AUTUMN 2006 Newsletter
In this issue of our Essential Business newsletter:
- FREE e-book: Go It Alone LITE by Geoff Burch
- We urge you to think about planning for your business
- We've got a great business planning software offer
- Chartered Insitute of Marketing (CIM) event offer
We're delighted to offer you this FREE e-book
You may remember Geoff Burch, whose book Go It Alone we loved when we reviewed it in our summer newsletter? Well, Geoff has distilled Go It Alone into a great e-book, especially for us, and Julie has turned it into something beautiful, as she always does. Go It Alone LITE is yours absolutely free.
Click below to download it straight away. No catch, no hidden cost. Just a great 38-page e-book, especially designed by Julie to be easy to read on screen and packed with tips to help you run your business better.
Take a look and see what you think of it. And if you like it, please send the link at the bottom of the e-book to as many people as you think will also read and enjoy it. That way you'll help us spread the word about our website and about Geoff's fantastic books.
DOWNLOAD» Go It Alone LITE e-book pdf
If Go It Alone LITE makes you want to own the 'full fat' version of 'Go It Alone', you can buy it direct from our online shop for only £9.95 (usual price £12.99).
A little help with your plan
Many business owners and directors never give a thought to planning, or if the thought does cross their minds, they quickly dismiss it as being unnecessary for them, or too much effort.
This is a pity. In fact, this attitude seems like business suicide to us — but then Jane has seen the effects of good planning on various companies' profits over almost twenty years, so we know how powerfully it can work when done properly.
So why don't business owners plan more? Often its because nobody tells them they ought to, it’s not a legal requirement after all (beyond the financial audit in a limited company). Businesses often grow slowly from small beginnings, reacting to markets and responding to opportunities as they arise, rather than choosing how they want their business to be.
In healthy, growing markets — and especially if competitors are weak — this can work OK, for a while. But what happens when the market has a downturn, or competitors smarten up their act? That's when the unplanned, reactive business is the first to suffer.
There's no doubt that planning can be time consuming to do, at least first time through, and many business owners are pressed for time and under pressure. Added to that, they often don’t know how to do it, and most of the information available tells them what to do, not how. So as a result, many convince themselves that planning doesn’t work for their type of business, or that they can do very well without it.
Trust us: It is worth the effort. And if you are one of those people who is keen to have a go, here are some suggestions on how to make planning work for your business:
An ultra-brief guide to how to plan:
1 Set your constraints – what you will/will not do in your business
For example, if you were setting up a carpet cleaning business, you might decide: I will clean carpets, curtains and furniture; I will not clean wooden or tiled floors or anything outdoors; I will travel anywhere within 50 miles of here, but no further.
2 Look at your total possible market (after constraints)
Everyone with carpets, curtains and furniture within 50 miles of here
3 Divide into meaningful groups – sometimes called segments
Home owners, offices, letting agents etc. You might need to break each group down further before examining their needs. For example: Home owners with dogs and/or children (and therefore dirtier carpets!), different age groups, different sizes of homes and offices, domestic vs commercial letting agencies
4 Examine their needs — in detail
This might show you that certain age groups of home owners are more inclined to have their carpets and curtains cleaned often than others, and that dog owners need their carpets but not their curtains cleaned more often than the home owners with children but no dogs, or whatever.
5 Do some research to fill the gaps you have found in your knowledge as you tried to work out what people needed. This might mean designing a simple questionnaire and asking people from your different groups about their habits when it comes to cleaning carpets etc
6 Set some objectives ‘Where do we want to get to?’
For example: 'By the end of three years, I want to be managing a group of five other people to do the cleaning work, I want to have sales of £x per year, and be making £x per year in profit after tax.'
7 Strategies 'How will we get there?'
An outline 3-5 year plan, ideally in reverse order, as this helps you work out what your eventual goals are first, then work towards them. In the cleaner example, if you wanted to be employing five people by the end of three years, you might aim to have three cleaners by the end of two years, and one by the end of the first year. Your sales figures in each year would need to increase enough for you to be able to pay the wage bill and have enough left for yourself, and to invest back into the business. You would need to outline how much carpet, curtain and furniture cleaning you need to sell, at what price, to how many of each type of customer, for your sales to add up to the amount you need to make. This would help you work out whether your plan is possible or not.
8 Tactical/action plan
This is simply a more detailed version of the strategy, covering just the first year of the plan. It should be a well-used, dog-eared document, perhaps in the form of a spreadsheet, and organized like a calendar, so you can see easily what you need to have done in each month to make sure that everything is done in time.
To see examples of Action Plans which we created for our mythical personal trainer (taken from our soon-to-be-published Start Your Business, Step by Step workbook) click to download an example pdf »
The planning professionals
Palo Alto is deservedly market leader with its excellent Business Plan Pro business planning software. The company’s website also has lots of useful information, as well as some very handy tools with calculations built in — especially good for looking at 'what ifs', such as the effect of variations in price and sales levels. Free and useful. What else could you ask for?
We have negotiated a special £25 discount on Business Plan Pro software. The standard version normally retails at £79.99, and the premier version at £99.99, so this is a big saving.
The offer is valid until 30th December 2006, and all you need to do is click below to purchase and receive your £25 discount.
* Please note the exclusive discount will be included once you've moved to the Palo Alto shopping cart page.
CIM marketing event
Both Julie and Jane are speaking at a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) event in Crawley, West Sussex, on Tuesday 28th November. The event, 'Milking your marketing for all it’s worth', will feature three speakers, a buffet, and the chance to network with other business owners.
CIM Southeast have offered our readers the members’ rate of £20 per person, a saving of £5 on the normal price, so if you live anywhere near Crawley, come and meet us. Find out more about the event on the CIM website and then you'll need to book by phone (01628 427120) and quote 'Essential Business' for the discounted price (unless you are a CIM
member, and qualify for the lower price anyway).
Want to read more from Essential Business?
» Click to read our Summer 2006 newsletter
» Click to read our Spring 2006 newsletter
We hope to meet up with some of you soon...
Jane and Julie are doing lots of speaking engagements and workshops this month, so perhaps we'll see you at one of them. Come and say hello, and tell us about your business.
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