The 7 Most Common Business Plan Mistakes

And How to Make Sure You Don’t Make Any of Them While Writing Yours

Reading through these common business plan mistakes before you write one will make the task a lot easier – and give your new business venture a much better chance of success.

The most common business plan mistakes are:

1) Not bothering to write one.

This is far and away the most common mistake. Entrepreneurs are doers so it's natural that they want to get on with things and get them done – especially when they have an idea that they’re excited about buzzing around in their heads.

But who hasn’t heard the adage "He who fails to plan plans to fail?" And that's the fate of almost every business someone starts without a business plan; failure. So yes, you need to write a business plan. Here are five reasons why.

Mistakes to Avoid While Starting a Restaurant Business

Many a people who are talented cooks or those who are capable to pool in a significant amount of capital, think of getting into a restaurant business. The whole idea can be exciting as food business is often said to have more than 500% returns. Quite a figure that is! Yet almost 90% of restaurants fail in less than 2 years from their inauguration. The upside is that we can predict the major cause behind the failure of these restaurants and thus avoid chances of failure in the first place. My article will help you avoid common mistakes made while starting a restaurant business.

Failing to Plan...is Planning to Fail 

10 Ways to Validate a Sales Forecast

Even without data, there are other ways to test your projections.
You have an interesting new business and you’re working your plan, thinking about seeking investors when you come to the sales forecast. How do you validate a sales forecast when you’re talking about something new? Of course there’s no data. So now what?

Creating a Written Business Plan

Creating and using a business plan affords you the opportunity to think through your business idea, and to track operational results against your plan. It's a valuable tool that can make a substantial difference in the success or failure of a business.

If you have ever thought about going into business for yourself, whether it's something you've always dreamed of, or just considered while having a bad day at your job, that thought represents the starting point of business planning. If you were at all realistic, you probably also reflected on what impact such a choice would have on your personal life. A steady job probably provides you with some certainty regarding income, how you commute to and from work, and for many workers, known employee health and retirement benefits. In all likelihood, opening your own business will remove much of the certainty and routine you now rely on.

The 7 Most Common Business Plan Mistakes

And How to Make Sure You Don’t Make Any of Them While Writing Yours

Reading through these common business plan mistakes before you write one will make the task a lot easier – and give your new business venture a much better chance of success.

The most common business plan mistakes are:

1) Not bothering to write one.

12 Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers don’t buy

Do you sit and wait for your buyer’s to close? They need your solution. They like you. They are OK with the price. What’s going on?

Here are the ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of why buyers don’t buy, taken from my book of the same name:

How to Outsource Your Finance Department

Few positions in a company are as easily outsourced as those in the finance department. That’s great news for small companies looking to add strategic skills, and for larger companies looking to cut full-time staffing costs.

Nearly every company can save money while expanding its team of key decision makers and strategic support by outsourcing key finance positions.

Outsource the Right Positions

How to Craft a Business Plan That'll Turn Investors' Heads

Have you reached that all-important -- and often frightening -- moment when you realize that your business needs more money to get to the next level? Whether you're attempting to borrow a few thousand bucks from Mom and Dad or you want to ask total strangers to pony up several million, you’d better have your ducks in a row before you ask. In other words, you'd better have a business plan.

Success Tips for Family-Owned Companies

Family-owned businesses are vital to the economy--but most can't transition successfully to a second generation. There's a better way to preserve your company's success.
I work with a lot of family businesses as clients. I have seen a wide range of behavior in the interplay of family members–much of it really unpleasant.

But still, I had no idea how prevalent family-owned businesses were until I read an article from Gaebler.com's Resources for Entrepreneurs. Among the stats cited, U.S. family-owned businesses:

    50% of the U.S. GDP
    60% of U.S. employment
    78% of new jobs in the U.S.

But even if those sound a little bit generous, here's the thing that struck me: Only a third of those make a successful transition to the second generation.

How to Start a Kiosk Business

A Checklist for Starting

While perhaps not as “sexy” as other forms of small businesses, kiosks offer a viable and practical way to earn a great living, all without dealing with the substantial challenges required for many small businesses operating out of traditional brick-and-mortar storefronts.

Yet even thought kiosks offer greater flexibility and less red tape than traditional businesses, they still provide their own laundry list of steps to complete before you can get your new enterprise up and running.

Breathing Life Into Your New Business’ Email Strategy

If your business is new, when you are building your online marketing strategy, your Email campaign is very important for your success. When it comes to Email, if you don’t get it right initially, you may have problems later on.

The purpose of the Email campaign in the infancy of your business is to motivate prospective clients to seriously consider buying from you instead of one of your competitors when they are ready to make a purchase of some kind. It is well known that people will only buy a product or service from someone whom they trust and whom they find credible. If you build a strong and solid Email campaign and you strengthen the relationships that you have managed to establish, you will be positioning yourself as a subject matter expert (SME) in your niche and industry. If you build and follow a plan that goes by solid and sensible principles, you can’t go wrong.

8 Ways to Differentiate your Small Business

We have all heard the word differentiate before, but…
1. What does it really mean?
2. How does it really work?
The term “differentiate” is defined by dictionary.com as “to form or mark differently from other such things; distinguish”.
As a brand positioning specialist, I define “differentiate” as a means of distinguishing one’s business over its competition. The most important aspect each definition communicates is the need to look at the other guys in your space and find out what makes them special/unique. You then want to do the same with your own business and then compare. This keeps you from hanging your hat on the same hook as the other providers in your space. By comparing your business to your competitors, you can identify key positioning niches that you can claim independently of the other companies. By right, you are then differentiated – as long as the niche(s) you choose is/are distinguishing.

Youth Entrepreneurship Building Skills

Building a society that is responsive to, encouraging and favourable to Youth Entrepreneurship is the responsibility of every society as well as the Government. Encouraging the Youth to become entrepreneurs has a lot of advantages in terms of solving problems of unemployment in the economy as well as paving way for the innovation and growth of the country too. Understanding the need to creating and nurturing Youth Entrepreneurship, many countries have taken up strategic initiatives and implemented plans aimed at imparting Entrepreneurial skills and knowledge through education. Such a move no doubt provides the freedom and the thrust to the Youth to dream and achieve their dreams.

Put Your Plan Into Action

Five questions your business plan must answer.

1. How will you win market share?
Your plan should define your ideal target customer and how you’ll market, sell and distribute your products or services to buyers. Within the plan, detail the size of your market based on geography, population of target customers or other defining factors. Then, identify the competition and explain how your company will win over enough of that market to grow.

What makes a good business plan?

What factors are involved in creating a good business plan? Is it the length of the plan? The information it covers? How well it’s written, or the brilliance of its strategy. No.
The following illustration shows a business plan as part of a process. You can think about the good or bad of a plan as the plan itself, measuring its value by its contents. There are some qualities in a plan that make it more likely to create results, and these are important. However, it is even better to see the plan as part of the whole process of results, because even a great plan is wasted if nobody follows it.


Planning is a process, not just a plan

How Social Media Monitoring Can Boost Your Lead Generation

Getting the most out of social media monitoring tools is something we’re obviously very interested in, and our series of free eBooks is tailored towards different uses available to SMM tool users.
In the fifth such book, we’ve taken an in-depth look at using tools like Brandwatch for lead generation.

Cash Is King: 5 Simple Rules for Creating a Cash Flow Plan

Cash is paramount for running a business. Here are five easy rules for creating a positive cash flow plan for your company.

With Opening Day of Major League Baseball over, I breathe a deep sigh of relief as a ticket broker. It means my company, EasySeat, has started shipping all of the baseball tickets that it has been purchasing for the last 7 months.

That means cash flow will soon turn positive again.

In EasySeat’s business model, cash is king, and ensuring that we have enough cash to fund inventory and operations is critical to our success. Successfully managing, and understanding, cash flow is not a skill reserved for MBAs. Every business owner should understand their cash flow.

Here are five easy rules for creating a simple cash flow plan:

Business Plan Basics

Who needs a business plan? What do they do? How can one help you?

The best way to show bankers, venture capitalists, and angel investors that you are worthy of financial support is to show them a great business plan. Make sure that your plan is clear, focused and realistic. Then show them that you have the tools, talent and team to make it happen. Your business plan is like your calling card, it will get you in the door where you'll have to convince investors and loan officers that you can put your plan into action.

Once you have raised the money to start or expand your business, your plan will serve as a road map for your business. It is not a static document that you write once and put away. You will reference it often, making sure you stay focused and on track, and meet milestones. It will change and develop as your business evolves.

8 Secrets to Creating Successful Web Apps

Between the apps available through the Apple Store or the Android platform there is an app for just about everything. Creating a great app streamlines consumers to your business but you’ll need to be creative and put your customers first before your primary intention of marketing your brand. No one wants that spammy feel.  Customers aren’t going to want to download your advertisement, they want something of value and your marketing techniques should be consequential.
Of course you’ll still need to focus on the marketing aspect of your web app.
Here are 8 secrets to creating a great web app that will benefit both you and your customers:

Writing a Business-Growth Plan

Facilitate and speed expansion with a clear roadmap            
Writing a growth plan is very similar to writing a business plan. However, a growth plan focuses specifically on expansion and how you're going to achieve it. Creating a useful plan takes time, but the effort can pay off substantially by keeping your growth efforts on track. A growth plan includes:

1. A description of expansion opportunities.
2. Financial goals broken down quarterly and yearly.
3. A marketing plan of how you will achieve growth.
4. A financial plan to determine what capital is accessible during growth.
5. A breakdown of your company's staffing needs and responsibilities.