Business plans

Setting targets

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable.”

This quote from Seneca the Younger, a philosopher, summarises well a business without a business plan. Your hard work and resources could be to no use if you fail to establish a clear plan and goals to achieve.

A good business plan should set out clearly what you want to achieve, how, with what and by when. You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses, your opportunities and your threats. The market, the targets, the objectives and milestones as well as not forgetting the financials.

Building a business is tough, but it can help you think in a way about your business you never have before and at the end of it give you a never-before-seen clarity on how you are going to make your business for you.

The Mayflower method to business plans

We love helping our clients write a good business plan. The first choice is to decide how you want it prepared.

We offer two types of business plan. The first is what we call the power page. This is the document you keep to hand, you laminate it, stick it in easy reach, maybe on the wall behind your desk. It’s a constant, quick and concise reminder about what you are going to do, why and how.

Power pages are usually done on-the-spot, in a one-on-one session where we will look to interrogate your business model, find what makes it tick and where it needs to be.

The second is what we call the business navigator. Sure, it’s otherwise our fancy description for a typical, full business plan, but we do believe it will give you that end-to-end guide to find success. This is a much more comprehensive document covering a full SWOT analysis, executive summary and mission statement, operations and marketing plan and of course a financial plan. It is the sort of document you may need to give confidence to banks or investors.

When you start to delve into running your business, of course those financial targets can easily be measured as part of our management accounting package.