1: Know your company’s pre-sales and marketing goals for the year
How many leads (or sales) can you reasonably expect to achieve? Look at your company’s budget and work backwards from there.
Understand the lead generation, marketing and sales processes. This enables you to plan the training and management of the team. There’s no point in allocating a large budget to lead generation if the people doing the marketing are not up to scratch!
2: Make sure that you are selling the benefits, not the service.
People don’t want to buy a service; they want to buy the results that that service produces in their life.
Don’t just talk about the product, talk about their life, how it will be when they have this product. How it will make them feel, what else they will have in their life that they don’t have right now.
This is the difference between selling to a person and selling to a prospect.
3: Know your businesses cost structure and profitability.
Cost structure is the fixed and variable costs that make up your profit. Profit is the difference between total revenue and total cost. Finding the right balance between both is a key component of business plan development.
Know your industry’s profit margin. To do this, spend time on industry websites and read trade magazines. If a number isn’t available, make an educated guess.
4: Try to plan for problems you may incur in your business.
Develop a business plan that includes contingency plans for a variety of unexpected situations and then use them to help you make good decisions that will help you manage your business.
For example, if you have a partnership, have a contingency plan to dissolve your partnership. Incorporate your business, which allows you to buy out your partner and dissolve the partnership if it ceases to function well.
5: Learn the management skills you’ll need to run your business such as employee management, sales, marketing and purchasing.
You may be able to learn from an already successful asphalt company owner. If not, then get to studying via YouTube, books or other mentors.
Takeaway: You can always plan ahead of time. The best way is to follow these steps in a realistic way so you can make sure that everything goes smoothly.
