An area that a lot of businesses don’t spend a lot of time measuring but is very easy, cost effective and critical to do is the key performance areas of the business. These key performance areas or metrics can show whether the business has all the parts working together and in a healthy manner or is in need of a tune up or radical surgery. There are a number of key areas to a Performance Plan so let’s break them down.

The first area to look at is the financial statements of the business. The first and most readily used is the Profit and Loss Statement as it shows the income and expenses of the business with hopefully the income greater than the expenses. Just as important, however, is the Balance Sheet as this document shows the wealth of the business. With an up to date profit and loss statement and balance sheet, a trained business appraiser can then calculate what the owner of the business could expect to get if they decided to sell it on the market.
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Email, websites, online bill paying, Amazon.com, FaceBook, Twitter, WI-FI, online banking; how did we survive prior to the internet? The virtual world is all around us and guess what; it’s only going to get more immersed in our everyday life as we look to watching TV and movies on our computer and connect our appliances to computer networks at home.

How does this affect our business? There is no question that data including audio and video are exploding online and helping sell more goods and services. Hand held devices such as iPhone’s and Blackberry’s are growing in popularity, devices that track the GPS to give us driving directions are here to stay. We therefore, if we own and operate a business, need to ensure we use technology how it was designed and this is as a tool to help us be more productive.
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So you’ve made your New Year’s resolutions which included building a business plan. This includes setting your personal and business goals. You also did a budget to make sure you can afford to do what you’ve planned. You are therefore all rested and dressed up and ready to go. Bring it on you say. My question is therefore, you know WHAT you want to do but HOW are you going to do it?

Chances are you have a list of projects and tasks you want and need to do. It probably doesn’t include answering phones, sending and receiving emails, reading articles and newsletters, attending conferences, staying on top of compliance items that affect your industry but numerous day to day activities that lead most entrepreneurs at the end of the day to say “Where did the day go?” And that’s the point of a Productivity Plan.
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Buying or selling a business is a complex matter. There is no question about it. The complexities start from the moment a buyer and seller start interacting but there is natural conflict in place. For a start, the buyer doesn’t have any history of the operation of the business and so has to rely entirely on the representations of the seller. Conversely, the seller has lived and breathed the business, knows its upsides and downs including its strengths and weaknesses. My Golden Rule when assisting with a business transaction is for each party to put their feet in the shoes of the other party. In other words, the seller should see things from the buyer’s perspective and the buyer should see things from the seller’s perspective.

A key way this would help a business transition from a seller to a buyer would be if the seller used a Management Plan. What you may ask is a Management Plan? From my perspective, a Management Plan is where all the critical areas of a business are summarized so if the owner of the business wins the lottery and never wants to work another day in their life in the business and not come to work tomorrow, the business will survive and grow.
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The life blood of what we do as human beings and the glue that keeps us all together as a society be at a local, regional, national or indeed international level is the ability to communicate with one another. Many times that communication breaks down and many times this leads to unintended consequences. All entrepreneurs are familiar with a Business Plan and a Sales and Marketing Plan but not everyone has heard of a Communication Plan.

So what is a Communication Plan?

A Communication Plan is an attempt to standard the message that goes out from the business to its customers. It complements and dovetails with a Business Plan and Sales and Marketing Plan. In some instances there can be an overlap. It includes all written, spoke and electronic communications.
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The sales and marketing plan is a document that most entrepreneurs don’t have time to get around to putting together. I’m not sure why that is as it’s just as important as the business plan and indeed complements it.
The business plan outlines the vision, strategic direction and business and financial goals of the business. The sales and marketing plan breaks down the business plan to show how you are going to get there and the tactics to be used to attract the customers it needs.

The sales and marketing plan can be as complex and as detailed as you wish to make it. It can include a list of tactics you could deploy, it can list and detail only specific tactics you plan to use or a combination of both. It’s important, though, that you understand how each idea is to be used but you have some idea of the expected results each tactic should bring to the business. There is an old adage in business management: If you cannot measure it you cannot manage it. There is also a famous quote that says “I’m convinced that 50% of my marketing is effective, I just can’t tell which 50%.”

There is also another saying that says “I can’t afford to advertise.” If you cannot afford to advertise then you probably cannot afford to be in business.
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Being an entrepreneur requires the need to constantly make decisions. Being a successful entrepreneur requires constantly getting most of those decisions right. No entrepreneur gets every decision right. Just ask Tiger Woods. Besides, if that was to happen it would be boring. However, being an entrepreneur does require bringing your A game to business as much as possible.

One of the best tools that enable entrepreneurs to be successful is creating and working a business plan. In simple terms there are two types of business plan. The first type of business plan is for a brand new business that is moving towards entering the economy. A new business or enterprise requires a different approach to an existing business as there is a lot of data gathering and initial research to build and make decisions. Additionally, there are a lot of one offs to attend to such as researching and deciding the best legal entity, setting up and creating a proper set of financial records, knowing what business licenses, permits and other regulatory requirements need to be met, creating job descriptions and hiring the right people for those positions, researching technology options, buying the right equipment, getting it setup correctly including any necessary training, and the list goes on.
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One of the hardest aspects of being an entrepreneur is staying on top of some things you may not like to do because you either don’t enjoy them or simply aren’t good at them…or both. Doing math back in school just wasn’t fun for me. I enjoyed almost every other subject except anything to do with numbers as there seemed too many rules and exceptions to remember.

Most entrepreneurs do not enjoy numbers. They are happy to relegate the task of debits and credits or journal entries or double entry book-keeping to someone who enjoys it. Define your core competencies and what you do well and then delegate to other people who have the right skill set and aptitude to do the things they do well. In simple business terms it’s called outsourcing.
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Buying or selling a business is a major step for all entrepreneurs. It comes with obvious financial risk which everyone understands and prevents many would-be-entrepreneurs from starting their journey. However, an element not many understand is that the business ownership comes with many emotional risks that play a more important role than the money itself.

Entrepreneurs are constantly challenged by many emotional risks. The obvious one is success or failure. For most entrepreneurs, once they come to terms with the financial risk involved with business ownership, their next challenge is coming to terms with the fact that owning a business comes with the possibility it will fail. That alone is a concern but the real concern is what they will say to family and friends.
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Everyone is familiar with the Christmas song, the 12 days of Christmas. Without going into every verse of the song, the carol works forwards with the first day of Christmas being a partridge in a pear tree, the second day of Christmas two turtle doves and so on. The song is full of optimism and hope that the giver and receivers of the gifts will be thankful for life, the opportunity to share and hope for the future.

From researching the origins of the song, I came across something interesting. One of the articles I read suggested that the 12 days of Christmas is not about the 12 days prior to Christmas but in fact, the 12 days from Christmas until the beginning of Epiphany which begins on January 06. When I thought further about this, it naturally combined with another favorite thing we do during the Holiday Season and that is to make New Year’s Resolutions.
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