Only 2% of business owners have a written down plan that they use.
About 25% of business owners when asked if they have a plan say yes but that’s a verbal plan – its in their head which, although not great, is preferable to the rest who have no plan at all.
Having a plan will help your business to be more successful and smooth out the ups and downs that will inevitably happen. Remember though that having a business plan in itself is good but what is better is actually using that plan to monitor your progress and making ongoing adjustments to keep you on the right path. Its an ongoing development!
Business Failure Rates
Myth Buster: A business plan is not just for the start-up phase of a business, it is something to be used throughout the life of the business and building a plan is an integral part of the development and growth of a strong and sustainable business.
80% of businesses that start don’t make it to their 5th birthday and many of those that fail would have increased their chances if they had developed and used a plan.
Why don’t SME business owners have a plan?
A real problem with the SME business owner is that they don’t believe that plans work. Why? because they have never used one before – well, they have never used one for their business before, but they use plans all the time.
What do I mean – think about when we go on holidays, we plan fairly meticulously: dates, times, activities, things we need to buy before we go, saving our spending money, checking passports, renewing passports, travel methods and timings. If these plans don’t work in reality then nobody would ever end up on holiday! OK, so that’s a bit flippant but its true. Plans that we create and execute work!
SME Business owners have missed the fact that its not the actual plan that matters but the process of creating the content of the plan and then executing and measuring your progress that matters. A plan for a holiday is a simple example and the plan for your business will likely take a bit more time and effort to put together but you cant measure progress or adjust a plan that you don’t have!
Priorities
Everyone can easily understand the headline things that need to go into a Business Plan but it takes time to think about the content and to pull it all together. Business Owners don’t prioritise the time to learn what needs to be in their plan because they are too busy running their businesses to plan for the future – isn’t that ironic!
For many business owner taking part in planning activities and developing plans means that new skills need to be developed and new thinking needs to be applied. Moving outside of your comfort zone can be hard to do and, combined with a perceived lack of time, means that good intentions never become reality.
As your coach I will help you with your priorities and expand your comfort zone so you can build and execute on your future plans.
Lets make those good intentions a reality!
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