Can you remember why you started your business? Has that changed?
Some key reasons may be a passion you have, an expertise you are trained in, the idea of being an entrepreneur or a business owner, to build a business to employ your family in, a niche you saw that had potential.
- Did you originally outline your business idea formally, perhaps to seek funds from an investor or a bank?
- Is this plan still relevant or does it require updating?
- If you do not have one at all here is a resource https://business.gov.au/planning/business-plans/how-to-develop-your-business-plan
Goals
- Do you have short term (1 year) and long term goals (3-5 years)?
These goals might look like store expansion, creating your own product range, employing more staff, Sales and profit targets, and it may include selling your business to someone else.
- How would you rate your chance of achieving these goals out of 10?
- A great structure to use is the SMART principle – Check and see if your goals are SMART!
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R – Realistic
T - Timeframe
It may be worth re-writing your short and long term goals so they are in line with this.
Resources
What do you need to ensure success of your goals? Whats preventing this from occurring?
- It may be $, skills, time, access, technology, equipment etc
- What is required to change this? Training? New skilled staff?, investing in equipment/technology?
- If its time – how can you allocate some time every week/month to work on these projects, or can you outsource it? Ie; update your website
- If its $ - Can you access funds from an alternative source? Bank, investors etc
- What is holding you back? Whats the outcome of not doing it?
SWOT Analysis
What is happening right now (and into the future) that positively and negatively impacts on your business?
The SWOT analysis really summarises your position. Try to outline around 5 points for each.
Strengths – What does your business do well that helps your business maintain or grow?
Weaknesses – What things within your business that you could control are not helping your business grow?
Opportunities – What is outside your business and a trend that could positively improve or grow your business?
Threats – What is outside your business and possibly uncontrollable that is negatively affecting your business?
Other key points to be clear on
- Your Product/Service Range offered – does this need modification to enable growth?
- Your Target Markets – Is there enough demand to make money?
- How will you communicate with your Target Market? (Marketing)
- Who are you competing with? (Including online)
- Staff – Do they have the right skills to optimise your business? Does this need change? Eg;Training/Recruitment
- Finances – (see below) Is your pricing strategy and costs making you profit?
- Operations – are there more innovative or more efficient ways to manage your business ie; technology?
ACTION PLAN
Based on your answers to the above, outline what plans need to happen to enable your business to thrive in a very specific way under the following sections.
1. Who – is responsible? The people who need to be involved in the project to achieve the business goals.
2. What – Resources and processes do you need to undertake and be successful in this project?
3. When – Timeframe needs to be realistic to achieve the plan
4. Measure – How will you measure the success of this plan?