Running any business bigger than a lemonade stand will involve a significant amount of planning or an enormous amount of luck. Doubly so for any business that is looking for investors or bank loans, as investors are more interested in sound plans than in good ideas. Because of the complexity of business operation, make plans that deal with one aspect of the operation at a time, even if they interlock in a grand strategy.
Business Plans
Business plans are drafted in order to prove the feasibility and value of new business ideas. The obvious time for writing a business plan is when opening a new business, but the original plan must be reviewed and adjusted periodically, particularly when operations are expanded or diversified. business plan should include the objectives of the organization, as well as a strategy of value creation.
Marketing Plans
The marketing plan will describe the potential customers of the product and explain their motivation for buying. This will allow for the organization to fine-tune its product or service to ensure that customers may be won and kept. The marketing plan should also include factors such as market size, nature of the competition, potential price and potential channels for reaching the customer.
Sales Plans
The sales plan is concerned with the nuts and bolts of customer acquisition. After the sales forecast, specific distribution channels are located and territories, targets and accounts are assigned to salespeople or teams. Sales targets matching the forecasts are set. Objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound -- goals summarized by the acronym SMART.
The Big Picture
Business, marketing and sales plans should inform and complement each other, but they operate at different scales. The business plan describes the reason of being of the organization, and will only change when the basic assumptions of operation change. Marketing plans occupy a middle ground, must reacting to changes in market trends and customer preferences.Sales plans are involve day-to-day operations. Thus, they must bring to reality the objectives set forth in the marketing plan, which in turn follow the strategies outlined in the business plan.
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