If you’re setting up a business for the first time, the world of planning may seem somewhat daunting. It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to writing your business plan, and you may even be reluctant to begin, for fear of getting something wrong. However, cbm is here to help. Here are six business planning mistakes you should avoid if you want to get the most out of your plan and use it to achieve business success.
1.Put Off Writing Your Business Plan
If you wait until you have lots of time to write your business plan, you may never get it done. There is so much for you to work on when you’re first starting out, but don’t let everything else get in the way of your planning, or make the mistake of thinking it isn’t important. Once you have your business plan written up, everything else will feel a little more orderly, and you’ll be able to achieve even more than you could if you were just winging it. Find out more about when you should write your business plan.
2.Set Vague Goals
If you don’t set yourself specific goals, how are you going to meet them? You need more than “I want to make more money” or “I want to sell lots of my product”. How many units do you want to sell in your first month, or first year? How much profit do you want to make? You need to be able to set specific, quantifiable goals and track your progress in order to meet them. Write down exactly what you want to achieve.
3.Set Unrealistic Goals
Just as bad as vague goals are unrealistic ones. Setting yourself a goal that is far too high is a good way to make yourself and your team feel demoralised. It’s great to have high ambitions, but setting unrealistic goals that you’re never going to reach, or at least not in the timeframe you have set yourself, isn’t going to help you to achieve them. In fact, the prospect of attempting to do so may be so daunting that you achieve even less than you would if you had given yourself a realistic goal. The solution to this is to think carefully about your goals, and instead of plucking a big number out of the sky, considering what would be achievable for you in the best circumstances, and aiming for that.
4.Ignore the Details
You may have a great business idea, but an idea alone isn’t enough to make a business successful. Don’t ignore the finer details in favour of the big picture – for example, the smallest costs can all add up, and low priority activities you keep setting to one side can eventually snowball into larger problems. Don’t get carried away with your great idea and forget about keeping all your balls in the air.
5.Use A Business Plan Template
Your business is unique, and your business plan should be, too. Don’t do it a disservice by using a business plan template you found on the internet. Different businesses will need to have different information in their business plans, and plans are written for different purposes, so one size doesn’t necessarily fit all. Find out more about bespoke business plans vs. templates in our earlier blog post.
6.Write Your Business Plan And Then File It Away
Your business plan isn’t something to write and then put in a drawer and forget about. As your business changes and grows, your plan should evolve with you – it’s not much use to you if you don’t refer to it, keep it updated, and continually use it to guide and change your strategy. After all, you don’t only plan your business activities when you first set up – you will always be thinking of new things to try, and analysing your results. Your business plan is no different and should be involved at every stage of your business.
If you’d like a little help with avoiding these six business planning mistakes, cbm are here to advise you. We can provide as much support as you need with writing your business plan, whether you’ve made a start but hit a roadblock, or you need someone to write the entire plan for you. Contact us online or call 01604 420 420.