Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Experts Views on the Value of Business Plans


Susan Ward is an expert who writes for www.about.com and has both her master and bachelor degrees in the field of education. Susan has been writing about business and business plans since the late 1990’s and has been published many times. She is a trained workshop presenter and has been fortunate enough to put together course materials that were used by school districts.

Susan encourages that when writing a business plan it should be prepared with an investor in mind. It is also her recommendation that as your company grows, over the years, so your business plan changes with it.

Susan states business plans are a definitive way of testing the feasibility of your idea. Writing the business plan out can save you a great deal of time and money because it will show disconnects within your thoughts. It will also help you to visually see where changes must be made. Writing out your business plan may help you realize it needs to be dumped, so you can move onto the next, before you get too far into it.

Susan believes the business plan gives your idea the best possible option for success because it will help you to cross your I’s and dot you T’s and stick to the written sequence of going forward with your business plans.

According to Susan, if capital is needed for the startup of your business, the plan is the only thing accepted and considered by financial institutions. Business plans also help attract investors. Putting the business plan in their hands will give them something to take away and peruse while making a financial determination.

MaryAnn Shank is also a business plan expert. MaryAnn has some advanced and edgy technological ideas of how to go about getting investors interested in your company.

According to MaryAnn her job was to sift through the many piles of unsolicited business plans sent in. She says out of them all she only chose 2-3%. MaryAnn said she looked for the ones that had that spark of inspiration, commitment and hint of true genius.

MaryAnn insists that writing a great business plan is the only option because a mediocre one just won’t do. With her 20+ years of experience, MaryAnn suggests putting together an online business plan. Yes, this means setting up a site specifically for your business with all the bells and whistles that calls for.

Bells and Whistles may potentially include:

1.Pages linked so potential investors can muddle through at his/her own leisure.
2. Maybe a sitemap to speed up browsing.
3. Graphics.
4. Videos showing your business in action.
5. Patents.
6. Introductions from some of your key people.
7. Short video introducing a strong advisory council/board.
8. Product; office; and staff photos.
9. Industry and local publication articles.
10. Testimonials

MaryAnn states that as the owner your number one job is to sell the product and what better way to show you are an expert at that than by taking the time to put it out there for them to see.

MaryAnn also takes into consideration that site logs will show when you’ve had a visitor enter his/her password thereby allowing to you make phone contact while the business plan is still fresh on their mind. This will also give you the opportunity to answer any questions they may have.

Although this may take quite a bit of time to put together it sounds as if it could be extremely profitable and definitely worth it in the long run.

I look forward to seeing you “WOW” investors with your online business plans.

Sources:

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