15 Reasons You Need a Business Plan

Whether you're just starting out, growing your business or seeking outside help, a well-thought-out business plan is the vehicle you need to get you there.

There are so many other good reasons to create a business plan that many business owners don't know about. So, just for a change, let's take a look at the less obvious reasons first and finish with the ones you probably already know about. Think of this as a late-show top 10, with us building up to the most important reasons you need a business plan.

15. Set specific objectives for managers. Good management requires setting specific objectives and then tracking and following up. I'm surprised how many existing businesses manage without a plan. How do they establish what's supposed to happen? In truth, you're really just taking a short cut and planning in your head--and good for you if you can do it--but as your business grows you want to organize and plan better, and communicate the priorities better. Be strategic. Develop a plan; don't just wing it.

14. Share your strategy, priorities and specific action points with your partner or significant other. Your business life goes by so quickly: a rush of answering phone calls, putting out fires, etc. Don't the other people in your business life need to know what's supposed to be happening? Don't you want them to know?

13. Deal with displacement. Displacement is probably by far the most important practical business concept you've never heard of. It goes like this: "Whatever you do is something else you don't do." Displacement lives at the heart of all small-business strategy. At least most people have never heard of it.

12. Decide whether or not to rent new space. Rent is a new obligation, usually a fixed cost. Do your growth prospects and plans justify taking on this increased fixed cost? Shouldn't that be in your business plan?

11. Hire new people. This is another new obligation (a fixed cost) that increases your risk. How will new people help your business grow and prosper? What exactly are they supposed to be doing? The rationale for hiring should be in your business plan.

10. Decide whether you need new assets, how many, and whether to buy or lease them. Use your business plan to help decide what's going to happen in the long term, which should be an important input to the classic make vs. buy. How long will this important purchase last in your plan?

9. Share and explain business objectives with your management team, employees and new hires. Make selected portions of your business plan part of your new employee training.

8. Develop new business alliances. Use your plan to set targets for new alliances, and selected portions of your plan to communicate with those alliances.

7. Deal with professionals. Share selected highlights or your plans with your attorneys and accountants, and, if this is relevant to you, consultants.

6. Sell your business. Usually the business plan is a very important part of selling the business. Help buyers understand what you have, what it's worth and why they want it.

5. Valuation of the business for formal transactions related to divorce, inheritance, estate planning and tax issues. Valuation is the term for establishing how much your business is worth. Usually that takes a business plan, as well as a professional with experience. The plan tells the valuation expert what your business is doing, when, why and how much that will cost and how much it will produce.

4. Create a new business. Use a plan to establish the right steps to starting a new business, including what you need to do, what resources will be required, and what you expect to happen.

3. Seek investment for a business, whether it's a startup or not. Investors need to see a business plan before they decide whether or not to invest. They'll expect the plan to cover all the main points.

2. Back up a business loan application. Like investors, lenders want to see the plan and will expect the plan to cover the main points.

1. Grow your existing business. Establish strategy and allocate resources according to strategic priority. 

Running a business is a great adventure. But just like any road-trip, having a "map" is vital to taking you where you want to go.  Plan ahead.

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If you want to hold consultation sessions for a plan in connection with a current enterprise or for a business your are setting-up, give us call and let's take a look at your options.

Dickie Aguado is the Executive Director of Magna Kultura Foundation. He is a consultant to private & government corporations in the Philippines. Dickie Aguado develops Business Plans, marketing and communications strategy, public relations & corporate social responsibility programs, social marketing campaigns, social mobilization and community engagement efforts at the grassroots of society. 

For Strategic Marketing Consultancy, contact Dickie Aguado 
at Tel. No. (632) 514-5868, via Mobile Nos. +63917-8990025,
 or at +63922-8990026.

You may also send an email at grassrootscommunication@gmail.com

For more details of how Dickie handles strategic marketing planning, click to open http://grassrootmarketing.multiply.com/profile/resume/resume.M.  

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Creating Iconic Brands

Nike.  Apple.  Facebook.  Google.  Some brands just make it big. So big, in fact, that the brand name goes before the product does.  And to some extent, they become a household name.

How can you create such an ideal brand that’s synonymous with all the good things you wish to be, like quality, luxury or perhaps dependability?  Can you build a clear, strong, stylish, unique image for your brand? Can you give it such a unique personality that it gains a specific, clear, appealing meaning in spite of the brand clutter plaguing most markets?

Logos and names do matter. But brands are really defined by how people experience them. What matters most is not what the brand says, but what it does, how it behaves.

Here are a few thoughts you can think about in making that iconic brand for your company:

First and foremost, BE UNIQUE, and stand out.   Great brands achieve a high level of individuality and speak to a person rather than to the entire market.

There is a tendency among some, even at the most illustrious business schools, to treat the term ‘iconic’ as a trendy synonym for successful mass‐market brands. Iconic brands are unique, special, distinctive, and have very strong and appealing personalities. They have the kind of recognition that iconic movie actors or singers have.

Can you brand your product like a rock star?  Or, a movie matinee idol?  That’s what you want to strive for as you build an iconic brand.  Give it a unique personality and a highly distinctive voice, then be true to its personality and voice no matter what.

In iconic branding, the brand’s identity trumps everything else in the marketing plan. Don’t extend an iconic brand too far, for example, or you’ll water down its meaning and lose the special boost in sales and loyalty that your iconic status confers.

BE CLEAR. Refrain from speaking jargonese and from talking manufacturer. If your positioning statement uses acronyms, chances are most people won’t understand your branding, and your branding won’t last very long. Example, “Best DVD Copier” presumes that people understand what “DVD” and “Copier” mean. Ten years from now, who knows if DVDs would still matter. Here’s a good tip for you to try: If your parents get your positioning, then chances are, it’s good.

BE POSITIVE – When creating a brand, make sure that it is established on positive attributes like “doing good things,” or “being a catalyst for change.” Don’t try to create a brand that is focused on beating or damaging your competition. Make sure that your brand promotes happy thoughts. No one would want to buy a product that is majorly focused on hurting its competition. If you want to beat your competition, establish an uplifting brand.

Consistency is key. Think of one message and work on it. Many companies commit the mistake of coming up with more than one message because they‘re afraid of being niched and want the entire market for themselves. “We sell the best high-end phones, and the best ones for the budget-conscious.” 

Let’s face it. You have to cater to a specific market, one brand at a time. This is the reason why big companies try to come up with multiple versions of the same product, so they can brand it for a specific market.

Building a personal brand requires a lot of time and consistency, the latter of which is a critical element to the brand’s success. Being consistent is what builds familiarity and trust in the minds of others and demonstrates that you are very serious about your business and it’s image.

By not being consistent, you may appear to be undecided or confused which leads to a loss in credibility.

The Opposite Test. You can always say that your products are “nutritious, delicious, and fresh.” However, how many other companies can claim that their products are nutritious, delicious and fresh? See if your competition uses the antonyms of the adjectives that you use to describe your product. If it doesn’t, your description is useless. Example, I’ve never seen a company claim its products to be slow, hard to use and bulky.

Fool-proof your message.  Once you have the perfect brand positioning for your perfect product, it’s time to make sure that everyone understands the message it conveys. Start within your organization, from your immediate people to the receptionist down the front desk. Make sure that everyone understands the message.

The power of PR. When it comes to branding, too much money is worse than too little because people who have a lot of money tend to spend a lot of money on stupid things like stupid awards night commercials. Keep in mind that brands are built on what people are saying about you, not what you’re saying about yourself.  Go advertise above-the-line, but don’t waste too much on advertising, use PR.  Make people realize that you’re offering a great product and you get great response.

Try staying away from conventional branding, and avoid speaking like a manufacturer.  Empathize with your target consumer, and genuinely speak to them.  Brands are created in the customers’ minds. And though customers may get attracted by the brand’s value proposition, it needs to live up to the promise and build a relationship based on trust.

Customers value some products as much for what they symbolize as for what they do.  For Nike, Apple, or BMW, customers value the brand stories largely for their identity value.  Acting as “vessels of self-expression, the brands are imbued with stories that consumers find value in constructing their identities.

Every marketer aims at creating brands that customers love and trust. Yet it is only a few brands that are able to win the hearts of customers.  The challenge for brand managers comes after the non-believers have bought into the brand. The brand experience needs to be managed well.

Though branding has been regarded as a science, the process of building brands that are endearing is also an art. The culmination of science and art is what results in the creation of truly great brands.  If your brand becomes known in the market, good.  If your brand becomes popular, better.  But, in time, if your brand becomes an icon, great!

For Strategic Marketing Consultancy, contact Dickie Aguado at

Tel. No. 514-5868, via Mobile Nos. 0917-990025 or 0922-8990026.

You may also send an email at grassrootscommunication@gmail.com

For more details of how Dickie handles strategic marketing planning, click to open http://grassrootmarketing.multiply.com/profile/resume/resume.M.  

Your Brand is Everything They Need To Remember

To some a brand is just a name or a logo. To some, it stands for quality. To some it means a whole lot more like a status symbol.

So what’s in a brand, really? Is it the image? Is it the company behind the name? Of course, anyone with enough sense will say it’s about all these things, and more. It works for every business, big or small.

A commonly used term in marketing, branding is often the subliminal process by which a business employs marketing strategies to guide people to easily remember their products and services over a competitor’s.  

Essentially, it’s applied psychology. Branding is also a method to leverage success, expand market share, and fend off competition. The problem is, companies are turning to branding as a panacea and the cold, hard fact is branding will not create a spike in cash flow or market share. Therefore, it makes sense to understand that the purpose of branding is not to make your target market choose you over the competition, but rather to urge your prospects to see you as the only solution to their problem. 

Establish and evolve your brand. Branding is necessary to give your company a distinct and memorable identity. A company possessing brand recognition is better poised to succeed.

A good brand is one that can convey a company’s message throughout a wide array of audience, ideally one that is timeless and one that sticks.

 A strong brand is invaluable, as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. Brands of the future will be those able to surround their products and services with ardent advocates and loyalists: passion brands. 

All other brands will be left to compete in the price wars. It is important that the TV, radio, print online and offline images of your business be harmonious and that time is invested in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all, your brand is your promise to your consumer. Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions regarding your company, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

How do you connect with the consumer when they’re calling all the shots? View your consumers as both customer and collaborator and employ game-changing thinking. In order to change the game, you need to audit how you think, comparing rational versus intuitive decision-making strategies and identifying common mistakes made by even the most experienced professionals. The process is based on the premise that the answers to your company’s brand strategy reside in the heads of the CEO and the key management group. 

YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND STRATEGY MUST BE OWNED BY EVERY EMPLOYEE FROM THE TOP DOWN.

Eleven key attributes necessary to become a passion brand include:
1.   You must recognize that your brand is a key asset in delivering strategic targets at a level that is higher than the industry standard.

2.  Do not consider the brand as merely a communications issue—your brand must be recognized as the key platform to link the company strategy with customers and employees.



3.   Make sure your brand management processes are integrated seamlessly into the company’s processes—i.e., “branding” is not a separate activity.

4.   Your senior management is accountable for the brand’s continued health—brand responsibility resides at C-level.

5.  All of your employees need to share a belief in the brand as well as a common understanding of the brand.  With this mindset in place, the power of the brand will act as an incentive to employees.

6.  Ensure your employees’ activities are aligned with the brand values and contribute to the building and strengthening of the brand.

7.  Your employees should be measured and rewarded by the success of these brand-guided activities.

8.   Your marketing department must be able to talk in terms of expected return on their investments and marketers must be able to leverage customer insights to make the most effective marketing decisions.  Future strategy should be built based on knowledge of the customer, product and practices.

9.   All marketing activities should be closely aligned with the core brand values.


10.   It is necessary to invest in sufficient IT capability to capture data on customers, segment customers in order to efficiently respond to their needs, and implement marketing techniques to deliver increased ROI.

11.   You must identify your company’s brand equity (the financial value of your brand) by understanding the brand’s value drivers and the levers required to influence these drivers.  This action leads to success.

Always remember that your BRAND IS EVERYTHING that you and your company stands for.  People may not know the name of your company, but it is important that they remember the brand you carry --- especially when they decide to make a purchase.  

GET INTO THE GAME

BUILD YOUR BRAND.

MAKE IT STRONG.

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For discussion of Brand Building and Strategic Marketing Solutions, call me at (632) 514-5868.  We’re building brands not just for “awareness”, but to deliver “day-after” sales results. 

For Strategic Marketing Consultancy, contact Dickie Aguado at

Tel. No. 514-5868, via Mobile Nos. 0917-990025 or 0922-8990026.

You may also send an email at grassrootscommunication@gmail.com

For more details of how Dickie handles strategic marketing planning, click to open http://grassrootmarketing.multiply.com/profile/resume/resume.M.  

Strategic Marketing Solutions To Achieve Measurable Results

In business, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Nor can you measure what you can’t describe. This is a problem because for many enterprises, more than 75-percent of their market value is generated by intangible assets which traditional financial and accounting metrics simply don’t capture at all.

To address this problem, thousands of companies worldwide have adopted the “Balanced Scorecard” approach which supplements financial measures (which summarize the results of actions taken previously) with nonfinancial measures (of customers, internal processes and learning and growth) to capture the lead indicators of future financial performance. In this way, direct links are formed between the strategy a company chooses and its results. The directness of this link enhances the company’s ability to manage and ultimately execute its desired strategy.

In developing a Balanced Scorecard for each organization, a strategy map is also developed which links intangible and tangible assets with objectives in cause-and-effect relationships. Originally, strategy maps were considered a by-product but managers found these maps were very useful in articulating the strategy of the organization and how that strategy links to the objectives. 

Put differently, strategy maps help managers describe and manage strategy at an operational level because they show:

1. How value gets created from the organization’s internal and learning and growth perspectives.
2. The dynamics of the corporation’s strategy and the processes which are designed to create value.
3. How the company’s intangible assets – human, information and organizational capital – are measured and aligned.

Thus, strategy maps may have started out with a minor role but they have now moved to center stage in describing how an organization creates value using both its tangible and intangible assets. They provide a framework by which important management decisions can be made. And as such, every manager needs to understand his or her own organization’s strategy map. 

To try and manage without a strategy map in place is like working in the dark. At the very least, any organization which understands its own strategy map has a sustainable competitive advantage over those organizations which adopt a much more hit-and-miss approach.

The strategy map has turned out to be as important an innovation as the original Balanced Scorecard itself. Executives find the visual representation of strategy both natural and powerful. As one executive speaker exclaimed at the start of her talk, ‘I love strategy maps’. 

When we post organization’s strategy maps on the walls of rooms where we hold conferences, delegates use their coffee breaks to study each diagram – even for organizations completely different from their own. Strategy maps provide increased granularity for executives to describe and manage strategy at an operational level of detail.

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Growth doesn't just happen -- You Plan For It.  Taking your business to the next level isn't just about hard work: it's about vision and planning. It’s about mapping a plan that everyone in your business will follow: from staff & employees, down to your sales force and distributors.

Dickie Aguado and his colleagues at Magna Kultura helped improve many big and medium-sized company’s performance work, providing high-impact, results-driven strategic brand marketing efforts; well-planned and go-to-market trade promotions efforts, and customer-loyalty development in district trading areas. Using community-based marketing and trade promotions management, Magna Kultura  explores the market and create action plans that deliver DAY-AFTER SALES RESULT.

In working together, the Magna Kultura group doesn’t just give advice verbally and submit documents, charts, or graphs for you to study and analyze by yourself.  They work together with you and your staff to BRING CONCEPT TO ACTION.   That is how the partnership support work.  We see to it that that the plan works, and more importantly, delivers sales-results.

The Magna Kultura group can help develop a sustainable competitive advantage for companies: it includes Marketing Planning & Strategy Development, Brand Architecture planning and Promotions, Sales Strategy & Promo Implementation, Retail Trade Relations and Community-Based Consumer Promotion. 

Call us to see to discuss how we can explore bringing your business to the next level.

 

For Strategic Marketing Consultancy, contact Dickie Aguado at

Tel. No. 514-5868, via Mobile Nos. 0917-990025 or 0922-8990026.

You may also send an email at grassrootscommunication@gmail.com

For more details of how Dickie handles strategic marketing planning, click to open http://grassrootmarketing.multiply.com/profile/resume/resume.M.  

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Magna Kultura conducts Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns and 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs for Private companies 

as an entrepreneurial approach to raise funds for the foundation, 

at the same time, sustaining relationship with the communities 

serviced  by the organization.  The synergy between private corporations 

and community-based organizations, helps the informal economy 

and fosters social enterprises in communities we serve.

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Strategic Alignment: Creating Differentiation in Fact versus in Theory

One of the greatest failures of strategic planning is the lack of execution on the other side of planning.  Great ideas and newfound desire for strong leadership

emerge from strategy retreats, only to be left to notebooks and memories a few months later.

The key principle to remember in executing change is that anything that is not consistent with the strategy will deter the success of your strategy.  Everything.

This includes your organizational structure, your measures, the processes you reengineer, measures and incentives, the types of people hired, job goals, how you lead.  Everything.

Many companies have great planning systems, but they are focused on financial outcomes alone.  Others have great ideas about how to be different than the competition, but their ideas never get translated into actions.  Year-by-year they are doing the same old things.  Both companies fail their people and their customers.  

Companies need to get different and get better.  Companies competing as commodities need new strategies.  Existing market leaders need enhanced points of differentiation.  Both must develop even better execution skills to create the organization’s desired future.  Even the lowest cost provider in a commodity market must be attuned to changes as companies with different business models can disrupt a market and threaten the lowest provider’s position

Let's get it straight:

• Strategy without execution is a plan that sits on a shelf, at least until next year. Communication of the competitive strategy and alignment of departmental and team actions to the strategy is required to create the desired differentiation.

• Annual plans are the current year execution of strategies; they are the itineraries for attaining the organization’s strategic goals and vision.

• The marketing-sales plan, operational plan, leadership plan, and financial plan must be aligned with one another.  

• Process improvement that is not linked to creating a meaningful point of distinction from the competition is a feel-good exercise that will help the bottom line in the short term, but is unlikely to create a meaningful shift in your market position.

• The Balanced Score Card is a useful tool for measuring whether strategy is being executed and whether the strategy is having its anticipated effect on key performance measures.  Linking individual and process objectives to balanced score card measures is a critical part of alignment.  

• The leadership team plan is also a critical part of alignment.  It will insure that the organization creates future leaders and that today’s leaders are doing the work only they can do: setting direction and creating change to align the organization to create its desired future.  

• Systematic review of market changes will help the organization evolve its competitive strategy so as to maintain differentiation.  A marketing department plays a critical role in this process. 

• There are two types of marketing – strategic and tactical.  Tactical marketing decisions, e.g., pricing and advertising are – for the most part – the domain of the marketing professional, working in collaboration with the Sales Department.  Strategic marketing decisions, e.g., competitive and growth strategy decisions, must rest with the entire leadership team.  

The Marketing Department creates the strategic analysis used by the leadership team to both identify strategic issues and opportunities and define new strategies.

• Ignoring needed marketing activities is like driving without being able to see beyond two feet.  Organizations without strong marketing skills are generally unfocused and reactive.

• Sales and Marketing serve different roles in a company.  There is great danger in combining the two roles in the same person as sales requirements always win out over marketing.  Sales is the most expensive resource in the company. You must therefore minimize how much time is spent on non-selling activities.  Don’t ask sales people to do Marketing’s work.

Implementation of new competitive strategies or enhancing execution of an existing competitive strategy creates superior value for customers and therefore market victories. 

Implementation is enhanced by balanced score card measures and annual marketing, sales, operational, financial, partnering, and leadership team

plans that translate strategy into desired near-term outcomes.  This focuses all the efforts and initiatives of the organization on a shared direction.

In a very real sense, implementation is the art of introducing and managing change.  Management tools, such as budgeting, measurements and rewards, individual job objectives, timetables and evaluation of results are all valuable in this work.  

Aligned planning is a key tool for building collaboration and tackling the "system" causes of distrust and weakened relationships across parts of the organization.  With all these advantages, what are you waiting for?

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For Strategic Marketing Consultancy, contact Dickie Aguado at

Tel. No. 514-5868, via Mobile Nos. 0917-990025 or 0922-8990026.

You may also send an email at grassrootscommunication@gmail.com

For more details of how Dickie handles strategic marketing planning, click to open http://grassrootmarketing.multiply.com/profile/resume/resume.M.  

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Magna Kultura conducts Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns and 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs for Private companies 

as an entrepreneurial approach to raise funds for the foundation, 

at the same time, sustaining relationship with the communities 

serviced  by the organization.  The synergy between private corporations 

and community-based organizations, helps the informal economy 

and fosters social enterprises in communities we serve.

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