Writing a business plan - what's the point?

Plans. Planning. Business Plans. What are these all about then? Everyone you talk to and everything you read about starting up and running a business seems to say the same thing.

"You need to write a business plan," your adviser, accountant, bank manager or bible-bashing business guru will tell you.

OK, it's certainly true you will need a plan at some time or other, and yes, you will need to write one in order to have one, and even better, you can get plenty of advice and find loads of guides to writing one floating around on the Net.

But that's not exactly what you need to hear, that you need to write a business plan to start up or run your business. This just doesn't mean anything. It's too vague, meaningless, unfocused.

What you actually need is a business plan, (or a marketing plan, investment plan, exit plan etc), that you can use for a purpose. A plan should help or enable you to do something with or in your enterprise that will achieve one or more very specific business goals or objectives.

And this is the key. Ask yourself initially, why exactly do you need a plan? What's it for? Precisely what are you trying to do, and most importantly how are you going to do it and make sure that it happens?

Then you can think about writing it down, and start planning to achieve something.

Whatever your own situation or objective is, here's our quick-and-dirty business plan formula.

Planning is about recognising where you are now, identifying where you want to get to and what you want to achieve, and... the crunch part... how you're going to do it.

The problem in most situations is with the word "plan" itself. Too many of the people that advise you put the emphasis of your plan on the noun, the "thing", the actual document, rather than on the act of planning, thinking and plotting, which is more about what you are going to "do" with your business, or achieve in your market.

Planning is about doing things and specifying, illustrating or clarifying details about how you will achieve certain targets and objectives.

And it's a fact that people who plan will, far more often than not, be more successful than those who don't, because of the level of discipline they end up introducing and applying to their business.

Whatever your reason for writing a plan, or planning your future business activities, you might find it interesting and revealing to look at some other words and terms that relate to the meaning of "plan". This can help you focus your ideas, thinking and approach to planning the start or next stage of your enterprise.

A plan can mean many things and could be any or all of the following:

- an aim
- a plot
- an ambition or wish
- a direction or way
- a purpose
- a course
- an outline
- a blueprint
- an intention
- a picture
- a system
- a proposal
- a prospectus
- a view
- a project
- a design
- a process

Get the drift? Look at these different terms, which mean the same as plan or are a part of planning, and use the ones that best fit what you are trying to do and will help you communicate your plan to your intended audience.

Whether it's to persuade someone to invest in you, to lend you money, to launch a new product, to build an online store, to paddle across the Atlantic in a bathtub or whatever, your plan should articulate not just what, but more importantly when, why, where and how you are going to achieve your objectives.

By following these few simple rules you will hopefully be more focused on your real objectives - shifting products, increasing sales and making profits - than on how much time you are going to spend putting your pen to paper.

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