One Pager Business Plan to Dominate the Market in 2019: Guide + Template
There are a lot of discussion out there on writing business plans and variety of templates and best practices. One thing I learned in the field after working and drafting business and sales plans is that, less is more. There is absolutely no point to draft a 15 page business plan and then wing it!
I have seen and wrote very detailed business plans that covered lots of aspects of the business. In fact, there are lot of resources on internet and different templates that you can use to draft an effective business plan. However, what normally happens after that, is the salesperson will not stay focused on the plan and even in some cases, will forget to even use it as a reference.
Business planning is one of the key and strategic activities of a salesperson and can set him for success or failure very quickly. In fact, when you start your role as a salesperson, one of the key activities is to set up a business plan and highlight potential targeted segments and personas and how you will reach out to them.
My personal preference is one pager business plan, because of these reasons:
1. Simple
When it comes to strategy planning, always less is more. Having an one pager plan allows you to only highlight absolute important activities and avoid clutter. If you want to drag the conversation to competition, market analysis, business model and pricing, you are missing a lot and over thinking the whole process. Assume that you have reasonably solid processes in place at your company and focus on important activities that leads to sales.
2. Focused
As I mentioned before, a short one pager plan can be a reference and guide throughout your career journey and keep you focused only on those activities that brings you and your organisation high yields. By avoiding long list of activities, you can choose several key tasks to focus on and become master at those activities (e.g. prospecting or sales call or presentation). This way you can build a daily routine for yourself which over time put you on autopilot and get you solid results on a daily basis.
If you try different stand alone activities every day, you cannot reach to your peak performance.
3. Flexible
Let’s imagine that after a while, you find out that things are not going very well as per plan. Which is happening a lot when it comes to business. The key here is to adjust business plan and make a shift in activities and even approach to improve the process. If you are dealing with 15 page plan, even thinking of a small change will be overwhelming (at least for me!). However, when it comes to one pager plan, you can make sure that the changes will take only about half a day and you can immediately carry on to execution phase.
What information to cover in one pager plan
When it comes to planning, I absolutely focus on key tasks as following:
1. Vision
If you read my last post on how to sell like an entrepreneur and how to think like one, I recommended that you come up with a vision for the business in 1 to 3 years even if you are a junior salesperson. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having an audacious crazy north star that you want to be in future. So pin that in your plan.
2. Set target
Now you can think of more realistic targets that are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) so you can expect to hit that target. However, the target should not be that easy to achieve as well. It should have some small stretch so you can come out of your comfort zone.
3. Tactics
Now you can do the most important part of the plan and come up with ideas on how to achieve your targets. Come up with monthly or 3 months plan and design activities that bring you the highest value. Then make sure you set up KPIs as well to keep track of your progress. If you are not hitting your KPIs, you can start replacing these tactics with brand new activities that you hope will get you where you want.
I normally break down my activities in a table into branding, marketing and sales and for each category come up with few tactics. If I want to think of long term results, I put my focus on branding and marketing. However, if I want to do short term tasks, I put more focus on sales.
4. Target accounts / industry
This is the last bit of plan and then I simply list the targeted list of accounts or people that I want to reach out to. This list can be long enough so you can generate reasonable amount of leads and opportunities.
[Company Name]
XX Months Business Plan [Your Name], [Your Title]
Vision:
Target:
Branding
Marketing
Sales
Targeted Accounts / Persona:
About Author:
Houman Asefi is world authority and visionary and B2B technology sales strategist, award finalist blogger and startup advisor, focusing on building and scaling sales strategy and making sure companies achieve their targeted revenue.
Contact Info: Houman Asefi
Phone Number: +61 452 219 022
Email: houman.asefi@gmail.com
Blog: http://www.houmanasefi.com/
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