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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
Your one-stop guide to creating a winning business plan from scratch Whether you're starting a new business or growing an established one, you'll need a solid business plan to get you where you want to go. Revised for today's rocky economic climate, this edition of the UK's bestselling business plan guide gives you what you need to map out your business strategy and stay on course - including a complete sample plan that you can easily adapt for your business! * Chart your course - assess the current state of your business and where you'd like to take it, and establish clear, achievable objectives * Get to know your customers - learn the latest techniques for getting a better idea of who your customers are and what they want * Scope out the competition - find out who your competitors are and what it'll take to get your share of the market pie (and theirs) * Sort out your finances - construct a value chain, examine your cash flow and calculate a sensible budget * Enter the Dragons' Den - convince bankers, investors, venture capitalists and other funding sources your business is a good investment * Read the tea leaves - learn to decipher changing cultural, political and technological trends and to alter your strategies as needed Open the book and find: * Tips on developing a sure-fire business strategy * How to set realistic objectives * Forecasting and budgeting strategies * Keys to writing a motivational mission statement * How to decipher the latest consumer trends * Advice on building your brand and brand loyalty * Tips for seeing and seizing opportunities before the competition * Ways to adapt your plan to economic change Learn to: * Prepare a watertight business strategy * Assess the marketplace * Devise a sensible forecast and budget
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Seitenzahl: 607
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Business Plans For Dummies®, 3rd Edition
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/businessplansuk to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Business Plans For Dummies®, 3rd Edition
by Paul Tiffany, Steven D. Peterson and Colin Barrow
Business Plans For Dummies®, 3rd Edition
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd The Atrium Southern Gate Chichester West Sussex PO19 8SQ England
Email (for orders and customer service enquires): [email protected]
Visit our home page on www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex, England
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to (44) 1243 770620.
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-119-94118-7 (pbk), 978-1-119-94389-1 (ebk), 978-1-119-94387-7 (ebk), 978-1-119-94388-4 (ebk)
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Authors
Paul Tiffany is the managing director of Paul Tiffany & Associates, a Santa Rosa, California-based firm that has offered management training and consulting services to organisations throughout the world for the past fifteen years. In addition, he has taught business planning courses at some of the top business schools in the country, including Stanford, Wharton and The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently serves as adjunct professor. He holds an MBA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Berkeley. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
Steven Peterson is a senior partner and founder of Home Planet Technologies, a management training company specialising in hands-on software tools designed to enhance business strategy, business planning and general management skills. He is the creator and designer of The Protean Strategist, a state-of-the-art computer-based business simulation. The simulation creates a dynamic business environment where participants run companies and compete against each other in a fast-changing marketplace. Each management team in the simulation is responsible for developing its own strategy, business plan and program to make the plan work.
Steven has used The Protean Strategist to add excitement, hands-on experience, teamwork and a competitive challenge to corporate training programmes around the world. He has worked with both large and small companies on products and services in industries ranging from telecommunications to financial services and from high technology to consumer goods and industrial equipment. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
When he’s not planning his own business, Steven is planning to remodel his 80-year old house or to redesign the garden. And he confesses that of the three, the garden proves to be the most difficult. Steven holds advanced degrees in mathematics and physics, receiving his doctorate from Cornell University. He teaches part-time at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, and lives in the Bay Area with his long-time companion, Peter, and their long-lived canine, Jake.
Colin Barrow was until recently Head of the Enterprise Group at Cranfield School of Management, where he still teaches on entrepreneurship on programmes. He is also a visiting professor at business schools in the US, Asia, France and Austria. His books on entrepreneurship and small business have been translated into twenty languages including Arabic, Russian and Chinese. He worked with Microsoft to incorporate the business planning model used in his teaching programmes into the software program, Microsoft Business Planner, now bundled with Office. He is a regular contributor to newspapers, periodicals and academic journals such as the Financial Times, The Guardian, Management Today and the International Small Business Journal.
Thousands of students have passed through Colin’s start-up and business growth programmes, raising millions in new capital and going on to run successful and thriving enterprises. He held non-executive director appointments in two venture capital funds, is on the board of several small businesses and has served on a number of Government Task Forces.
Dedication
Paul Tiffany:
For the thousands of students and executives whom I have taught in the past, and who have provided me with constant inspiration and insight about the challenges facing management in the modern world.
Steven Peterson:
To my parents, Mary and Pete, for always being there to encourage and support me in whatever path I chose to pursue. Your love and devotion to each other and our family are beyond measure. And to my sister, Susie, for her deep and constant friendship, and for giving me the chance to be a big brother and an uncle.
Authors’ Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at John Wiley & Sons, Inc. for the opportunity to write this book and Claire Ruston, Jo Jones and Kim Vernon for making my writing infinitely more readable. Without their help, encouragement, feedback and tireless work this book would not have happened.
— Colin
First we would like to express our gratitude to Peter Jaret for the many hours he spent reading, editing, asking questions and making suggestions. His insights were always on the mark, and the book reflects his own immense talents as a writer. We would also like to thank Rick Oliver for his care in reviewing the book, and for all his astute comments and advice. His continued enthusiasm for the book is gratifying and greatly appreciated.
Special thanks go out to three of our editors. To Barb Terry for starting us out on the right track. And to Tere Drenth and Colleen Rainsberger for keeping us on course and on schedule. While we didn’t always show it at the time, we really appreciate all their energy and hard work.
We are grateful to John Kilcullen and Kathy Welton, our publishers, for giving us the chance to write the book in the first place, and for allowing us the extra time to make it as good as it is.
We would also like to thank the talented staff at our publisher for taking care of all the important details. To Kathy Simpson for copy editing and Donna Love for assisting with several chapters. To Joyce Pepple and Heather Dismore for dealing with all the permissions. And to Ann Miller for seeing that the bills got paid.
Paul would also like to thank his family for their support during this project – for Janet, and for his children, Ann, Rafael, Roland, Brandon, and Mariah.
— Paul and Steven
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Commissioning, Editorial, and Media Development
Project Editor: Jo Jones (Previous Editions: Daniel Mersey, Amie Tibble, Simon Bell)
Commissioning Editor: Claire Ruston
Assistant Editor: Ben Kemble
Copy Editor: Kim Vernon
Production Manager: Daniel Mersey
Publisher: David Palmer
Cover Photo: © iStock/Talaj
Cartoons: Ed McLachlan
Composition Services
Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees
Layout and Graphics: Jennifer Creasey, Christin Swinford
Proofreader: Dwight Ramsey
Indexer: Estalita Slivoskey
Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher
Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director
Ensley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel
Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Introduction
So you pulled this book off the shelf and decided to give us a try. Good move. You’ve come to the right place. Believe it or not, we don’t need to read tea leaves to know a bit about your background. In fact, we’d go so far as to suggest that you probably find yourself in one of the following situations:
You’ve a great idea for a brand-new gadget and can’t wait to get your own company up and running.
Your boss just turned over a new leaf and wants a business plan from you in three weeks.
You’ve always run the business without a business plan, and you’re the one who turned over the new leaf.
You thought you had a business plan for the company, but it doesn’t seem to be doing the job that it should.
The business and economic climate looks a whole lot more hostile than the last time you thought about writing a business plan and you want to be doubly sure of getting it right.
Are we close? Whatever your situation, you’re not going to need those tea leaves to make a business plan, just read this book instead. We can’t tell you the future of your business. But the business plan that we help you put together prepares you for the future. And we’re with you every step of the way.
Why You Need This Book
You may not know how to make a business plan just yet, but you’re smart enough to know that a plan is important. We know, from years of working with companies large and small, that a business plan is crucial – your plan is the only way that you can get where you want to go.
This book helps you create your business plan step by step. Along the way, you may discover things about your business that you never realised – things that just may help you beat the competition. We even throw in a few laughs as well.
Sure, for some of you, a business plan is something that you’re required to put together to raise money for a startup company. At best, it’s a formality; at worst, a real pain in the neck. But a business plan isn’t just there to raise money; it can also be a powerful tool – one that’s bound to make your company a better place to work and your business a more successful operation.
Is a business plan magic? No – no sorcery here. A business plan works because it forces you to stop and think about what you’re doing. It prompts you to figure out what you want your company to be in the future and how you intend to make the future happen. Then your plan acts as a template, guiding you through the steps required to meet your goals. For example:
A business plan requires you to look carefully at your industry, your customers and the competition to determine what your real opportunities are and what threats you face.
A business plan takes a good hard look at your company as well, so that you can honestly and objectively recognise its capabilities and resources, its strengths and weaknesses and its true advantages.
A business plan coaxes a financial report, a forecast and a budget out of you, so that you know where you stand today and what the future holds.
A business plan prepares you for an uncertain future by encouraging you to come up with business strategies and alternatives to increase your chances of success down the road.
How to Use This Book
Business Plans For Dummies,3rd Edition will help your business succeed no matter who you are or what your job description is, whether you’re part of a large corporation or a one-person show. Depending on your situation, you may find yourself dipping into and out of the book in different ways:
If business plans are new to you, you may want to start at the beginning and let us be your guides. We take you from your company mission all the way through to making your business plan work, and we keep your head above water the whole way.
If you’re a little more experienced, you may want to head straight for one of the more interesting watering holes: how to recognise the critical success factors in your business, for example, or where to look for your company’s strengths and weaknesses. After dipping in anywhere along the way, you’ll most likely discover yet another section where you want to spend some time.
Just remember – no matter where you find yourself, you’re never too late to start a business plan, and never too late to make the one that you have even better. In each case, you can find what you’re looking for between these bright-yellow covers.
How This Book Is Organised
Business Plans For Dummies is divided into six parts, based on the major elements of your business plan. You don’t have to read all the parts, however, and you certainly don’t have to read them in order. Each chapter is devoted to a particular business-planning topic, and you may need some chapters more than you do others. Feel free to skip around; pick and choose what you’re really interested in.
Part I: Determining Where You Want to Go
When putting together a business plan, you have to decide where you want to end up in the future. This part helps you get on track right away by establishing a mission for your company, along with business goals and objectives. Then we help you examine your company’s values and your vision for the future.
Part II: Sizing Up Your Marketplace
To make a useful plan for your business, you have to know something about the market you’re going after. In this part, we help you examine your industry and figure out what it takes to be successful by identifying where your opportunities and threats come from. We also help you analyse your customers, so that you can understand who they are, what they need and how you can group them to better serve them. Finally, we help you scope out your competition, trying to determine exactly what you need to win.
Part III: Weighing Up Your Company’s Prospects
In this part, we turn our full attention to your company. We help you look as objectively as you can at your capabilities and resources, identifying the strengths that you can count on and the weaknesses that you need to deal with. We also help you zero in on what you do best, enabling you to figure out the real value that you provide for your customers and the true advantage that you have over your competitors. Finally, we guide you through your finances and help you put together a financial forecast and a budget.
Part IV: Looking to the Future
The main reason why you make a business plan in the first place is to get ready for what lies ahead for your business. Part IV helps you look into your future and prepares you for change. We introduce several standard alternatives and show you how you can use them to come up with strategies of your own. And we consider the different directions that you can take as your company grows bigger.
Part V: A Planner’s Toolkit
Your business plan is no good if you can’t put it to work. In this part, we help you shape your company to be as efficient and effective as it can be. We also help you prepare the people in your company so that they’ve the skills they need to accomplish the goals set out in your plan. Finally, we show you a sample of a real business plan, so that you know – start to finish – what you’re aiming for.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
The Part of Tens is a collection of reminders, hints, observations and warnings about what to do – and not to do – as you work through your business plan. These chapters focus on the big picture, so look at them whenever you need a little perspective on where you stand and where you’re headed, especially if the road ahead starts to look a little bumpy.
Icons Used in This Book
To guide you through your business plan preparation, we include icons in the left margins of the book. Here’s what they mean:
This icon indicates tips to put you way ahead of the competition.
Wherever you see this icon, you find definitions of business-guru terms.
This icon calls your attention to illuminating examples from the business world.
This icon flags situations that apply mostly to large companies, but that may help small companies as well.
Ouch!, you may get burned unless you heed these warnings.
This icon serves as a friendly reminder that the topic at hand is important enough for you to note down for the future.
This icon lets you know about websites from which you can download free financial spreadsheets, tables and other useful goodies. These can help take the grunt and groan out of number-crunching cashflow forecasts, ‘what if’ projections and other tedious but vital repetitive calculations, as well as keep you up-to-date on important rules and regulations.
Where to Go from Here
Take a minute to thumb through this book and get comfortable with what’s inside. Then pick out one or two chapters that tickle your fancy. Better yet, turn to a chapter that you already know something about. Or, if you’re really daring, turn the page and start at the beginning.
Don’t forget to use the table of contents for a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. The index is also an excellent place to turn to find a specific topic right away.
Want to make your business plan look great, or need some hands on support? Go to www.dummies.com/go/businessplansfordummies to find tips and advice on shaping up your business plan. You can also download a glossary from here to get your head around the business jargon.
Part I
Determining Where You Want to Go
In this part . . .
No matter what you’d like to finish, from wallpapering the bedroom to hooking up the new router, it’s awfully easy to pass over all the preliminary stuff and jump right into the thick of the project. Let’s face it, the preliminaries are a bit boring. But for the really important things in life – and in business – preparation is everything. So preparing to do your business plan ranks right up there in importance with each of the other major steps as you create a plan.
In this part, we help you prepare to plan by looking at what a business plan is all about. First, we look at how to establish a mission for your company and develop business goals and objectives with all your stakeholders in mind. We also point out why values are so important to your company, and show you how you can use your company’s values. Finally, we look at how a vision for your company gives you something to aim for and a direction to take.
Chapter 1
Starting Your Business Plan
In This Chapter
Getting the most out of your plan
Using your plan as a record of the past and a guide to the future
Making your plan function as your company description
Figuring out how to address your different readership
Checking out what the written plan looks like
Most of us go through life thinking ahead. We plan to paint the house, plan to go back to university, plan to take a holiday and plan for retirement – we always have a plan or two in the works. Why do we plan so much? We certainly can’t predict what’s going to happen, so why bother? Certainly, none of us knows the future. But each of us knows that tomorrow will be different from today, and today isn’t the same as yesterday. Planning for those differences is one way to move forward and face things that are unfamiliar and uncertain. Planning is a strategy for survival.
Companies make business plans for many of the same reasons. Planning is a strategy to improve the odds of success in a business world that’s constantly changing. Business plans are not a guarantee, of course. Business planning isn’t a science that offers you right and wrong answers about the future. But business planning is a process that gets you ready for what’s to come. And making a plan increases the likelihood that down the road, your company will be in the right place at the right time.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
