Seven Steps for Building a Successful Business Plan

 

This 3 day, hands-on course leads you through the steps of writing a complete and integrated business plan. It provides a framework for management to tell a company story that is authentic, consistent, and believable. The advantages of this program are:

  • A single planning model is used to incorporate all business functions.
  • Definitions are simplified and worded in plain business language.
  • Relationships between and among planning elements are clearly demonstrated.
  • Connections between strategic, operational, organizational, resources, and contingency plans are fully formed.
  • Total employee involvement is accomplished by taking the business plan to all levels.

Who Should Attend

Presidents, vice-presidents, directors and divisional managers who are responsible for developing a complete business plan. Team attendance is strongly recommended. 

Practical Skills and Applications

As a result of this course you should be able to understand and apply the following:

  • Write a business plan that connects your day to day activities with your strategic goals
  • Develop easily understood, standardized planning language throughout the company
  • Install an integrated seven step planning process to ensure plan continuity
  • Demonstrate a highly transferable set of skills and tools to cascade the planning downward for continuity, buy in, and execution
  • Produce a five page finished business plan ready for implementation at multiple organizational levels
  • Demonstrate a rational method for plan measurement and accountability for plan implementation.

 

What You Will Cover

Special Issues in Business Planning

  • Define techniques to overcome organizational resistance to planning
  • Eliminate planning creep mentality found in most planning processes
  • Compare implications for long and short range planning timeframes

The Mechanics of 7 Step Planning Process

  • Define methods and techniques for pre-planning orientation and preparation
  • Build an effective planning conference format and work agenda
  • Design and implement steps to cascade the planning to other organizational levels
  • Institute methods for quarterly reviews and annual updates
  • Develop management activities to support successful plan execution

The Development of a 5 Page Business Plan

  • Construct one page strategic, operational, resources, organizational, and contingency components
  • Connect short and long term resources requirements to the strategic plan
  • Design the organization’s structure to fit identified strategies
  • Develop operational plans to put the strategic direction into measurable reality
  • Consider alternatives in contingency plans when assumptions fail

The Power of a 5 Page Business Plan

  • Connect the soft corporate culture elements to the hard numbers reality of the plan
  • Identifies short falls or gaps between say and do management behaviors
  • Force creative thinking to set bold strategic goals
  • Require accountability, responsibility, and authority for performance measures
  • Move the plan from a three ring binder on the shelf to management hands