07 Jul Written Assignment Your Business Plan
A Business Plan is a powerful tool for consulting psychologists aspiring to start their own firm. It allows you to identify and target areas of strength and opportunity in your business value proposition while addressing and mitigating potential problems that your business may face.
Once developed, you can share your Business Plan with potential advisers, partners, and sources of funding. In fact, the Small Business Administration suggests that you keep your business plan current throughout the life of your consulting business.
For this assignment, you will develop a 1,000-word Business Plan detailing aspects of your business that youve identified in class.
Your Business Plan should include the following sections:
- Executive Summary. Provide a concise overview of your business plan. Your goal is to interest the reader in wanting to read more about your company. While this section appears first, you will want to write it last, after youve completed the remaining sections of your plan. Include the following details of your consulting firm in your executive summary:
- Business name and location
- Core product and/or service offerings
- Company vision and mission statements
- Niche market
- Core purpose of your plan (to set strategic priorities, secure investors/funding, etc.).
- Company Description. Provide additional detail on your consulting firm, explaining your primary goals, who you are, and how you operate. The company description should feature:
- Short- and long-term business goals
- The SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of your consulting company in addressing your business goals
- The business model (or hybrid model) you will use for your consulting firm
- Legal structure of your business (corporation, sole proprietorship, etc.)
- Financial management structure of your business (accounting method, plans for bookeeping and managing the books – use of income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, capital expenditure budgets, and plans for fee structure)
- Outline of your company’s organizational structure, including: owners, management team and board of directors
- Profiles of your management team, including names, positions, primary responsibilities and bio sketch(es)
- List of any advisors (board members, accountants, attorneys, etc.)
- Service/Product Offerings.Clearly describe what you are selling, focusing on the benefits to your clients. This section should include:
- The nature of your business and the needs you plan to satisfythe features, benefits and advantages of your consulting services
- An explanation of your consulting firms advantages over its competition
- Research and development activities that may lead to new services or products
- Marketing Plan.Demonstrate your plans to market to your target niche. Address how you plan to conduct market analysis research to better understand your markets needs. Your marketing plan should include:
- An industry description and outlook, including statistics (as appropriate). For example, is your target market growing, shrinking, level?
- How you will market your consulting services (using Katchers 18 approaches)
- A sketch of targeted customer segments, including both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets
- An evaluation of your competitors, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses
- The associations you will use to market your consulting services and how you plan to do so
- Networking groups you will use
- LinkedIn Groups that you will join to promote your consulting services
- How you will use social media to promote your consulting services
- Initial pricing and promotion estimates
