The Business Strategy Process

By Christine Richardson

Want to understand the process to develop a qualified business strategy in the least amount of time? Everything starts with research. Is there a niche for your goods and services? What is the competition? After research comes creating an approach, determining expenses and earnings, creating a strategy, and completing a finished copy.

1. Complete the Research

Use databases, articles, and direct interviews with businesspeople and potential clients to study the market in its entirety, your niche market, your rivals, and operational fees. Make thorough, organized, careful notes. Make sure you cite sources, since you will be referring to them throughout the business plan.

2. Develop a Strategy

Use industry standard practices as a starting point. This will make your approach solid, since others have tested it in the industry. Nevertheless, you must produce other strategies that are different from the rest of the field. This will set your business apart from you rivals and make "barriers to entry" to help your company thrive. This will inform all parts of your business plan.

3. Do the Calculations

Add together all the expenses of each action your company will do and incorporate operational expenses for the first year, five-year, and long-term forecasts. Then develop income forecasts for the same periods. Base your forecasts on the research you did, in light of the approach you created. Your forecasts should definitely be sensible from square one, or the odor of inexperience will make its way to investors, who will quickly drop your business strategy into the trash.

4. Create a Draft

If you have completed the previous elements of the business strategy process completely, creating a draft will flow effortlessly out of your current information. The objective is to transform it all into writing, structured into the ten common parts of a business strategy Executive Overview, Business Analysis, Market Analysis, Consumer Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Marketing Strategy, Operations Plan, Administration Team, Operating Plan, and Appendix.

5. Edit and Refine as a Final Draft

First, review your plan for logic and completeness. Rid of any redundancies because the business plan has to be as straightforward as possible without sacrificing the whole concept. Then review for grammar, punctuation, and last formatting. If you have to hire someone to check over your business plan, do so. Business planning stress can make you overlook obvious errors.

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If you'd like to know how to finish your business plan quickly and easily, then consider using a business plan template, so you finish your plan in hours, not days, weeks or months.