Get better at planning
Five ways to approach entrepreneurship with solid plans.
Each entrepreneur has his or her own style of planning, but not all of them are equally good at it. Anton Roelofse, regional general manager of Business Partners Limited, believes entrepreneurs can and should constantly try to improve their planning process.
Here are some ways in which to become be er at planning for the year ahead:
1. Planning is a forward-looking activity, but the best way in which to ground it in reality is to start by looking backwards first. If you plan for the year ahead, begin by looking at the year past. What worked? What went wrong? What were the highlights and the disappointments? Now start looking forward – how can you increase those highlights in the year ahead, and limit the risks of disappointment? Planning not rooted in past
Look backwards before you look forwards
experience runs the risk of drifting off into fantasy. 2.
Take your head out from under the bonnet of your business and have a look at the environment in which you operate. Is your optimism in line with others in your industry and perhaps the economy as a whole? Should you allow for interest-rate hikes in your financial plans? Are there regulatory changes or new technology that may disrupt your industry? Your plans should be closely tied to the constantly changing conditions in the business environment.
Take a look around you
3. Even if a plan contains clear and realistic targets, as it should, as well as strategies to reach them, it is not complete if it does not contain clear markers that will allow you to measure your progress towards your goals. Annual goals without a breakdown of monthly or quarterly progress targets run the risk of being forgotten. 4. A very common, if not the most common, business target for
Build in clear targets and milestones Be careful of chasing turnover
the year ahead is a turnover goal. The problem is that it is easy to increase turnover at the expense of profitability by lowering prices or discounting too much. Turnover targets must be tempered by realistic profitability goals. 5.
Most entrepreneurs love operations and find it relatively easy to plan for it. To many, marketing is seen as something that just happens more or less spontaneously. The fact is that, just like operations or finance, the marketing side of a business requires careful thinking. – businesspartners.co.za
Don’t neglect marketing