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Your Profit Power Tool: The Business Plan

If the idea of creating a business plan makes your eyes glaze over, don’t worry. This chapter isn’t about the kind of detailed business plan you’d need to get a loan from a bank or money from a venture capitalist. In fact, the kind of business plan I’m going to show you just might be the most dynamic document you’ve ever created, and it is likely to be the most profitable.

First things first. If you’ve already written a business plan, print it out or dust it off and take a look at it. If it’s more than two years old, its shelf life has expired. Why? Consumer expectations are constantly changing in response to economic conditions, new technology and lifestyle shifts. So be prepared to make some changes in your approach to ensure that it’s up to date.

If you’ve never written a business plan, you’re about to find out how to make it your most powerful business development tool. Pull out a pad of paper and a pen, and let’s get started.

Define Success in Your Own Terms

Start off by defining what you mean by “success” for the next 12 months. Success can mean different things to different people. Your definition should be what will satisfy you, and it’s likely to evolve over time. But unless you know what your success target is for the immediate future, you won’t know when you’ve hit the mark.

Here are some ways to define business success for any given year:

~ Profit.

~ Market share.

~ New product penetration.

~ Media coverage and endorsements

~ National distribution channels.

~ Percent gain in product sales.

~ Industry credibility—speaking engagements, interviews, board or committee roles.

You may even think of a few more possibilities. The point is that success is more than just money, although for most companies and solo professionals, there is a target amount of money involved.

Ready, Aim…

Now write down your top three business goals for next year. Be sure to prioritize them from most important to least important. Do they match your definition of success?

One of the reasons business development often fails for small companies and solo professionals is that the business development and networking efforts are not aligned with the prioritized business plan goals. Overwhelmed business owners take whatever business development opportunities cross their paths, or join associations or professional groups without determining their potential benefit. They don’t know how to say yes with confidence and no without guilt, because they don’t have any standard to judge the opportunities.

Your business plan sets that standard. Next to each of your prioritized business goals, write down who the target audience is for that goal. The more precisely you can narrow down the target audience (instead of “everyone” it would be better to say “college educated men between the ages of 18 and 30”), the more precisely you’ll be able to target your business development. You may have more than one target audience for each goal (for now), or you may have the same target audience for all of your goals. That’s okay. We’ll look at your audiences in more detail in the next chapter.

…Fire! Or Aim Again

Once you’ve matched an audience with a prioritized goal, make a list of all your current business development efforts. List everything: Websites, professional memberships, event sponsorships, trade shows, networking groups, banner ads, Facebook ads, online marketing efforts, direct mail, print or radio ads, signage, social media, e-mail newsletters, speaking appearances, online and traditional press release distribution, and so on. Now that you’ve made a comprehensive list, match each business development effort to the target audience it reaches, and to the business goal it supports. Do you see any disconnects?

Usually at this point, company owners notice that they have business development efforts that reach a particular target audience but aren’t communicating a message that supports the business goal that is now linked to that audience. For example, perhaps paid magazine ads are reaching the right type of reader, but the call to action isn’t aligned with the top business goal. If the goal is “increase the mailing list with opt-ins,” the ad should encourage readers to go to the Website and sign up with their e-mail address to receive some kind of reward, such as a useful checklist, article, or mini e-book.

Sometimes, company owners discover “orphan” business development efforts that don’t seem to connect with any prioritized business goal. “Orphan” business development efforts might exist out of habit, or because they met an old need, or because there’s an emotional connection to the action or to the person who sold it to you. But if it’s not advancing a business goal, it’s an “orphan” because there is no reason to keep on doing it. They might also find business development efforts that are reaching the wrong audience.

Getting the effort in sync with the best target audience in support of the right prioritized goal is the first step to business development success. Online business development and networking efforts will be most successful if the message and effort are linked to the right goal and audience, and you’ll get a multiplier effect on all of your business development efforts if they are all in sync. As you’ll see when we get into the details, good online business development and networking not only help to raise your company’s visibility, but also create lasting relationships and brand recognition that creates future orders. If those business development actions aren’t tied to the right goals and audiences, your prospect will get a muddled, ineffective message that will cost you sales.

Look for Gaps

Now that you’ve aligned your business plan goals according to your success priorities, matched the goals to the right target audiences and matched your current business development efforts to the right audience/goal, it’s time to go “gap hunting.” Here’s how to “gap hunt”:

~ Are there any goals/audiences without any supporting business development efforts?

~ Are all the business development efforts bunched up around one goal?

~ Is most of your business development effort supporting your top prioritized goal?

~ Are you putting most of your effort into goals you’ve ranked as second or third in importance?

~ Do you have target audiences who aren’t the focus of any business development?

~ Is one target audience getting all the business development messages?

~ Are second- or third-goal audiences getting more business development messages than your top goal audience?

Make a list of these business development gaps, because you’ll need to address them in your strategy, and you’ll want to look for ways online business development and networking can help you plug the holes.

Defining Your Transformative Value

Before any customer spends money, he or she has to overcome two obstacles: ego and money. Ego is what makes people try to fix a problem themselves, rather than hire someone. They don’t agree to buy until they fail. Money is what clients hope to save by doing the job themselves. Most people won’t hire someone for any job until 1) they have failed to do it themselves, and 2) there is enough at stake that continued failure will cost more than paying for the job.

Every person who buys your product does so because he or she has a problem. For example, if you are a business coach who specializes in work/life balance, your clients set aside time and money to work with you because their current balance isn’t functioning well. If you run a roofing firm, clients hire you to replace missing shingles. Balance or missing shingles are the problem.

Behind the problem is a pain. That’s the chance that the problem could get bigger. The work/life balance problem could begin to impact a person’s relationships or ability to complete projects. A few missing shingles could lead to water damage and more expensive repairs if not fixed promptly.

Underneath the pain is a fear. The fear is the “what if” that keeps a prospect up at night envisioning the worst scenario. The work/life balance issue could lead to a divorce, delinquent children, and/or bankruptcy. Water damage could mean a whole new roof and expensive structural damage.

Your Transformative Value is the way you speak to the problem/pain/fear in your own unique way. When you make a sale, it’s because you have done two things: successfully answered the ego/ money challenge and satisfied the problem/pain/fear issue. To satisfy the ego/money challenge, you’ve convinced the prospect that you have skills they don’t in order to save them money with better results. You’ve resolved the problem/pain/fear issue by assuring them that you can fix the initial problem so well that the pain and fear disappear. Speaking compellingly about your prospect’s problem/ pain/fear will make your networking and business development efforts more productive, yielding more results with less effort.

Successful business development efforts communicate your unique Transformative Value to your best prospects to satisfy both the ego/money objection and to solve the problem/pain/fear. Online business development and networking are two of the channels you can use to communicate that message effectively.