One of my favorite types of projects is working on small business plans with clients. There is an air of excitement as they work out their ideas and put their dreams on paper. I always think that I might be witnessing a birth of another future corporate giant. Some of those ideas are compelling, others seem unattainable, and yet the confidence and certainty my clients exhibit leave me with no doubt that they will succeed.

The Challenge of Writing a Business Plan
As excited as these entrepreneurs are about their ideas, for many of them the actual task of writing things down in a business plan format is very hard. They would rather get started already, develop their product or service, find a location – do all the things a typical small business owner does. They have such inner clarity about every single detail and yet communicating all of it in writing – in a business plan format – seems completely against their nature. It feels too structured, almost unnecessary.

Obtaining Financing
And yet, especially it today’s world, it is necessary. Most of the time the purpose for a small business plan is to obtain financing. No matter which group you are thinking of approaching – venture capitalists, commercial lenders, potential investors – they will all want to see a formal, written business plan.

Even though many people use business plans primarily, and sometimes only, as financing tools, they tend to write them in a way that puts the venture in too optimistic a light. Even if it gets you the cash you wanted, it will not help you succeed, because if the business has not been well thought out, or if the risks are too great, it will fail.

A realistic and objective business plan that also conveys your excitement about your business idea and your confidence in reaching your goals will have a much better chance of not only getting you the financing you need, but also fulfilling the other purpose it was meant to serve:

Planning a Business
Yes, that’s it! A business plan is a “planning tool”. That is its primary function and purpose. And it does this so well that shrewd business people like investors and bankers use it to determine who will get financed by them and who will not.

And you too will benefit from using it the most when you see it as such and not only as a sales tool.

It is a structured approach to refining your ideas about your business and devising a plan of action taking into account all aspects of the future enterprise: marketing, personnel, operations and finance. It helps you translate your ideas into actionable goals and it helps to predict your financial resource needs and financial results.

As you fine tune it, you will find out that it allows you to make many mistakes “on paper” and saves you from their consequences in the real world.

Monitoring a Business
The hardest business plan to draft is your very first one. Why? Because all you have are estimates and assumptions. But after a few months of operations, you will have some real numbers and you can update your plan at that point. Planning process has to be dynamic and on-going. A plan is not something you do once and put on a shelf. If it is to you, you have not realized the tremendous value it has for your business.

It should be an integral part of your management. Use it to compare your actual results to what you were anticipating. Analyze the deviations and understand them. Perhaps what you did was better than what you planned, perhaps not. Either way, you can learn from this comparison and refine your planning and your operations even further.

Any time you plan to introduce a new product, enter a new market, change the management structure, you should first prepare a business plan for the scenario you are envisioning. And don’t think this means too much time involvement for you. After all, you are just a small business owner. You cannot behave like a large corporation with a separate planing department, right? Wrong…

Large companies have large planning departments because they have learned the value and necessity of planning, but you need it just as much, if not more, because as a small business owner you do not have the reserves that can carry you through a sales slump or a bad business mistake.

This is what I always tell my clients – small businesses need all the sophistication of large companies. They actually need it even more, they just need it scaled down and adjusted to their size.

Today we are going to talk about your business consultant business plan and I am going to challenge you to leave the hole. Let me explain what I mean. As consultants we do a lot of thinking. Our job is to think on behalf of our clients, but when it comes to our own business we think too much. Whether you are creating your first business plan or fifth generation new growth plan, I am going to challenge you to leave the hole. Don’t try to think through all the iterations before you actually roll the plan out. Don’t try to come up with every contingency, every plan A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Do your best to come up with sharp thinking, trust your thinking, and then roll the plan.

Old Mindset: Holes are bad and you must fill them. The old mindset that most of us have is that holes are bad and you must fix them. There is a fear that comes along with holes. We don’t want anybody to assume we haven’t thought our plan all the way through; we don’t want the public embarrassment. However, one thing about holes is that holes don’t make mistakes. If you allow your fear of failure to drive you, you will rush to create a new process to solve for a problem that may not exist at all. That rushed process can create plenty of mistakes. But if you have the courage to leave the hole then no new problems will arise. You can manage the situation with more patience and savvy.

Also, consider that a hole is a legitimate data point. Customer complaints are data. Lost revenue is data. Low employee morale is data. Even if you get a zero as the specific output, that is a data point as well. The holes you find are prompts to ask great questions. Think about how the work is supposed to be done. If you realize a hole, this is an opportunity to brainstorm around how the hole got there and solve for the root cause.

New Mindset: Holes make us better. In the spirit of a new mindset, holes actually make us better. Holes remind us of how our best work is done. You review a process, see a hole and think about what’s supposed to be there. How do you want it to work in a best case scenario? The existence of holes allows you to brainstorm in that way. Thinking this way gives you an eye for greater opportunity. Perhaps the existing process is healthy, but maybe you notice a hole before that process begins, or after the process ends. Those holes allow you to see what additional value can be added as an introduction or conclusion to your process.

Holes also represent real (and valuable) business pain. If you are supposed to have a five step process and you consistently miss step two, the consistent miss causes your business pain and pain teaches lessons. Pain attracts attention. None of us like to be around pain, but it’s hard for us to forget real pain. Business pains are things like lost clients, lost revenue, lost employees, lost opportunities, and lost bid prospects. These pains allow you to zero in on the holes that exist and fix them. Take the opportunity to become a better company.

Have the courage to leave the holes. Sometimes you have to go through loss or pain in order to appreciate what in that process needs to be changed.

The system doesn’t work if you cheat it. With that said, you must have the courage to leave the holes and the system doesn’t work if you cheat it. If you insert yourself in certain parts of the plan to cover up holes, you are cheating. You are not allowing the process to stand on its own and that’s necessary if you are going to make an honest analysis of it.

You can’t be afraid to discover a hole. You do your best thinking, put together your best strategy, and realize errors after roll-out. That’s what happens in business. You can’t be afraid of finding a hole later on in the process.

Don’t rob your company of the discipline it needs. You need the courage to leave a hole so that your entire business can see that an error has developed in how you do business. Because the solution may not reside in you as the lead consultant, that solution may reside in some other business relationship. But if you don’t have the courage to leave the hole, then your entire community can’t notice the hole and rally to fix it. Your business community includes your team, employees, vendors, customers, and clients. You all work together to create the best possible business environment. Be transparent with the holes so everyone can be part of the solution.

As the leader of your consulting business you have to be okay with making a mistake and you have to be OK with possible embarrassment. You’ve got to be OK with certain systems and certain processes failing. Those failures give you an opportunity to improve and that constant spirit of improvement is what makes you attractive as a consulting company. The fear that drives perfection only makes you weak and it’s a matter of time when that weakness is revealed to the marketplace. Have the courage to reveal the holes in your business and then work hard to improve them.

What is it?
Every business, whether big or small, requires strategic business planning to be successful. All businesses face issues and problems on a daily basis that need to be resolved in order to make the business reach its targets or goals. Most of the top-management resolves such problems by developing optimized tactics, which work fairly well. However, to make a business successful, something more than tactics is required. You need proper strategic business planning to maximize growth and give your business that extra edge. Strategic business planning is developing and formulating a business plan keeping in mind all strategic factors, such as competitors, demography and customers, that can influence the business.

What are the factors involved?
With each business having a unique set of factors that distinguishes it from others, strategic business planning is never easy. However, one thing that is common for all businesses – their aim to be financially effective in order to survive in the market. Thus, while implementing strategic business planning, the primary factors that need to be looked into are the optimal use of resources at hand and maximization of returns on investment (ROI). Apart from these, the budget is another key aspect that has to be looked into during strategic business planning. A business plan devised for a multi-million dollar company would be totally different from one formulated for a small business with a limited budget. The key to proper strategic business planning lies in discussion, development of new understanding of business aspects, gaining new insights and the generation of new ideas.

Who can help in formulating?
While one can look into their in-house management team to formulate a strategic business plan, it is always better to look for specialized services that can understand your business with a new prospective and have high expertise in your field. This would provide your management team a third-party view, ideas and assistance during strategic business planning, enabling it to create a strategic plan that would be both effective and efficient. Obtaining the assistance of a facilitator will also help your business gain an edge over that of your competitors.