{"id":112,"date":"2010-11-15T22:43:37","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T06:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gordonbenzie.com\/blog\/?p=112"},"modified":"2023-05-22T22:21:39","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T05:21:39","slug":"5-questions-to-ask-before-writing-a-business-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gordonbenzie.com\/blog\/5-questions-to-ask-before-writing-a-business-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Questions to Ask Before Writing a Business Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing a business plan is an excellent way to discover if your idea for a new business has merit. Going through this exercise will challenge you to see if your idea for a business has the foundation for a viable business, or if it is just a neat idea worthy of a cocktail party conversation. The difficulty, however, is that the whole process of writing the business plan can be quite time consuming, even if you elect to hire a third party business plan writer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before you invest the time and effort to write your business plan, there are a few questions you should consider as part of an evaluation process if your idea is worth pursuing.<\/p>\n

\"5<\/a>I just discovered a great blog written by Pamela Slim where she talks about transitioning from the corporate world to starting your own business. As part of this process, Pamela posted “Can you answer these 5 questions about your business?<\/a>” I would propose that these questions can function quite well as a “filter,” which\u00a0can then help guide you through your decision making process.\u00a0If you can answer each of these questions, then you understand your value proposition and are now ready to prepare a business plan.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Who is your ideal client? <\/strong>This is a simplified way of stating “who are you going to sell to?” Specificity is needed, to help you hone and refine your message. From a marketer’s perspective, the question here is “Who is your target market?” Who will buy your goods or services, and why <\/em>would they buy it from you<\/em>? Most importantly … do you have the skills and background to SELL it to them? Great first question to consider before you decide to write your business plan.<\/li>\n
  2. Where do I send people who are interested?<\/strong> This question is stating that you better be ready to make an investment in building an online presence, no matter what it is you are selling. Do you have a site already? As part of evaluating the decision to write a business plan, have you thought about the investment of your time and resources to build an online presence? What would that website’s URL be? What would your business name be? How would you portray yourself and what sort of message would you include on the site? The answers to these questions will layout a framework for you to establish a marketing communications style and plan of how your message is communicated to your ideal client.<\/li>\n
  3. Who would you really love to meet? <\/strong>I see this question as a\u00a0gauge\u00a0to the level of passion you have for your idea. Without the passion, your new business idea is doomed. So, who would you be really excited to meet that is a “player” or key influencer in your industry? Once you have identified that person, are you ready to reach out and try and meet them? One of the biggest attributes of a successful entrepreneur is if they feel they can change the world by doing something better, faster, easier, etc. than everyone else … you can’t do that unless you are a guru in your space and have a passion for meeting the other key players in your industry.<\/li>\n
  4. Which media would you love to cover your business? <\/strong>This might be a question asked when it comes time to write your marketing plan … where will your message be displayed, how will you market to your customers and what medium is best for establishing this marketing communication? But, if you are ask this question early in the process, it can reveal quite quickly if your business plan will be tough\u00a0or easy\u00a0to launch. If you don’t know the answer to this question, maybe you don’t know your target audience as well as you should, which then poses the question “Is there really a viable market out there for your goods or services?” This is a pretty important question to consider.<\/li>\n
  5. How do you make money? <\/strong>Or, what is your revenue model? Another great question. This should be on the top of your list when evaluating a new business or expanding a new division. Challenge yourself to answer this question with detail. For example, if your business is web-based e-commerce site, saying “I will sell banner ads” really isn’t sufficient of an answer. You need to know what traffic levels are needed before anyone considers placing an ad. How long will that take? What revenues are possible, and what level of traffic do I need to achieve X dollars of banner ad revenue? These are the types of questions that should be considered in great depth before spending the time and resources to get your business plan written.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Don’t worry if it takes some time to answer these questions … the knowledge you will gain will be well worth the effort. Not only will this exercise help you better understand if you really have a viable business model, but it will give you an outline of what your business plan should look like.<\/p>\n

    Gordon Benzie<\/strong> is a marketing adviser\u00a0and business plan writer that specializes in preparing and executing upon business plans and marketing strategies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Before you write your business plan, there are a few questions you should consider as part of your evaluation process to see if it is worth proceeding forward and writing a business plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-plan-writer","category-business-strategy","category-marketing-communications"],"yoast_head":"\n5 Questions to Ask Before Writing a Business Plan - Making Every Word Count<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gordonbenzie.com\/blog\/5-questions-to-ask-before-writing-a-business-plan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 Questions to Ask Before Writing a Business Plan - 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