02 Business Planning & Pricing

Goals and Strategiesbusiness-plan-document

A BUSINESS PLAN is simply as the name implies — a plan about your business. As you write down your goals, strategies and action steps, your business becomes real. We show you how.

IT’S USED TO LOOK AHEAD, allocate resources, focus on key points and prepare for problems and opportunities. But (believe it or not) many business owners find formulating a Business Plan terribly daunting and avoid it altogether.

Be one step ahead from the get-go — not only will having a plan for your business help you get to market faster, it also helps you gain clarity, focus and confidence. It outlines exactly what your business is going to do, and for whom, and what sets you apart from your rivals.

Forecasts and Assumptions

Banks, investors and other lending institutions will insist on a well-written, concise Business Plan on which to base their funding or investing decisions and if you can provide the numbers and those numbers stack up, then you’ll start from a point of certainty.

When you combine your ideas and concepts from subject 1 into a spreadsheet that clearly demonstrates and justifies the potential revenue and profit from a business it will give potential investors confidence but the most important thing is that YOU believe you can do it. This course combines:

  • Ideas for packaging products and services
  • Justifiable retail pricing
  • revenue that increases as you grow your business
  • grouping of revenue, cost of goods, marketing and operational costs
  • key financial performance indicators and percentages
  • the basis for regular reporting to test and measure

Starting simply with key information

Spreadsheet Business Plan with Sales Forecast for Starting a Bookkeeping BusinessDon’t be Intimidated. Goals and strategies can often be written briefly and succinctly in a couple of pages and once complete it can remain dynamic and ever-changing with small modifications as your business changes.

Although many business plans are Word documents they can also be Excel spreadsheets which clearly show the main information, key assumptions and calculations and demonstrate just how easy it is to achieve your goals.

A completed spreadsheet is included in the course that shows how you can startup a bookkeeping (or other services) business and having it running smoothly within 6 months with low initial investment.

Business Plans should be revised throughout the life of your business.

Getting off to a great start 

We will walk you through the elements of a Business Plan:

  • Learn how to conduct cash flow forecasts, profit and loss projections, likely return on investment and set pricing strategies and profit targets
  • Learn how to develop the clear goals you need to focus on as a measure of your business performance.
  • Identifying methods of promoting your business.
  • Understand strategies to achieve lower costs of production and distribution than your competitors, and turn your business into a class leader in your industry
  • Identify the staffing requirements to effectively deliver your product or service.
  • Develop risk management strategies according to the goals and objectives of your business, and a contingency plan to address possible areas of non-conformance with the Business Plan.

What You’ll Learn

This module gives you the understanding of how to create (and modify) your business plan using Microsoft Excel and use the spreadsheet to understand how your business is performing on a monthly basis and use this information to forecast future revenues.

Where you want to go with your business (setting up goals and strategies to make them happen) and finally how you are going to get there( infrastructure needed, legal obligations, marketing and systems management as well as 2 years minimum financials).

You will learn what information goes where, so that there is a logical progression of that information. That will make your final plan both easy to understand and easy to manage as your business takes shape.

Be aware that:

  • Should you require capital (money) to start or support your business, you will need to produce evidence of viability in the form of a well- structured, well researched and well documented business plan. All banks, investor, banks, and other funding bodies will require one. Learn more about our course on Valuation and Raising Capital

We would like to introduce you to our comprehensive Business StartUp Online Training Course by way of a series of FREE videos, available from this page.

FREE Business Startup Training Course Planning Videos

Stuart Carr discusses Shares, Partnerships and other responsibilities

SBC02A Business StartUp Course Training Video Interview – Business Structure with Stuart CarrStarting a business is exciting and fun because it’s new and creative but many startups involve partners who are willing to work or contribute money to achieve the results all parties hope for. All these parties are willing to contribute these “assets” because if everything works out they’ll get some great rewards as a result.

Stuart has seen the results of what happens with people in business when things don’t go as planned or when it becomes a lot harder than they expect. The main issue is that startup entrepreneurs are so excited and hopeful that they fail to spend time on the agreements that define how and why they all work together.

FREE TRAINING: Business Structures, Partnership Agreements & Shareholder Agreements

What Else Do You Get in the Business Start Up Online Training Course?

Legal and Risk Management

Next you will learn about the different business structures that are available in Australia, the compliance check-lists you need to get through in setting your business up and ways to protect yourself in the case of any error, accident or negligence.

Subject 3: Establish Legal and Risk Management

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Xero online training course - quotes, sales, orders, purchases, bank reconciliation, payroll, gst, reporting and BAS logo - smallIf you like what you see, bite the bullet and Enrol Now!

Better still, save yourself serious money by opting for our Complete Business Cloud Package, which includes:

  • The entire contents of this course — the Business StartUp Online Training Course
  • Our Business Partnerships Online Training Course and Template
  • Sessions with your own dedicated Course Completion Coach
  • The ENTIRE SUITE of Xero online training courses
  • Our digital and social media marketing package AND Google online training course
  • Maggie Richardson’s easy to read and enlightening book, Starting a Business in Australia.

Read the full details for the Complete Business Cloud Packageworking-anywhere-anytime

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