How to build your first Business Plan?

1. Set your goals and objectives

The foundation of your plan is to define the high-level goals that you want to achieve in the next 12 months. It is recommended to limit your high-level goals to between 3 and 5 to ensure focus and one of these high-level goals must be "Revenue Goals"

Examples for high-level goals

• Customer Retention

• Long-term Value Creation "It costs more to get a new customer that it does to keep the one you already have"

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

• Introduce new products/services or enter new markets

• Expanding your networking presence in key organizations (Strategic Partnerships)

2. Focus your approach

Key benefits of a focused business development plan

• Allows you to qualify and score prospects to prioritize limited sales and marketing resources

• Well-defined target markets and buyer profiles let you create content that drives revenue to the bottom line

• Allows you to develop products and services specifically for your target markets

• Develop value messaging for each market segment

• Allows you to devote resources to the target segments that have the highest probability of creating long-term value

3. Define Marketing Channels

Define the channels in which you will generate leads for each market segment. Some of the common marketing channels

• Inbound leads - leads generated on your website with premium content and other offers.

• Paid Search Advertising - leads generated by search engine advertising like Google Adwords.

• Paid Social Advertising - leads generated by social media advertising like Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Sponsored Updates.

• Outbound leads - leads generated by outbound prospecting, primarily targeted email prospecting.

• Referrals - leads that are referred by satisfied customers.

• Networking - leads resulting from your networking efforts.

• Channel Sales - leads generated by channel partners.

• Cross-sells - these are opportunities to sell new products/services to customers

• Up-sells - these are opportunities to sell higher levels of products/services to customers

4. Choose KPIs and create dashboards to keep you on track

Key Benefits to for having KPIs

• Keep on top of KPI performance so that there aren't any surprises at the end of the quarter

• Provide timely marketplace feedback on the effectiveness of your business development plan

• Let you focus resources on high-performing tactics and either improving or abandoning low-performing ones

Choose the metrics that matter, those that contribute to generating revenue. Think about your professional services sales funnel for each of your marketing channels. If you set SMART goals for each step of the funnel, they can be tracked and shared in dashboards for constant monitoring and management

5. Define your sales process to align with your customer's needs

The key to a scalable revenue generation process is to consistently apply your sales approach in a way that corresponds with your target customer's buying process

For each lead source, identify the milestones that need to be reached in order to advance a sales opportunity to the closed won stage. These milestones can then be entered into your CRM system so that the salesperson can take the necessary actions to advance to the next milestone and management can have insight into the sales pipeline

6. Determine resource needs

You need to figure out the most efficient way to execute your business development plan. What are your people, technology, and resource needs? Here are some of the technologies you will likely use in your business development

• CRM software

• Inbound marketing/marketing automation software

• Sales prospecting software

• Webinar/web conference software

• Website Content management system

• Dashboard software

• Graphic design/photo editing/video editing software

7. Share your business development plan with stakeholders

Once you have developed a strategic business development plan designed to create long-term value for your business, it's very important to share your vision with key stakeholders.

Don't just share the plan with your management team, make sure everyone in the company knows the crucial elements of your business development plan. Messaging, target markets, and high-level goals are important to everyone. Service, sales, and management should all be on the same page about the company vision for creating long-term value.

Companies focused on growth will invest higher amounts in sales and marketing

Reference: The 7 Essential Elements Of A Winning Business Development Plan