Plan Your Success

It takes proper planning to make your business vision a reality.

- Nikki Viljoen

It’s no secret that in order to succeed in life, there has to be some sort of plan. This obviously applies to business success as well. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the ‘devil is in the detail’. The more information and detail in the plan, the more you can ‘measure’ whether you are on the right track, and the likely it is to succeed. If “Cash is King!” then “Clarity must be Queen!”

The problem of course is that many folk have no idea what needs to go into a plan. This statement is evidenced by the many failed businesses around us, often simply because individuals have failed to make plans or set goals of any kind.

Here are some guidelines and a ‘checklist’ to help you plan properly for business success:

VISION

Your vision, of course, is your dream or your intention. It is the ultimate goal. It could be something as dramatic as having your particular product in every home in the country by xxxx date, or as simple as providing training to 5 SMME’s (small, medium, micro-enterprises) on a monthly basis.

What it should also include is the “what” and the “why”; What kind of product and why it should be in every household, or what kind of training and why it will make a difference.

MISSION STATEMENT

For me, the mission statement is a simple plan on the ‘how to’ achieve your vision. How do you intend getting your product into every household. How do you intend getting the SMME’s to sign up for your training. At this stage I wouldn’t go too in-depth, but rather have the basics down. The details can be fleshed out as and when you get to the information that you need.