Small Business Marketing and Strategy Resources

Sometimes you're busy beyond belief, yet nothing seems to be getting done.

Its not a matter of talent - you do great work and produce fantastic results for your clients. But, when you deal with your business, you feel lost and confused.

This happens to the best of us - even geniuses who consistently grow their businesses year after year.

But, despite the feeling of wondering if you're helping your business with what you're doing, we continue to do things in the same manner.

But it doesn't need to be this way%u2026

None of us started our business to work 90 hours a week with much of that time feeling like we're flailing in the wind and trying to "guess" what to do. Yet many of us end up doing just that.

Why? Typically entrepreneurs launch their businesses with a couple of phenomenal skills. They may also have a network that will help them get a few clients right away. What most entrepreneurs lack is an understanding of "business."

Its one thing to be a freelancer who does the work, sends a bill and cashes a check. Its quite a step beyond to be a business owner who has growth as a goal.

There are a number of skills that are necessary in varying degrees as we seek to grow our businesses: finance, accounting, human resources (hiring, firing, benefits, policies), operations, budgeting, marketing, sales, etc.

For many, the time when they realize how much there is to learn and do is about the same time that their referral jobs are complete. This perfect storm of too few clients and too much to do creates havoc for many.

While big business is a place that many entrepreneurs "escaped" from, there are some ways of operating that a small business can adopt and put to good use.

Three of these areas are: accountability, reporting, and planning.

Big businesses are strong in these three areas, although they too may struggle with staying relevant and true to their goals.

Accountability in this case refers to each individual knowing what their role is, how that role interacts with other roles, and "answering" to somebody for their responsible role.

While many larger businesses have cumbersome structures and inefficient organizations, they typically have a chain of accountability. If they and their group are responsible for an outcome, they will be measured against that outcome.

Sometimes bonuses or promotions are influenced by reaching accountable goals. The accountability cascades throughout their organization through each level of management.

Accountability lets a big business distribute responsibility, build a picture of how effective different divisions or people are, and predict more reliably.

Reporting is just what it sounds like. In this instance I'm combining measurement and reporting into reporting for convenience. In many big businesses, the mantra is "if you don't measure it, you can't improve it."

Budgeting and results fall into this area. A big business will usually create an annual budget and determine measurements to determine successful outcomes and a reporting structure that allows timely intervention or change if needed.

A project or operations will have reports on the key outcomes that are expected. These reports will help the business measure their success and compare expected results with those actually achieved.

Knowing what is working and what is underperforming helps a large firm understand its next budget, forecast reliably and gives executives the information they need to make decisions for the firm that impact how / when it reaches its goals.

Planning seems to be the most obvious of the three in what it means. It may also be the most challenging to get right.

A big business will plan in a number of areas such as budget, marketing, hiring, sales, internal and external projects, revenue goals, etc.

Each of these plans is then typically taken by the next layer in the organization down and they add detail to the plan that is important for the work they do. This may happen several times depending upon the size of the organization.

Cascading their plan down through the levels of the business helps a big business organize its efforts towards its strategic goals.

A worker at any given level can identify where their work is impacting the company with planning in this fashion.

This sounds great, but how can an overwhelmed small business owner take advantage of these three key areas when they are already overworked?

By bringing in accountability, reporting and planning into their business, entrepreneurs can quickly conquer the time wasting and busy work that isn't moving them forward towards their goals.

Accountability. This is often one of the most useful aspects of the coaching relationship I have with my clients. We as small business owners are accountable to ourselves and aren't usually challenged.

If we aren't held accountable, its easy for us to change course in mid-stream or decide that we don't want to do something anymore. An accountability partner to hold you accountable to your goals is a great motivator and breath of fresh air. I have a coach and accountability group that I belong to that is wonderful for keeping me on track.

But its not just ourselves we need to hold accountable. As we add employees and grow, those people must know what is expected of them and what will happen if they don't perform to standards.

To hold them accountable, they need clear guidance on what their role is. Everybody should have a clear roles and responsibilities section of their job description. It seems a bit over the top, but your employes will appreciate the clarity and you'll enjoy their productivity and will find no cause to micromanage.

Reporting can be easily introduced to a small business. The challenge is reporting on those areas that are critical to achieving your goals.

Too many firms (big and small) report on everything that they measure. The common misperception is that if we measure it, it must be important%u2026wrong!

Track only those things that impact your business and your goals. Don't get caught up in building complicated and uninformative reports, they waste productive time and are only busy work.

Look at each goal and the steps required to reach the goal and then decide what information will tell you if you're moving towards your goal. Build your reports based upon that line of reasoning and you'll have your critical information at your finger tips.

Your reporting can be created as you build plans (marketing, sales, annual, etc.) In fact, you should build your reporting directly into your plans and show how you'll measure success and progress.

Planning is another double-edged sword. Not planning is risky and planning too much is a huge waste of time. Also, some areas aren't worth planning, but are better served as being acknowledged and dealt with in the future.

For a small business, I find the most useful plan to be a sales and marketing plan. I combine the documents and add in budgeting, goals for the company, information about target clients, measurement, reporting, accountability, etc.

For an established company, a robust sales and marketing plan that contains those areas may be the only plan your business needs.

When you create this plan, you contemplate and define your goals. Its important to make sure your goals are measurable. If you want to be the best ice sculptor in the Congo, describe how you're going to measure that success numerically.

Try to break your goals down into smaller chunks and put them on a timeline that is monthly, quarterly, etc. Track your progress and hold yourself accountable.

As you capture what needs to be done to reach your goals in your plan, you'll start to see what you should be working on at any given time. You'll be focussed and you won't feel like you're hoping something is the right thing to do, you'll know you're working towards your goals.

Accountability. Planning. Measuring. These three keys to big business success should be a part of all of our businesses. It might seem like a lot of work to bring them into your business, but you'll save time and money before long and you'll be moving towards your goals more reliably and quickly.

How do you bring them to your business? How long will it take to do? In my E3 Business Transformation Program, these three elements and more are integrated into your business during the 12 week course. Your specific timeline will depend upon what resources you have available to you, what experience you have, if you do it alone, etc.

These three concepts pulled from big business are three that we should embrace as small business owners. When we do, we'll work less, be more certain in what we are doing, and move much more quickly towards our goals.

Michael Nelson
michael@thecogentcoach
http://thecogentcoach.com
877-242-4812

Marketing remains a critical, yet confusing, focus area for many small business owners. If you have any desire to grow, marketing can make or break your plans. Even if you only want to maintain your business at a comfortable size, marketing helps reduce the risk of shrinking if you lose current customers.

Like business itself, marketing is a subject that needs to be mastered. You don't have to be a marketing guru, but you need to know enough to make informed decisions if you out-source some of your marketing or even if its being done internally by other members of your team.

Here are four common mistakes that businesses (large and small) make when marketing. Consider the mistakes and remedies when you're putting together your campaigns and you'll make much better use of your time and money and see better returns as a result.

Trying to be all things to everybody. When we market it's tempting to reach as broad an audience as possible, after all, the purpose of marketing is to create customers. It also costs us resources to market%u2026time and money especially. It makes sense that we would want to reach as many people as possible and write our messages such that they resonate with the majority.

Unfortunately, this will actually turn most people away as it will end up sounding generic and not specific to their situation. When you craft your marketing, try to write your message to a single person that represents about 20% of the market that you can readily identify. This requires a bit of research to know your customer segments, but will result in much better response to your campaigns.

Assuming prospects will act rationally. When I was in business school at Duke, Dan Ariely published his book "Predictably Irrational." Dan asserts convincingly that many of our decisions aren't made rationally, but are driven by intuition or emotion. When we craft our marketing campaigns, it's tempting to make a clear case for our product in order to capture prospects.

But people make many of their decisions in ways that are hard for us to understand rationally. Many decisions, especially purchasing decisions, are made based upon emotions. Not only are emotions critical in the decision-making process, we aren't even aware of it in most cases. Make sure your marketing is personal, involves emotions, benefits, etc. so that it appeals to the true holder of purchasing power. Most importantly, make sure your language focuses on them.

Talking about you or your product's features. It's tempting to talk about ourselves in marketing. How we will help, how we developed our product, etc. When we're done talking about ourselves, we usually shift to talking about the features of our offering. And why not? Our offering took great expertise, ingenuity, experience, etc. to create and we're proud of it.

Alas, prospects want to hear about how products or services will help them. They want to understand what problems will be solved, how they can do something important better, faster or cheaper, what jobs will be facilitated, etc. Make your message speak to these areas.

Not following your plan. If you take the time to craft a marketing plan that incorporates the above elements, has metrics, a budget, a timeline, etc. then follow the plan. It is a common mistake to expect quick results and to reduce budgets or cancel campaigns when the results aren't forthcoming immediately.

Don't abandon you plan before you've had time to assess its effectiveness. Prospects don't typically act immediately or even quickly; they usually require a number of exposures to your product or service before deciding to become a customer. You made a plan, follow it and then evaluate it when its run its course.

When you're putting together your marketing efforts, use this list of common errors to check your efforts. If you see yourself falling into any of these traps, make the necessary changes. Changing in the planning stages is inexpensive, don't wait until the money has been spent and the results are disappointing before altering your campaign.

Too much marketing happens based upon a mix of optimism and desire instead of a foundation of goals, budgeting, and measurement. It's a given that you would like your marketing efforts to succeed, but don't jump in blind. Take the time to structure your efforts with a bit of consideration and research and your results will reward you

The following three steps should be a part of your marketing efforts, ideally at the inception of your efforts. Marketing, like any other business action, costs time, money and effort and those are finite resources. For every action you take, there are several you won't have the resources to pursue, so make the most of them.

Set goals. I'm not referring to your business goals, which should already be set or your marketing is in trouble. I'm referring to marketing goals. What are you hoping to accomplish with your marketing, not generically, but specifically.

Here are a number of elements that will make your marketing goals more useful:

Write your goals down;
Conduct the analysis needed to see if your marketing can help you reach those goals;
Put a timeline on your efforts, when will you expect to see results? and
Document your plan to achieve these goals and keep the documents to review at the end of your campaign to evaluate and improve the next effort.
Your marketing effort not only needs to support your overall business goals, but each campaign must have defined goals as well.

Budget. Once you set your marketing goals, understand how they relate to your overall business goals, and have a plan, you need to set a marketing budget.

Know how much the campaign will cost you, not just in terms of money. Compare the amount budgeted with expected returns and the timeline you've created and decide if that particular effort should continue, cease, or expand.

Measure. This becomes much easier when the previous two steps have been completed. Understand how you will measure success. Its it visitors to your web site, new customers, etc.? Keep track of the results. Be specific and honest with yourself.

Put your measurements together with your original documentation for future use. Now you have a reference for that type of marketing and you can make the next effort even better or avoid making the same mistake twice.

Implement these steps and your marketing will produce better results and over time you'll become even more adept at marketing as you begin to understand what has been successful and what to avoid. Ideally, you've begun to structure your business in an organized manner as well so that this process is second nature and takes minimal time while fitting in with the way you do business.

Annesa Lacey, Chicago Online Marketing Examiner
January 14, 2012 - Like this? Subscribe to get instant updates.

The 2010 runaway hit The Social Network had many movie-goers questioning themselves if they would mind affording the risks of obtaining success. Considering the banality of pop culture classic Office Space, one wouldn't hesitate to take said risks%u2026 probably not even risks taken the likes of American Gangster, perhaps?

Breathe deeply. In spite of the current economic downturn, thankfully there'll be no need to turn to the streets, a la Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas. If there's a fire burning in your heart that could bear legitimate economical fruit, then Washington, DC-based Cogent Consulting Business Coach Michael Nelson is just the guy to help stoke it.

For the past 10 years, Nelson has helped the small business person realize their dreams by providing direction in weaving one's personal goals into profit. He's helped both corporate and federal clients, and has leadership experience gained from a decade in the Marine Corps that has enabled him to understand and help small businesses define and achieve their goals.

Realize your dreams in just 3 months

"This [promise] comes from having my E3 (Envision, Enable, Enact) Business Transformation System© in place. It's a foundation and a framework I use for business owners to go through the process of setting up what they want to do when they grow up, so to speak," Nelson said.

Some important questions to ask before going solo: "[First is the Envision step]: What should the business look like? What are my goals? What does the business stand for? Why does it exist?

During the Enable phase, Nelson says, "I then help to create a business model that will support those goals. Together we'll validate that business model; making sure that it's real. We would take time to make sure that your assumptions are actually proven, and ensure you're not spending money and time doing something on a guess," he added.

"I've got a number of tools to support this. These tools help in understanding objectively where a business is today and provides a measuring stick to check progress against.

"During the third phase, Enact, we take the business model and take it "live." We'll bring in a marketing plan that lets the business model arrive at its goals, then put together an operational plan that supports the process of bringing the value of the organization to its clients, whether its producing or delivering services," he said.

In a nutshell, the system helps determine what a business owner wants to do, establish a realistic and proven method of achieving those goals, followed by the marketing and operational efforts to make the goals real via the business model.

According to Nelson, three months is enough time to do a good job and be very thorough, but short enough span of time that a business owner doesn't lose momentum pushing into the future.

"In a year's time, we can use this system to move past the foundation; moving forward into how to build the organization and set up training, with typical results of around a 40% gain in profits. It also helps align the company and to communicate your intent in those three months so that everyone will understand it, and join in on that team," he added.

Current solopreneur case studies

Nelson is currently coaching a graphic designer who left corporate America eight months ago to run her own design firm, but has stopped growing as she has exhausted her network of contacts. She's now seeking to do missionary work and to live abroad, but at the same time needs the income from the business.

"It's just not just the business goals, but your goals as a business owner," Nelson said.

"The two have to be congruent. You can't work 80+ hours a week for the rest of your life because that's how you earn income. It helps if you're purpose-driven. It helps if you understand what the business is doing for you and if it's tied in," he added.

He calls his current client's challenge "fun and rewarding," and said that it's because this client has particularly significant personal goals that she is passionate about and that the business has to enable, making it a challenging model to create. In sitting down with her, Nelson got to understand her goals and what would be fiscally required for her to realize them.

"We turned to the business model that told us several things: a virtual model operated through the Internet would be needed. We established what she needed to have in place internationally, including her marketing plan."

Another current client of Nelson got his start in trying to be all things to all people.

"This client would tell his clients he specializes in strategy, but when they would visit his website, all they found was verbiage on IT. There was no connection. A real challenge in branding and marketing is having congruent messaging," he said.

"Branding on your website, business cards and glossies should all look and sound the same," he said, adding your message would need to be conveyed from those same vehicles.

"Being all over the map was keeping him from growing. We managed to find his key strengths, took what work he had done, and [looked at] where he could continue to work, and be able to sit across from someone; look them in the eye and tell them you're the best there is in solving their particular problem," he added.

Nelson helped this client pare back "about two-thirds" of his offerings and let projects, once completed, "die on the vine and go away."

"We got him to build on what he's proven to be good at and where he could build and lead a team. In about four years he was able to successfully build a team of 40," Nelson said.

To create a business plan or not to create one: that's the question

You could possibly believe the internet hype that drawing up a business plan isn't what it's cracked up to be. Nelson agrees that the business plan as it's commonly used isn't very useful, but business planning such as he uses in his system is indeed a foundation for success.

"What I've found is that business plans are like fairy dust. Everyone knows you need one, but not exactly why? You'll hear that VCs or angels read the executive summary to see if [the business concept] is an original idea that can displace a portion of the marketplace, or create a new marketplace or new product. They want to know if this is a compelling enough case that can be pulled off. The rest will be looked at as just fluff - which will prove what they've just read, even if it's wrong."

He added that on average, even banks and the American Small Business Administration (ASBA) typically don't look at business plans.

"Banks like to see that you've been in business for a while and you've been successful at it. They'd like to envision a business owner continuing to be successful for whatever a business owner is going to use the funds for (commercial space, etc.)"

Entrepreneur vs. "wantrepreneur"

So what's the difference between the Entrepreneur and the daydreamer who just so happens to believe their idea will "fly"? And what differentiates the two in knowing one is a business vs. a project or hobby?

"That's what I like to call the Entrepreneur vs. the wantrepreneur," he said.

The entrepreneur has the idea, skills, service concept or invention and has the guts to cut ties with corporate America, step out on faith and just do it. They'll throw the chips on the table and say, "OK, I'm in!"

"The wantrepreneur, or hobby business, has something that they really like doing, and are certain that their friends and others will like it, buy it or need one, just because [in their minds] they can see the value in it. They're from the category of business owners who don't want to grow, and is OK with returning to a day job when their solo venture fails," he said.

A great deal of Nelson's job is, well, consulting. So he does a lot of free initial consultations to find if both sides will be a good match for each other.

"There's a connection where I provide value, and it has to work both ways. A lot of folks are stuck. They're one, two, three persons and are just reaching out for help and ideas."

He said a lot of people he comes across are ultimately people who just don't want to work for somebody else, so they'll use entrepreneurship as a primary driver.

"Even when they fail, they're honest with themselves in being content on being a small firm. There's nothing wrong with that."

The SBA cites statistics that approximately 50% of businesses fail within the first year. Nelson's not entirely comfortable with such statistics because of what isn't disclosed.

"The problem with these statistics is that they don't tell you which business failed, or the why, or where these businesses are. I speculate this is where a lot of these failures come from, though. Eight months down the road, they'll see the grass isn't the shade of green they thought it would be, so they'll go back to the comfort zone of the day job."

Nelson says the average top entrepreneur has failed up to three to four times, but they're OK with that, "because they've learned what does and doesn't work. Next time they were more successful before they've figured it out."

"Where your gifts are is just where you should be," he added.

What's in your wallet?

Nelson's advice for the wannabe entrepreneur who's scared to go into their pocketbook to pay for leadership is pretty simple:

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.examiner.com/online-marketing-in-chicago/apathy-towards-the-day-job-there-s-a-business-coach-for-that

I'm constantly asked about how to use the Internet to help small businesses grow and develop a mature presence. Rather than write a series of articles on the subject, I've created a 7-part video series to address the question. It's a FREE series, for now at least.

Get access before it is no longer available!

Here is the link: Free 7-part Internet Marketing Video Series.

In this series, you'll learn:

How internet marketing works so that you can integrate it into your overall marketing efforts successfully;
What critical mistakes to avoid in analyzing your current state and creating your marketing plan;
How to get your Internet marketing to produce dramatic and lasting results;
What you need to know if you work with another firm to develop your campaign; and
In general, a background on how search engines rank sites and the factors to consider.
The videos are too large to mail (10 to 20 minutes each), so each day you'll receive a link to watch the next video in the series.

I hope you enjoy!

http://thecogentcoach.com/success-store.html

Here is a collection of the top 10 most mentioned problems I've heard from my clients and other small business owners.

What's missing? What would you add? Any great solutions you've developed to overcome any of these challenges?

Let's all pitch in so everybody benefits!

Marketing. How do I market? How much should it cost? How do I know if its working? Do I need to market?
Business Model. How do I create it so that I define my business and I'm not defined by whatever customers buy? How is it related to other aspects of the business? How do I maintain it?
Taking time to validate assumptions. Test the market. Get out of the building and interact with your customers to validate your model. "Prove" your financial assumptions.
HR. When the firm begins to grow this become huge. What is the minimally viable team? How do I find quality people? When do I hire? When do I fire? This becomes even more complex when friends and family have been hired%u2026
Exit plan. How do I plan for my departure from the business? How do I sell? How do I sell to retire? Can I be an effective absentee owner?
Costs. How do I control costs so I don't over spend my revenue (unless its for growth and on purpose)? How much should I spend on facilities?
Branding. This may as well be magic%u2026What does a brand do for me? How do I brand? How do I use my brand?
Operations. Huge area, but meant here as planning the running of the business and ramping up with growth. Scale and efficiency.
How do I use the web? Is it easy to bring traffic to my site? What will the traffic do and how can I influence their choices. How do I use social media?
10. Value proposition. What value is provided? What outcomes are produced? How long does it take? How much does it cost? What jobs do my offerings accomplish?
11. (Bonus) Customers. Who are my customers? What do they need? Who do they buy from? How do I communicate with them? How much does it cost to acquire them? What are they worth over the lifetime of our relationship? How do I know when they're happy.
This isn't comprehensive by any means. Its just an informal sampling of questions I've heard, responses to surveys, etc.

They seem to be ubiquitous, lets all pitch in and see if we can suggest possible solutions for each.

Have a great day!

Michael

Michael@thecogentcoach.com

http://thecogentcoach.com

http://thecogentcoach.com/wordpress

Time is rarely the friend of an entrepreneur or small business owner. In business, there is an advantage to being the first to market with an offering. You also don't want to waste time getting to a positive cash flow or growing. There is a useful way of segmenting tasks that have to be done that helps maximize time.

The primary challenge facing us is the limited resources on hand. These resources can be money, time, people, etc. What we often find ourselves doing is wearing multiple hats and just working longer hours trying to accomplish all that we need to do.

I'd like to focus on working smarter, not harder. Obvious first steps here would be to set your goals, deadlines, etc. But I'm going to look at this challenge from a different angle in this article.

Consider that your business, like any other, probably has three tiers of jobs and value. There are the $1,000/hour jobs, $100/hour jobs and $10/hour jobs. The $1,000/hour jobs are the most vital at creating value, growing the business, creating the business identity, etc.

The $100/hour jobs are the "business framework" of your company. These jobs are dedicated to making important decisions about the details of operations, HR, working on creating marketing campaign materials, measurement, reporting, etc.

The $10/hour jobs are dedicated to keeping the lights on and answering the phone. The cleaning staff, receptionist, etc. hold these types of jobs.

Since you've launched your own company, you likely have a few exceptional gifts that the company is based upon. Building upon these, creating the big picture, delivering results, etc. are probably where you should be spending most of your time. Your value in these roles is akin to the $1,000/hour jobs and you're making the best use of your time.

Professionals in finance, accounting, management, customer relations, etc. do the $100/hour jobs. They keep the business functioning and compliant. These jobs are critical and you need to have them done, but you probably don't need to do them all yourself. In fact, if you have to spend lots of time learning how to do these jobs, it's a waste of your time. Every hour you spend here is an hour lost at the $1,000/hour jobs.

The $10/hour jobs are even less valuable for you to be spending your time on. You can hire people to do these roles or out-source them. You may be able to automate many of them as well.

Don't misunderstand; all three levels of jobs are valuable, as are the people that perform them. The challenge is to find people who are fulfilled at those levels or whose career is at that level currently. But you don't want to spend all of your time in these roles; you want to focus on creating and growing your business. As you focus your time on the higher-level job, you'll be creating more jobs overall at the same time, which will enable you to serve even more people.

Take the time to sort out roles in your business and how you spend your time. Are you maximizing your talents or are you spending too much time in activities that others could do (probably better too)! When you find yourself doing less valuable work, try to brainstorm a way to remove it from your responsibilities. You can hire support firms, like CPAs to help with your accounting, virtual assistants to help with phones and busy work, professional managers to run the firm when it is the correct size, etc.

Remember, time is a finite resource. Don't think that just because you have the time to do something, that you should be doing it. Every activity you do means that you can't be doing something else. If the activity you put off is critical to your success, you may want to consider ways to free yourself to do the most influential tasks in your firm.

Every business needs a business plan. Right? That's what you read on the "authoritative" business sites. The Small Business Administration says not having a business plan is a cause in over 80% of small business failure. So, perhaps you've found a template and created one. If you don't have one, you feel guilty, don't you? You probably tell people that you're "working on it."

Release the guilt! While planning your business is absolutely important, the act of creating a business plan from a template isn't going to do anything for you. In the past venture capitalists, angel investors, banks, etc. were thought to demand business plans. As it turns out, VCs and angels typically only read the executive summary to see if the idea is unique and if it can be done. Banks rarely ask for or review business plans.

If the readers of business plans outside your business aren't asking for them, then the value must come from users in your business. So, how many times have you reviewed and updated your plan? How many times have you consulted your plan before making a signification decision? How often to you measure success against your plan? That is, if you have a business plan in the first place.

If planning is important, but business plans don't seem to be effective, how do I plan? Glad you asked. In the years that I've been working with clients and running small businesses, I've developed a framework that helps plan, keeps focus where it belongs, enables communication internally and externally, provides budgeting data, and creates a measuring stick to check your progress. I've incorporated these into the E3 Business Transformation System (shameless plug) and I'll go over the key elements below.

Envision. Goals. What do you want to be when you grow up? How much do you want to work a week? How much money do you desire? How do you like to spend your days at work? What do you want your business to be when it grows up? Why does it exist? Who does it serve? What value does it provide?

Before you start planning, you need to be able to answer these questions and the secondary questions that they'll bring up as you work through them. BE HONEST. If you answer them in a way that you think others would, you're cheating yourself and subsequent planning will just help you create something you don't really want%u2026.

Enable. Now we start planning. More accurately, we start putting together a business model that will enable you to reach the goals you just set while conforming to the way you've defined your working desires and business characteristics. This will let us plan.

Create a business model. Not a business plan, a business model. A business model defines how you deliver value to your customers, what that value is, who those customers are and everything that goes into making that happen. It also models costs and revenues. This is a template to how you are going to do business.

If you've been in business a while, start this phase with taking inventory of where you are. Get an objective view of your business today from an operational view and a financial view. This will help you more quickly develop your business model and will also serve as a reference point for progress.

When you've created your model, you need to validate it. It feels good to have the model done and understand how we're going to reach our goals, but for now it's still a hypothesis. It is our best educated guess on how we should run the business. Take the time to prove your assumptions. List your assumptions and create simple tests to prove or disprove them. Get out and talk with your customers, conduct surveys, query prospects, etc. Change when you find that you were wrong and create a validated model.

Enact. With goals and a proven model in hand, now its time to plan and act. It's time to figure out how we'll use the business model to reach our goals. There are a couple of important areas that we should all cover%u2026 a marketing plan, an operational plan, a budget and a team plan. The marketing plan will cover how you will get your message in front of your prospects and convert them into customers. The operational plan is what actions you'll take to deliver the value and run your business. The team plan deals with how you are going to create a team that fits in with your company values and can do the jobs necessary. The budget makes it all real and provides a reality check along the way.

After you've planned, budget. Budget thinking is likely going on during each stage, but when you're all done, create the actual budget. Be realistic about how much you're willing to spend, how quickly you can hire, how much you can afford on advertising, etc.

Now that you're ready to launch, make sure you're tracking your business. What are the goals and how do the different plans fit in? Is the marketing producing the results that you predicted? Are you able to hire the type of people that you want within your budget? Are you able to produce / deliver your offerings for the amount that you thought?

Answer these questions at least quarterly and measure the outcomes against your plans. Adjust where you need to and start developing a documented business "memory." Keep your plans and results stored throughout your business life and learn from them. Keep getting better at predicting, marketing, identifying customers, etc. These lessons cost you time and money to learn, don't forget them by not documenting them - use the lessons you've learned.

Now, you don't feel so guilty about not having a business plan, do you? If you have one, pull it off the shelf, dust it off, and reuse what you can as you work through this process. Make 2012 your best year yet!