home base business

11 Steps To Creating The Perfect Business Plan

By: Aaron Foster

What should a business plan cover?

That?s the million dollar question.

For one thing, it should offer a thorough analysis of the need for the particular product or service you are planning to offer. It also needs to talk about how you are qualified to be making such an offering to the public.

A business plan should address your strategies in terms of production and marketing, how you will be organized, any legal aspects that you must address, and what your accounting methods will be. In short, a business plan should address the following questions:

* What do I want and what am I capable of doing?

* What are the most workable ways of achieving my goals?

* What can I expect from the future?

Keep in mind that there is not one specific format that you should use, or one best way to lay out your business plan. However, there are some steps you can take to make the process go a little more smoothly; we?ve listed what we think is the easiest method, below.

Step 1: Making the Commitment ? be sure that you desire to work for yourself is truly greater than you desire to work for someone else.

Step 2: Analyze yourself ? list your strengths and weaknesses. Determine how you can build off your strengths, and improve on your weaknesses. Remember, this can be a daunting task because you may have to own up to a few shortcomings you?re not prepared to recognize!

Step 3: Choose a Product or Service ? this sounds silly, but just because you think you know what business you want to be in, it doesn?t mean your idea will be a profitable one. Take a look at the feasibility of your idea.

Step 4: Research Your Market ? marketing research is crucial to the success of any business, large or small. The more you know about your potential market, the greater your chances of securing the customers you want, right out of the gate, and that means making a profit.

Step 5: Forecast Your Sales Revenue ? after you take a look at the market your product is best suited for, estimate the percentage of that market that you think you will reasonably be able to take over. Take in to account the number of your competitors, their size, and the amount of market they already have. It is important to be realistic during this exercise.

Step 6: Choose a Location ? is your new business going to be on the web? Or will you have a retail storefront? Will you consult out of your home office? Be careful to weight both your personal preferences and what makes the most sense for the ultimate success of your business. You might like the idea of working in your pajamas every day, but if your shingle needs to be seen by the public for maximum growth potential, a home office might not be your best option.

Step 7: Develop a Marketing Plan ? here you will be forced to detail you plan to gain customers, and turn a profit. Discuss possible marketing channels, price points, advertising, and sales promotion.

Step 8: Develop an Organizational Plan ? what skills and talents do your new business need to not only survive, but to grow as well? If you don?t have all these traits, how are you going to get them in the door? Will you hire freelancers? Are you hoping to bring on an employee right away? If these individuals, and their skill sets, are vital to your success, do not make a plan without them!

Step 9: Decide on Your Status ? sole proprietor? Partnership? You need to decide how you?re going to approach this, and investigate the legal ramifications of each situation. As a sole proprietor, you?re in control, but you?re also solely responsible. In a partnership, you share the responsibility, but you also share the decision making and the profits. What works best for your budget AND your personality?

Step 10: Address Your Accounting ? if you don?t know how much money is coming in and out of your business, you will never know if you are making a profit, or if you need to make changes. Keeping track of your numbers is one of the single most important things you can do for your business. Decide on whether you will do it in house, or outsource it to a professional; if you take care of it yourself, decide on what software you will use.

Step 11: Put it All into Numbers ? this may or may not be necessary for you; it depends on what type of business you are starting. When you approach a financial institution for a small business loan, they will respond better if they see all of your plans in numbers; they are, after all, in the business of numbers. So, go back through all the above steps, and assign dollar amounts to what you can; when you approach the bank, you can tell them exactly how much you need, and show them where their money will be going. You can then show them, with a number, how much of the market you are planning to corner, and your growth, by percentage, over the next X years.

That?s it ? wasn?t so hard after all, was it?

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/business_and_finance/article_8995.shtml

Top 100 Employers Share Their Secrets Of Success

By: Leigh Branham

In June 2004, I was invited to speak at a ?Workplace of Choice? conference in Las Vegas sponsored by the American Strategic Management Institute. Representatives from seven of this year?s Fortune list of the ?100 Best Places in America to Work? were also invited to share the secrets of their companies? success, along with the co-founder of the Great Places to Work Institute, Robert Levering.

For the inaugural edition of this e-letter, I thought I would pass on to you the highlights of what these presenters had to say. With the economy primed for full recovery and a return to the war for talent, leaders of every organization stand to benefit from their insights and innovative practices.

Levering was a San Francisco labor reporter in 1981 when his newspaper gave him the assignment to write an article about great places to work. His initial reaction was to ask, ?Are there any?!? After conducting his initial research, Levering discovered that there were indeed?so many, in fact, that he has since built a career by tracking and reporting their best practices. Over the years, competition among companies to be selected for the prestigious list of 100 has become so intense that CEOs now seek the listing as a conscious, separate business objective.

Great Employers Score High on 5 Dimensions

Levering pointed out that candidates for the list are judged on five dimensions?credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie. Here are some of their best practices in each area:

Credibility

- Xilinx (#10 on Fortune?s list) made a determined effort to successfully avoid layoffs when jobs were threatened by a downturn in the economy. Instead of forcing employees to take pay cuts, Xilinx asked employees to volunteer for salary reductions as an alternative to lay-offs. The CEO, Wim Rolandts, set the example by taking a 25 percent salary cut. Some managers volunteered for six-to-eight percent pay cuts, and persuaded employees to buy-in to the idea of sacrificing part of their own salaries to keep their jobs. The ?lay-offs-as-a-last-resort? policy has attracted technology workers who have been laid off at other companies.

Respect

- At Duncan Aviation (#77on the list), even with a male population of 89 percent, the company had zero incidents of sexual harassment.

- Bright Horizon?s has built a culture where managers give ?explanations, not orders,? ask ?why not?? instead of adhering to rigid rules, and where workers remember to say ?thank you? to each other. (Bright Horizon was # 10 on Fortune?s best employers for minorities)

- Duncan Aviation has no time clocks, no fancy offices, no reserved parking for managers, and allowing a balance of work and family.

- Duncan?s president who speaks personally with all new employees for 90 minutes during their first week on the job, and invites them to view their commitment to Duncan Aviation not just as a job, but as a career.

- Duncan also makes a commitment to listening, as in: ?when talking with someone, we don?t answer the telephone.?

Fairness

- Valassis (#68) pays out nearly 10 percent profit-sharing yearly to each employee.

- Duncan Aviation provides bonuses to all employees contingent on meeting company goals.

- Ninety percent of Valassis employees have stock options, including some millionaires who wear overalls to work each day.

Pride

- Microsoft (#25) rewards ?Gold Star? spot bonuses to recognize significant contributions.

- To discourage the development of an ?entitlement mentality,? Valassis has employees who left and came back tell their stories about how the grass was not greener on the other side of the fence.

- Microsoft selects new hires carefully?those actually hired will have sat through an average of ten or more interviews.

- Quicken Loans (#13) gives spot bonuses that reward customer service and help maintain a 90 percent customer retention rate.

- Valassis prides itself on having 24 ways of recognizing employees and makes a special effort to recognize the ?steady Eddies??the solid citizens who comprise the backbone of the company. Employees? families are invited to all employee recognition ceremonies.

Camaraderie

- Quicken Loans has annual barbecue, and parties for all occasions?birthday, anniversary, holidays, and even tailgate parties.

- Quicken also holds annual ?Academy Award? ceremonies for top achievers.

Great Employers Give and Get Back

Another earmark of great places to work is a management mindset characterized by an interest in giving, which triggers the willingness of employees to give back.

What do preeminent employers give? Levering says they don?t necessarily give ?all the bells and whistles? or flashy benefits. They do tend to distinguish themselves from ?merely good? employers by giving over and above what is required. Here are some of the ways they do it:

- Instead of providing basic good communication, they make every employee feel ?I?m talking to you.?

- Instead of matching the benefits and perks of other companies, they ask their employees, ?what do you want and need??

- Instead of trying to implement several new initiatives all at once, they concentrate on doing the two or three most achievable ones that are also tied to their business objectives.

- Instead of trying to improve their weaknesses, great employers accentuate their strengths, building on what is special in their organizations.

In return for these gifts, employees give back greater individual effort, greater innovation and creativity, and better cooperation and teamwork. Perhaps this explains why, from 1998 to 2004, the evolving list of public companies on Fortune?s 100 Best Places to Work list experienced stock growth of 133.8 percent compared to only 25.2 percent by S & P companies!

What All These Employers Have in Common

As diverse as all the practices and benefits are, they do reveal two things these seven companies have in common?1.) a commitment to becoming and remaining a great place to work, and 2.) the wisdom to create cultures and human capital practices that serve and fit their business strategies and objectives.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/business_and_finance/article_8852.shtml