Category: People Resources

5 Key Points For Preparing a Winning Business Plan

Posted on by KWD

Preparing a Business Plan

Your business plan is your ultimate decision-making tool. Without it, you are more likely to struggle to achieve your goals. A clear and concise business plan is your way to show your staff, your investors, and your bank that you know what you are doing. Anyone you approach for money will expect to see your business plan and without it, you won’t be getting any money because everyone knows that investing in a rudderless business is simply too risky. That’s why you must take certain things into consideration to make sure your business plan is effective.

Following are some tips that will help you when preparing a business plan:

1. Be Clear on What You Want to Achieve

Ask yourself what you want to achieve and what your company stands for. Think of everything you would want a potential employee, customer, partner, or investor to know about it. This include the following:

  • Vision Statement: Create a short and aspirational vision statement. It should be realistic. You should take your time to get it right.
  • Unique Selling Proposition: This includes the reasons why you believe that the customers will come to you instead of your competitors.
  • Target Market Identification: Although you would want to expand your customer base as much as possible, it pays to have a clear picture of the target market as it will make it easier for you to communicate with them.
  • Explanation of Products/Services: Make sure the explanation is in line with your Unique Selling Proposition and meets the needs of your target market.
  • Goals: List your goals. They should be measurable, realistic, and consistent with your financial plan.

2. Set Out the Details

The next step is to see how your vision will work. Specify what your business structure is and who will help you bring your vision to life. Following are some others things you should include:

  • Structure and History: Outlines the background of your business and introduce key people like managers, employees, investors, and partners.
  • Analysis of Competitors: Do a complete analysis of the competitive landscape, including information on the characteristics and size of the target market, industry, as well as your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
  • Business Assets: Identify what you have as well as what you need, including plant and equipment, premises, intellectual property, information systems, insurance and licenses.
  • SWOT Analysis: Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your idea along with potential opportunities and threats.
  • Goals and Milestones: Set out your key business goals for the period covered by the plan along with different milestones you want to reach. Make sure your goals are realistic and measurable.
  • Financial Forecasts: List your capital requirements and start-up costs as well as your projected cash flow, loss and profit, break-even analysis, and balance sheet forecasts.
  • Business Strategies: These should include sales, marketing, and customer retention strategies.

We recommend that you use Stats NZ’s Data for Business website in order to find useful business statistics and tools.

3. Keep it Short and Easy to Understand

When writing a business plan, make sure to keep it realistic, short, and easy to understand. It is important to consider that someone reading your business plan in the future might not be familiar with jargon or more technical terms. That’s why we recommend you write the business plan in plain English. It is also recommended that you do your research and provide evidence to support your conclusions (if possible) and include an action plan.

4. Review and Make Necessary Changes

After the above steps, you are finally ready to review your work and finalize the summary. Carefully review the business plan and make sure it presents a compelling and cohesive picture of your business in a professional format. After that, take the most important component of each section and use them to create an engaging executive summary. Your goal here is to create the summary that draws the reader into the rest of your business plan.

5. Put the Plan to Work

Once your business plan is ready, treat it as a guide to running your business. Keep in mind that business plans are dynamic documents which means that you should adjust your business plan as your business develops. If the circumstances and goals change, update the plan. The Stats NZ website has some great tools and information to get your business started.

 

As always, Spinach believe in business, and we are inspired by goals of growth. We want to be part of your success. To get us on board, please call us on 0800 SPINACH (0800 774 622) or email us info@spinach.co.nz

6 Changes You Can Make Today To Have A Greater Impact As a Leader

Posted on by KWD

A true leader is the one who creates an impact with their leadership on their organization, employees, team, and stakeholders, as a result of their behaviors, attitudes, and actions. Qualities of a great leader include being appreciative of the good abilities of certain employees, patient, attentive listener, and thankful for accomplishments of their team as a whole. There are many ways you can create impact with your leadership and earn the respect of your colleagues and staff.

Following are some tips that will help you create impact with your leadership

1. Be a Role Model

Leaders must lead by example and walk the talk. Your team looks to you to lead them and show and communicate your expectations, particularly during change. You cannot expect your employees to change their habits if you are not willing to do so yourself. That’s why when you make some changes, make sure to follow them with the same action you expect out of your employees or team. If you are a role model and responsibly take the lead, your team will follow you.

2. Be a Coach

Respected and influential leaders put their staff ahead of their own needs by recognizing the employees who always give their best and that go beyond their job descriptions. If you want to create impact with your leadership, then you must find ways to enable your employees to reach their true potential. You will need to coach your employees in order to do this and share your wisdom, knowledge, and experience with them. With proper guidance, you will open the doors for continued success of your valued staff members.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks or Acknowledge Your Mistakes

Influential, strong leaders know that you have to take risks from time to time and even acknowledge when you have made any mistakes. These are the leaders who can challenge ideas and take risks to gain a competitive edge. They know when drastic measures are needed to be taken in order to keep certain operations within an organization moving smoothly and are always willing to act on their decisions. Unfortunately, sometimes the decisions a leader makes aren’t what are best for the team or organization. Respected leaders are the ones who acknowledge their mistakes and openly admit that they have made a bad call. This makes employees or team feel valued.

4. Reinforce a Culture of Accountability

Accountability is the key to creating an impact with leadership. When you, as a leader, hold your team accountable, it helps them understand that they are accountable in all things they do. Your words and influence will fall on deaf ears if there are no accountability measures in place. Your employees need to see the way in which you lead and do business. Cultural elements, and internal systems and processes are in place for a reason.

5. Create a Positive Executive Presence

When you are respected by your employees, only then you can create an impact and leave a long-lasting impression. Executive presence is a powerful tool which you can use to make your employees and team feel appreciated and valued. Influential leaders are the role models for their employees. When you create a positive executive presence, your employees will welcome the constructiveness and will be open to critiquing without worrying about the source that it’s coming from. This is the kind of presence that you can utilize to create impact with your leadership and create a positive influence for the whole organization.

6. Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Respected leaders recognize and reward colleagues and employees they are sharing the success with. Bad leaders hoard positive recognition and focus on themselves. In reality, those are the leaders who wouldn’t succeed without the help of their team and the employees working for them. When valuable efforts are recognized and rewarded, it encourages innovation, hard work, and stimulates new ways of thinking. Respected leaders make it their duty to focus and improve the progress of their colleagues and staff as opposed to themselves.

 

If you want to create impact with your leadership, then you must earn respect of your team and employees. Because without it, you are not going to see any success. Being a great leader is about being passionate about what you and your team do and being a navigational tool for all your employees and colleagues. Stay mindful of the ways to improve the working environment so that a better workforce is created and you stay competitively relevant.