How To Write A Quick & Easy Business Plan

How To Write A Quick & Relatively Painless
Business Plan ...

by: E.SAUNDERS

If you've never written a business plan before, the idea alone can be
overwhelming.

It doesn't have to be the nightmare of your imagination.

Traditionally, a business plan is used to secure funding from a lender or a
potential investment partner. It serves as something akin to your business's
resume, outlining the purpose and scope of your business, identifying the goals,
marketing and management, and establishing a basic balance sheet.

Now, even if you aren't going to seek additional funding, even if you're going
to grow your business by yourself from your office at home, you'd be wise to put
together a business plan. Simply going through the process has value. It'll help
you develop a clearly defined vision of what you intend to do with your business
and how you intend to do it.

These are some of the questions you should already have asked and answered
before you sit down to write your business plan:

What "want" does your business fill, and what service or product will you be
providing to fill that want?

Who will be your potential customer (this should be an established, niche market
with die-hard buyers).

Why will people purchase from you as opposed to the business down the street (in
other words ... what's your Unique Selling Position)?

How do you intend to reach your customers? A storefront? An ad in the phone
book? Direct mail? An Internet campaign? Selling door-to-door? A combination of
these?

Will you need additional funding and if so, how much will you need and how do
you intend to secure it?

Okay, so let's take a look at what you'll want to include in your business plan.

Most business plans are structured to examine four primary areas:

1. Executive Summary - a decription of the business

2. How you intend to market the business

3. How the busines finances will be arranged and
handled
4. How the busines will be managed

Let's take a further look at these.

Executive Summary: what the business will do, its Unique Selling Position, the
business goals, its ownership and legal structure, your skills and knowledge and
how they will benefit the business.

Marketing The Business: describe your product or service, identify your market
niche, how big it is, and how you plan to reach it. Define your customer,
identify your competition, detail your pricing plan, outline how you intend to
attract and convert customers.

Financing The Business: estimate your start-up costs, project your monthly
operating budget for the first year, outline your ROI (return on investment) and
cash flow for the first year, project your income and expense balance sheet for
the first two years, explain how you're going to compensate yourself, establish
who will maintain the accounting records and how they'll be maintained, and if
you're in need of funding, explain how much you need and how it'll be used by
the business.

Managing The Business: how will the business be managed day-to-day, what the
hiring and personnel procedures will be, how the products or services will be
developed and how they'll get into the hands of your customers. You'll also need
to account for equipment the business will need, and how insurance, rental
agreements, etc. will be handled.

That's it. In a nutshell!

Fours Simple Steps To Improve Your Resume

FOUR SIMPLE STEPS TO BETTER RESULTS WITH YOUR
RESUME

by: E.SAUNDERS

Is every job description you read the same? No.

Is every job you submit your resume to the same? Of course they aren’t.

If all these job descriptions are different, why do you submit the same resume?

Every day, people send the same generic resume out as though each position was
identical and each employer was attempting to hire identical skills and
attributes. Too often, the results they receive are like the broken watch that
is right twice a day—hit or miss success.

They list their name, address, phone numbers and email address, list an
objective, education, and chronology of experience with dates of employment. The
resume includes some successes or accomplishments. This is their resume.
In the days prior to computers when changing a resume required you to re-type
different versions, this made sense. Today, when computers allow you to
customize, spell and grammar check documents so easily, you are missing out on
opportunities and costing yourself money by being lazy and not tailoring your
resume for each opportunity you are interested in.

Here are several steps that you can do to improve your resume and get better
results.

1. Each employer will be interested in different
attributes of your experience. They often indicate it by the items they describe
in their job ad. Emphasize the experiences that you have that relate to the
skills being sought and the functions you will perform in the job they will ask
you to perform. If you are applying for a staff position, emphasize your staff
experience and minimize your management experience. If you are being hired to be
a leader, write about your recent leadership.

2. Employers are more interested in recent work,
rather than work you did many years ago. Use more space in your resume to
highlight recent experience, rather than things you did before George W. Bush
became President.

3. Like setting a goal where you make them
specific, measurable, achievable within a specific period of time, describe your
successes or achievements concretely. Reducing costs is a nice start but it is
more powerful to describe something as reducing operational costs globally by
2%. Increased departmental sales by 27% resulting in . . . You get the idea. Use
action verbs wherever possible.

4. Ask someone you trust to critique what you’ve
written. Too often, people believe that they can do everything by themselves
without asking for help. Ask a friend in your industry to critique what you’ve
written to insure you’re on target and aren’t missing the mark.

When you go to a restaurant and order a meal, you have the expectation that
it will be prepared in a way that will please you and be presented on the plate
beautifully. Writing a great resume requires that you be the chef and prepare a
meal that is both visually appealing and tastes great too!

Company/Employee Handbook As Organisational Improvement Tool

Company/Employee Handbook as Organisational
Improvement Tool

by: E.SAUNDERS

A business is only able to grow as fast as the internal organisation is able to
process higher volumes of sales. But how to get an optimal internal
organisation? Well, you will need to adapt your internal organisation over and
over again. It’s a never ending story. However, a Company/Employee Handbook
could assist you to achieve the best internal business organisation.

This brings up the question, What has to be included in a Company/Employee
Handbook? Everything what has influence to your business operation. First of
all, it has to be outlined which areas the Company/Employee Handbook will cover.
As it has to do with internal operation, here is a list of items you should
include:

- Company Background Information (Name-Development, Foundation date and place,
History-Milestones, Vision)

- Owner and/or Manager Bios/Profiles

- Listing of Officers and Board of Directors

- Employment Roles (Job Roles, Job Descriptions)

- Description of the main products and services (just use your marketing
material)

- FAQ (about internal subjects only)

- Company timeline (What, when, where)

- Office procedures (Workflow-Information, Working Procedures)

- List of persons to know (Bank Contact, Tax Advisor, Laywer, Main Suppliers,
etc.)

- Overview of agreements (Rental, Leasing, etc.)

- Internal Policies (Dress code, Phone usage and answering, Voice Mail
Procedure, Parking,

Business Cards, Drug Policy, etc.).

The above list shows which information should be included.

The following list
shows which departments should be included:

- Distribution

- Inventory/Warehouse

- Marketing (How Follow-up’s are handled, Lead-Generation, etc.)

- Customer Support

- Research and Development

- Accounting

- Human Resources

- Purchase/Procurement.

The above two lists just show, how complex it could be to setup a
Company/Employee Handbook. But it don’t have to be complex, just start partial.
Only include the information which are already available and use the help of
your employees. The benefits of having a Company Handbook are numerous, your
employees will save time, it will be easier to improve procedures, because the
procedures will be broken down into small sections of the whole precodures.
Everything is clearly described, so nobody needs to ask over and over again. In
case of holiday or illness of an employee, others could jump into the job,
because they could be trained faster.

As employer, you could hire employees with lower education. And your employees
will love it, because they know where to look, when they have questions and they
could improve their working environment as well. But the most advantage for the
owner is, that the organisation will be able to work properly, when the business
grows and when the owner might sell the business one day, it might get sold
easier, because of the proper organisation.

When installing a Company Handbook, you will find procedures you could automate.
Automating the operation as much as possible will also be a big benefit, because
employees and employer are able to focus their workforce on more important
topics, such as improving the sales volume. Furthermore automatization will
reduce to cost of operation as well.

A Company/Employee Handbook is a bit like a Business Plan, but far more
detailed, because it will contain information on every internal procedure. Only
the financial part of the business plan will not be included, but if you like
you might include some financial information you like to share with your
employees. As you describe your procedures just do it as a numeration or
listing. The description don’t have to be very well formed, it’s just important
that everyone who will read it, is able to understand what has to be done.

Remember, a Company Handbook is a living system, if you and your employees are
not updating it regularly, it will be death one day, because it will only
contain old stuff. So keep all people within your business engaged in improving
the Company Handbook, because it will improve your business internal
organisation as well. While starting to write the content of your Company
Handbook, concentrate on job roles at first, afterwards write down job
descriptions, in case a job role has been given to employees twice (Accounting
Staff, etc.). Job Roles need to include the duties and the responsebilities of
the described job.

Job Roles, Job Descriptions and Workflow-Descriptions of special procedures
don’t have to be the same, but take care that the information is consistent,
that means that it is written in a stream. This way the entire Company Handbook
will be of benefit for everyone. When rereading something on your Company
Handbook and you still have questions, than the entry is not finished.

Last but not least, your Company/Employee Handbook should be available everytime.
To do this, think about an Internet or Intranet Solution, depending on the size
of your business. Keep it simple and slim, and you will have many benefits from
it. Good Luck.