Periodic reviews should help keep us on track, despite the changing conditions in the market. This should help us fully focused on the actual goal. We should be able to define methods and goals we will be using, so it is easier for us to stay on track. This could be quite important during tougher times. Business plans should be a good way of presenting our ideas to lenders and potential business partners. Bank, lending institutions and venture capitalists will require us to submit a good business plan. When we meet with our potential investors, business plans can be an indispensable tool that allows us makes a logical and very detailed presentation. Business plans can also be used to solicit suggestions and ideas from others. We can share the plan with family members, close friends, mentors or other people who are professionally respectable. It is essential for new business owners to solicit opinions about their proposed ventures. That isn’t to say that we should always follow advices and suggestions given by others, we should be open minded and listen to them. It is a bad idea to get emotionally attached and many people have failed because they are unable to change plans due to emotional reasons.
In our business, we should meet many people who have great suggestions and ideas to make a lot of money. It is much easier to get them if we are able to explain clearly about our business plans. Our plans don’t have to be formatted only as text, we can also make other versions of the plan. We could create plans as presentation slides or as graphs/diagrams with as little text as possible. It is also important to write anything too detailed about things that may happen eighteen months or more to the future. There are many things that could happen with our business, so it is important that we only provide generalized projections for the future. Lenders, business partners and consultants are well aware that many things could change and if we want to remain in the business, it is important for us to change too. As an example, many people made a lot of money in early 1990’s in pager business and with the introduction of affordable cellphones a few years later, some of them know that they are in for some significant changes. This is a situation when our long-term business plan no longer applies and we need to create the plan from scratch, if we want to concentrate on mobile phone business.
It is important to show lenders, partner and consultants that we are able to make adjustments based on shifting market conditions. Business owners who know how to change their plans accordingly will end up racking up a lot of money. In fact, companies who rigidly follow their business plans could eventually become obsolete or even go bankrupt. We shouldn’t be the victim of “my great idea”. It is unacceptable to think that we are smarter than the rest of the market and we don’t have to change anything.