implications for all the decisions. And it is the time for the CEO to create a connection between the objectives and each of the managers so that there is personal commitment to the success of the company. If managers are not committed, they will never be able to expect commitment from other employees.

Turning Objectives Into Actions

When the company objectives and budget are ironed out, about half the work is done. A second series of steps takes the objectives set at a corporate level, and creates specific action items for each employee that support the department and then company objectives. Just as the CEO and the managers hashed out the process of give and take between what is today and where they would like to be tomorrow, each manager must go through the same process with the departments’ employees. Each employee must have a series of actions, but most importantly, each employee should know where they stand at any time they wish to check.

For instance, if the objectives for a customer service employee are to keep call length to an average of 2 minutes, have sales of an average of $50 per customer who calls, and to return all calls within 24 hours, then you want that employee to be able to find the measurements for those objectives as often as he or she wishes. The goal is for the employee to have access to just as much information about his or her performance as the manager. An employee who can assess his or her own progress real-time will correct performance deficiencies without a manager’s insistence.

The Plan Isn’t a Secret

The final piece is constant communication about the plan and the company’s progress to the employees. The game plan is not only communicated initially, it must be kept alive throughout the year with meetings focused on measuring progress toward the goals. Successes should be celebrated frequently.

In my own company, we used something we called a Game Plan Circle to illustrate our plan each year. It was a six-foot circle with our vision in the middle that radiated out to cover company objectives, department and individual objectives. It served as a visual we could refer to in meetings to keep us on track.

The Bottom Line

Don’t let your business become another failure statistic. A business plan is a great first step in starting or fundamentally changing a business. The next step is a game plan – a translation of that business plan to each employee’s actions every day.

When it comes to business plans and their importance, you will find that there are a number of different reasons why business plans are important. Perhaps, the best way to go about understanding those reasons is to closely examine business plans, namely what they are used for. Business plans are used for a number of different things; they serve a number of different purposes. In all honesty, it depends on the type of business that you are interested in developing.

Business plans are used by many to obtaining financing for their up and coming businesses. These potential business owners are ones who have business ideas, but they do not have the financing needed to make their dreams become a reality. Instead of giving up on those dreams, a large number of individuals turn to financial lenders or investors for financial assistance. This is where a business plan comes in. Financial lenders and investors don’t just hand out money to any ole person. They, as you likely expect, want to make sure that they will be getting their money back. The only way to do this is to back a business that is sure to be a success. The only problem is that financial lenders and investors aren’t mind readers; that is why they rely on business plans.

When examining a business plan, a financial lender or investor will likely go over it with a fine tooth comb. In fact, they may even want to keep your business plan for a while, to do a little bit of research. That research will likely help them determine whether or not your business idea could turn into a real, profitable business. If so, there is a good chance that you may get the financing that you need. That is why it is extremely important that you not only have a business plan, but a detailed, professional one. You will often find that your business plan is the deciding factor in whether or not you get the financing that you need.

In addition to using a business plan to obtain business financing, there are many potential business owners who use business plans as guidance. It is no secret that it is difficult to develop a business on a whim. Doing so may mean leaving out important duties or tasks; duties or tasks that may have a significant impact on your business. That is why, if you are interested in starting a business, you are advised to develop yourself a business plan. That business plan will help to make sure that you have all of your bases covered. Having all of your bases covered is one of the many keys to developing a successful and profitable business.

Guidance and financial backing are just a few of the many ways that business plans are used, but they are the two most important and most common uses. Regardless of what you use your business plan for, in the end, you will be glad that you developed one.

This article was authored by Ryan Bessling. This 32 year old, Internet marketer was able to quit his 9-5 “job” because of his The Business Plan Guide. He now wants to help others and show you how he made it in Internet Marketing from creating a great business plan!

Disqualifying prospects appears to run counter to everything a sales organization is trying to do. Why would you shut the door and snuff out a possible sale? The short answer is to make a lot more money.

When a telemarketing sales appointment company works for you they must deliver the most qualified prospects for you to meet and sell. The wishy-washy, tire-kickers might help you hone your sales skill but won’t put any money in your pocket. They’ll string you along forever incapable of making a firm decision no matter what. Their name on today’s call calendar will still be there 3 months from now. You don’t have the time. You can’t afford the aggravation

A superior sales appointment setter will ask the right questions to get a firm yes or a firm no. Anything in the middle isn’t acceptable. A prospect, with the authority to buy from you, who gives an emphatic yes to an appointment has a high probability of becoming a customer. Those who say no have given you the second best answer. The prospects that aren’t sure and are very vague about everything may never do business with you, or if they do will cost you more than they are worth.

Prospects who have trouble seeing your value, will have even more trouble paying for it. If, after months of trying to convince them of your worth, they finally agree to give you a “try out”, it will always be for the lowest price and service level. Problem is they’ll want to turn the ignition key in a Cadillac while paying for a Chevrolet. It isn’t a damnation of the client, it’s a finger pointed at the sales organization that won’t decide up-front that this isn’t a business relationship to pursue.

An appointment setting firm’s suggestion to dismiss a prospect early in the process sounds harsh but business is made up of a lot of harsh realities and most of them involve cash flow and sales. Decide now that in your pursuit of new, profitable business, you will rely on a company that will disqualify weak prospects in favor of those that will form long term, profitable relationships.