Failing to plan has been described as the same as planning to fail. Some common issues/worries about formal business planning and why bother doing them?

“We don’t need to plan. We know what to do”……. And will you always carry on doing that?
“You can’t measure this stuff”…. Yes you can and others are already doing it.
“Too busy doing the job to work out ways of doing it better”… Somebody else will find a way.
“I don’t have faith in planning, what does it do for me?”…
A proper business plan should incorporate a full assessment of the market, competitors, internal & external strengths, weaknesses, threats & opportunities (SWOT analysis). The following pyramid illustrates the critical components of a business plan.

See our papers on ‘Business Planning’, ‘Increasing your sales’ and ‘Developing strategies to increase profit’.