How do you structure your business plan? What types of questions do you use? Any guidelines?

We structure the business plan in three sections:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where are we going?
3. How are we going to get there?

It is simple and easy format to use.

We do an industry scan, and internal scan, find the competitive gaps and then determine our strategy

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We typically use this outline:

1. Where are our strengths
2. Where are we weak
3. How to we minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths
4. Where do we want to go from here
5. How do we get there

We first start off with a SWOT analysis:

-Strengths
-Weaknesses
-Opportunities
-Threats

Then we do some group thinking about what we think the industry will look like in 3-5 years then we talk about with the information we know about our company today and what we think the industry will look like in the future we ask ourselves - How do we succeed?

We take the same approach look internally, look externally and then plan a path.

I use the one page business plan methodology. Once you create your plan, you use the web system to continually monitor it. Basically...

What are you building?
Why are you building it?
What are the results you expect?
What strategies will get you those results?
What are the big action plans you need to take?

I have a few samples at Business Plan, Marketing Plan Consultant & Coach, One Page Process

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One thing I'm almost done working on, that will be in my blog next month is a list of questions that every business owner needs to ask themselves about their business... and have the answers, too

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Plan today and profit tomorrow,

Maria Marsala, Business Strategist

Helping build bigger, better businesses

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