Every business needs a concrete plan. It lets you gain a better understanding of your business in the market. Depending on your business plan, you will include most of the elements featured here.

But the main thing about a business plan is that it is never absolute. The plan should allow your business to be elastic so that it can adapt to the changes in the market as deemed necessary.

This is where the importance of lean planning comes in. According to Tim Berry, lean business is about “planning as you go.”

Instead of preparing an exhaustive and static plan about your business, lean planning simplifies the initial process by determining your identity, target market, action plan, and analysis. You can modify your plan as you go, but the elements will form the basic plan in the meantime.

This process will give you the same results as with a comprehensive business plan. But with lean planning, the process will take you less time and effort.

To help you write a more efficient business plan for your business, below are points that you should consider.

Simplify, simplify, simplify

The heart of a lean business is the ability to do more with less. Use your plan to emphasize this point.

Instead of long-winding paragraphs, use bullet points and simple words to elaborate your talking points.

Measure results

The ability to track your business’ performance as elaborated in your plan is key to a lean business. Refer to your expenditures and sales made to determine rate of investment, which is a good metric to build from with your plan.

If you have a website, use analytics tools like Google Analytics or Clicky to provide you with valuable data (traffic, bounce rate, average length of time on site, pages with the most visits, etc.) that you can use to make light of your progress.

You can also create goals and funnel on Google Analytics to have a better visualization of your progress based on your goals.

Use marketing automation tools

To make the process of measuring your results much faster, defer to this list of marketing automation tools if you’re not using one yet. If you’re not sure you need one, read this guide.

These tools help you manage and monitor sophisticated marketing campaigns for the purpose of achieving your goals in your business plan. They track your performance from different channels – email, social media, customer support, and others.

All the necessary data from these data is presented in a single dashboard from the tool, making it more efficient for you to track your performance on multiple sources.

Organize an exit strategy

This portion of the plan does not have to included on the plan, but it bears mentioning at this point. There are instances that you can’t control, which can lead to a failed business. Worse comes to worst, you must at least consider your options on how to gracefully bow out with your company.

One of the possible things you need to consider is filing for bankruptcy. As bad as it sounds, this should not get your entrepreneurial spirit down through Chapter 11.
According Los Angeles Bankruptcy Lawyer Simon Resnik, “[T]he business can reorganize its income and expenses while regaining its profits. This process can continue while the business is in operation, which for many business owners assists in helping the business regain profits.”

Originally posted on February 5, 2015 @ 10:49 am