Small Business Success Plan

Create a practical plan of action for the coming year.

Michael Van Horn 
#4 in the series

So great to see this valuable tool in a workbook!  Doing this annual plan for my business was a key component in eventually selling the business & retiring.  Every small business owner would benefit from this workbook.

Kathryn Weber, Maxwell Money Management, retired.

For owners of any kind of small businesses—from 1 to 100 employees. Questions and exercises to help you think through every part of your business.

I recommend you include your co-owners and key managers.

Owners who have a practical plan, and pay attention to it, will more likely succeed—even if there’s a lot of uncertainty. “Plan for what you can, then plan how you’ll deal with the things you can’t plan for."

I have led annual plan workshops using this workbook for over 30 years, so it's been tested and refined on thousands of business owners.

Topics covered

  1. The big questions

    Where you want to go, your vision of success, what your exit strategy is, what you must do to get there, what opportunities and problems you will face, and how you’ll deal with them.

  2. Parts of your business

    Questions to help you think through and plan for every aspect of your business:

    Marketing and sales

    Operations and getting the work done

    Management and administration

    Key people and other employees

    Finances and financial systems

  3. Financial goals

    Revenue—including 8 different ways to project your revenue.

    Profit—including how to calculate needed profit.

    Capital needed for growth, working capital.

    Your paycheck.

    Your spending plan—where you need to spend more, and where to cut costs.

  4. Key challenges

    Find the toughest part of achieving your goals: dilemmas, uncertainties, choice points, risk factors. How will you tackle these?

    Any plan that ignores these is bound to fail.

  5. Action plan

    Condense all this into a brief, practical plan of action.

    If you can’t write your plan on a page or two, you can’t get it done in a year anyway.

I have been a member of The Business Group for over 20 years! It has been a valuable resource and learning experience that has molded me into a successful leader and business owner. Developing an action plan each year gives me a road map to stay focused on all my goals.

Cal Farnsworth, Farnsworth Mayflower

Warm up exercise

From the workbook

Business Owners Strategic Planning Killers

Do any of these apply to you?

  • Nose to grindstone.

    You’re so busy on day-to-day stuff, you can’t take the time to think through a realistic plan and stay on it.

  • Lost in the woods.

    You don’t know where you want your business to take you, or what you ultimately want from it; you just go along year after year.

  • Can’t connect the dots I.

    Your short-term goals and activities are not connected with your long-term desires and objectives.

  • Can’t connect the dots II.

     Your strategies and activities are not linked to your financial goals. (E.g., “If I intend to increase sales by 25%, then I must make 10 additional sales calls each week.” “If our sales increase 25%, we’ll need three new staff people.”

  • Dreamer.

     Being unrealistic; not grounding your goals in what you can actually do. (“I want to double my sales.” but “My health and energy just aren’t what they used to be.”)

  • Bead of mercury.

       Unwilling to be pinned down to concrete goals; being fuzzy; not having any real idea of what can be accomplished.

  • Leaf in storm.

     “Why plan? I’m at the mercy of the winds of business fate anyway!”

  • List maker.

      You produce a laundry list of activities rather than a strategic plan. (“My marketing goals are: get new business cards, install a marketing database.”)

  • Whoops!

      You leave out key aspects of the business, especially how to deal with problems, dilemmas, and challenges; thus they are bound to sneak up and surprise you.

  • Lost in the trees I.

    You fail to think through the “what-ifs” and set contingencies for things that may not be likely to happen, but will have a huge impact if they do.  (“What if I lose my lease? . . . lose a key employee? . . . get a bigger project than we’ve ever had?”) 

  • Lost in the trees II.

      You don’t anticipate and think through the impact of outside events; e.g., what your competition may do; changes in your customer base, in the technology, the economy, in laws and regulations. (“What if my major competitor gets much more aggressive?” “What about this AI-business stuff, anyway?” “What if the city prohibits parking on my street?”)

  • Artiste.

      Beautiful plan, admired from time to time, but gathering dust.