New Business

My readers familiar with my profile know that I am a retired Public Health Administrator with over 40 years experience in directing and managing complex health agencies. One of the most important aspects of my job was planning the health services we provided for the population we served. The planning function was the one area I excelled in. I enjoyed planning. It enabled me to see both the forest and the trees as I developed our service products.

In the same way, we who are now developing our home based business opportunities must engage in the planning process. In Public Health we developed both long range and short range plans. The strategic or long range plan covered three to five years and laid out the steps for accomplishing our vision, mission, and values of our agency. The annual implementation plan selected priorities from the strategic plan and outlined the immediate short term goals and objectives for the next year. In developing your home based business opportunity you must develop both long range and short range plans.

First before even beginning the planning process, you must consider the five reasons you are developing a home based business. These may be addressed by considering the who, what, why, when and where questions. The answers to these questions essentially constitute your needs assessment outlining the reasons for establishing a home based business.

(1) Who are you trying to impact by establishing your home based business - yourself, immediate family, friends, etc.?
(2) Why are you establishing a home based business - to pay for education of a child, to get out of debt, to establish a retirement income?
(3) What are you going to offer through your home based business - a service, a product, information items, etc.? What system are you going to use to do this? Are you going to develop your own website or are you going to opt in to an existing opportunity?
(4) Where and how are you going to market your business (note: extremely important!)
(5) Where are you going to concentrate your efforts - in your community, State, the U.S. or world wide.

Once you answer these questions and essentially define why you need to develop a home based business, you need to start work on your Plans.

I caution you that you are undertaking a long range process. You will not make a ton of money overnight. The legitimate professionals in this business will tell you that. It takes work and it takes time. Fortunately enough people have been through the process that you won't have to reinvent the wheel. In fact, several of these experts now market courses, seminars, continuing education programs on line, to assist you in mastering the learning curve. Take advantage of these experts now. Several of the courses are free. Others you only have to pay a minimum of money to obtain. Start mastering your learning curve now. You will still make mistakes and spend unnecessary money - we all do that because we are human and have to learn from our own experiences. However the theory and practice is out there if you will take advantage of it.

Now you are ready to develop your plan.

(1) Long Range Strategic Plan - Set up your mission, vision, and values statements for your business for the next three to five years . This is the time to dream. You will be revising your long range plan every year to reach out the next three to five years - so be liberal in your goals. Then develop your long range strategic plan - goals, objectives and methodology to meet your dreams.

(2) Annual Business Plan - For the next year, develop your annual implementation plan. You might want to do this in increments of three months (quarterly), revising as you go based on accomplishment of your short range goals and objectives. Read free articles sent to you by the sponsors and mentors of the home based business opportunities you are pursuing. The budget and marketing sections are the most important parts of your annual business plan. Again, there are several excellent references by the leaders in the field on the web. You are encouraged to read all you can in these areas. The primary objective of your marketing plan component is to drive eager buyers to your business - not just curious lookers who may or may not be true prospects.

One of the most important aspects of planning is to be able to evaluate your results. In order to do this, you must set up quantitative indicators for both your long term strategic plan and your annual implementation plan. Set up your objectives for both your marketing and budgeting in quantitative terms and constantly evaluate them for results obtained, revising them periodically. Also, set up a traffic count system by which you can evaluate the number of hits, visitors, pages and referrers being made to your websites. Evaluation is a key component of planning and you will have to become proficient in it to produce the results you want.

I invite any comments and will be glad to provide any assistance readers might desire if you leave your name and e-mail addresses. Thank you for reading this submittal.

Now for the resource tidbits offered by this article:

Tidbit A - If you are still looking for a home based business offering multiple streams of residual income, please feel free to review my website at
http://www.rcarshomebus.com

Tidbit B - Remember the ultimate aim in your marketing plan is to drive interested prospects (and buyers) to your home based business opportunity. Remember what I said about learning from the experts? One such opportunity is offered by Janet Wilson of Empowerism, one of the home based business opportunities I offer through my website http://www.rcarshomebus.com Sign up for it today!

That is all for now. Good luck with your planning! See you next time.

Robert Carson

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - The Importance of Planning in Developing Your Home Based Business