You don’t need a 100 page Business plan to start one

One page business Plan modified. (1)

The One-page Business Plan Part B

Today I will be concluding the second part of this post, the one-page business plan, if you did not read the first post, you can get it Here .

I hope you have taken time to implement what you have learned in the first part of this post, writing this post has also helped me to go back to the drawing board to re-tweak my business plan.

The link for the one-page business plan is displayed above.

Now to the business of the day, we will be talking about the remaining 3 parts of this plan.

The Hustle.

How will customers learn about your business: In this area, we talk about your marketing plan, how do you intend to invite customers to your business? one of the key questions you need to ask yourself is where do my customers congregate?

This is the reason you must define your target market before setting out. When you know what your target market is, then you can begin to define where they are likely to congregate, thereby targeting your advertising to such places.

For example, my niche is stay at home moms who want to launch a business,.

One of the likely places I will find such women are baby forums, forums where women discuss money making ventures, I might also target my Facebook ads to women in their childbearing age because I know they will more likely be there. Thanks to Facebook targeted advertising features, you can do a lot to find your customers.

How will you encourage referrals: By giving away free samples and asking people to refer others to your business if they liked your product. You can also conduct contests for price points to encourage people to refer a certain number of people to win the price. Finally, you can give discounts for referrals to your point of sale.

Success

How will you rate the success of your Business: This part deals with figures How will you know that your business is successful? is it by the number of customers you have served or by the annual net income you intend to make. These figures will enable you to plan properly on how you intend to achieve it. It will force you to think of ways of dimensioning your resources to ensure you meet your targeted goals whether in customer numbers or in revenue. This part is where you also itemize your income streams and apportion how much you want to make from each stream. A multiple stream income strategy is always the best.

Challenges/ Obstacles; Finally this is the portion where you will write down obstacles that will mitigate against your business and how you intend to overcome them. Listing out your challenges is not to discourage you but to help you become aware of the risks involved in starting your business, and to show you also have a strategy to reduce those risks. Call it your mini risk analysis and you may not be far from the truth.

Proposed solution to your challenges: Here is where you list the steps you intend to take to mitigate such challenges and if possible eliminate it.

Your comments and suggestions are also welcome.

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