Business Planning

Written business plan

• The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers several templates for creating a business plan.
• Business plan worksheets also available from Hal Shelton, author of The Secrets to Writing a Successful Business Plan.
• SCORE provides a business plan template as a starting point for drafting a plan for start-up and established businesses.
• Your local Small Business Development Center (SBDC) may offer assistance with developing a business plan.

Marketing plan for e-commerce and online sales

The COVID-19 pandemic raised important awareness for businesses being able to take advantage of e-commerce and/or online sales. Various retail stores, restaurants and breweries, and even non-profits have come up with creative ways to make sales and bring in revenue during the crisis. See the Guide to Business Planning for Digital Marketing and Online Selling (Appendix A).

Business leadership and staff succession plan

If your organization lost its key manager or a critical employee today, would you have a successor with the knowledge, training and skills needed to fill their shoes? Leadership and succession planning is the process of identifying important positions in the organization and creating a talent pipeline, by preparing employees to fill critical leadership and staff positions as others retire or move on. Succession planning helps ensure business continuity and performance, particularly during times of shifting leadership and staffing changes. Even when there is no identifiable successor within an organization, succession planning can help identify the knowledge, skills and training needed in a future external candidate.

Steps for succession planning:

• Create a demographic profile of your employees, including ages, roles, and skills
• Identify key positions to determine the roles and skills that keep your organization going
• Build job profiles for the key positions to document required knowledge, skills, and qualities
• Identify and assess potential candidates to decide who could advance to the key positions
• Implement employee development plans to create learning and knowledge transfer

Exit planning

For most businesses, the “exit” phase may seem very far off, and while you’re busy enjoying running the business, you may not particularly want to exit. However, it’s important that you develop and plan an exit strategy.

• It helps others prepare. For example, your managers and employees want to know about the future of the business, so they can feel secure in their jobs and understand their roles. Your investors and lenders want to know how you will pay them back if you exit the business.
• It gives you a way out. You may need to leave the business for a number of reasons (e.g., retirement, burnout, or a medical emergency that leaves you unable to run the business). An exit strategy will give you a planned path out.
• It allows you to better plan your business. When you have an exit strategy, you’ll be better able to direct the business. You’ll have more time to prepare for the end.

Next category: Emergency and Disaster Planning