Creating a profitable enterprise starts with a comprehensive business plan, but after this first step comes putting your plans into action. While your corporate proposal is based on ideas, market research, financial projections, and many assumptions, it’s time to step back and start testing these estimations.
For the long-term success of your business, you’ll start by focusing on aspects of your company’s legal requirements, branding, finances, and accounting. You’ll also start approaching elements of entrepreneurship like marketing techniques, networking, and team building.
If you need to know what to do after creating a business plan, continue reading to learn the necessary steps for an entrepreneur hoping to turn their vision into a profitable, thriving enterprise.
Key Takeaways
- Embark on the legal aspects and brand promotion for your new venture or offering launch after writing your business plan
- You should ensure that your business plan stays relevant as you proceed to start or expand your venture
- Update your business plan according to the realistic market landscape or adapt your vision according to your company’s performance
How to Transition From the Business Plan Crafting Phase
A lot goes into crafting your business plan, and once done, you might think you’re in the clear, and all you’ll do next is open the doors of your establishment. But there are several crucial steps to take, which give your new enterprise a strategic foundation and a better chance at growth and success.
It’s vital to review your business plan once it’s complete and work out the finer details before submitting it to potential investors, partners, or employees. You can have an experienced mentor look at your corporate proposal so that you have a fresh set of eyes and views on your anticipated project.
Once you start operating and doing business, you’ll solve daily problems and make critical decisions. It takes work to make time for performance reviews or gauge your new enterprise’s direction, which means you risk severe problems.
As such, developing strategic practices at this foundational level is essential to generate effective business management habits before getting swamped. The most successful businesses start with something other than a bang but with tentative sales that allow you to understand your market and customer needs.
What Must You Do After Creating a Business Plan as an Entrepreneur?
After creating your business plan, it’s time to file the necessary legal documents to make your enterprise official and to comply with local, state, or federal regulations. File all your paperwork and permits with the business registration bodies in your region, including the Internal Revenue Service or IRS.
Your business structure is outlined in your business plan under the company description, which makes filing legal documents straightforward. Consult a corporate law professional if you need help with proper filings, including intellectual property patenting, copy writing, and trademarking.
Next, start budgeting for your business’s finances with what’s at hand and where to source external funding, especially if your enterprise is in the startup phase. Your completed business plan offers you a better chance at securing funds through investors or crowdfunding options.
Your brand’s promotion comes immediately after you’ve registered your company and once it’s legally and financially established. Raise awareness for your enterprise with marketing efforts before or after you’ve performed an official launch for your startup, new market entry, product, or service offering.
All processes for marketing and sales campaigns are highlighted in your business plan, and while you’re not expected to perfect your strategy at this point, you’ll send out word and discover what works best. After that, it’s time to focus on the duties you can do and those for which you’ll require the help of qualified experts.
How Does My Business Plan Stay Relevant as I Launch My Enterprise’s Operations?
During the initial period of your business operation or expansion, deviating from all the planning, strategies, and projected milestones in your business plan is easy. Your best plans may go differently than they are, as there’s a time for evolving, modifications, priority changes, and adaptations to market conditions.
While you’ll need to constantly change your objectives or goalposts as market trends evolve, keeping the rigid scenarios you outlined in your business plan relevant is essential. That’s because while some assumptions and projections are subject to risk management, others define the identity of your enterprise.
As such, you can set your business plan up as the strategic foundation for your business management practices by;
Scheduling a Monthly Business Plan Review
Every month before the duties of running your enterprise become hectic, schedule a one-hour business plan review with your management team or an advisor such as a trusted accountant. The timing for this meeting depends on your financial accounting calendar, as you’ll want to review the finalized numbers for the previous month.
Besides looking at your business’s financial performance for the ended month, you’ll also consider how these metrics stack up against your projected forecasts for the coming period. You’ll generate these comparisons from your costs and revenues depending on your actual results and then explore the reasons why.
Choosing KPIs to Measure Your Business Health for a Start
Key Performance Indicators or KPIs offer specific statistics that allow you to gauge whether your enterprise is achieving the objectives set out in your business plan. Depending on your industry or market segment, you’ll decide the important metrics with which to watch your indices and review them in your monthly meetings.
Setting Up a Key Metrics Dashboard
It would help if you had a way you can easily compare your business plans forecast against your accounting data so that you can review each month’s performance. Even if you need to be more financially savvy, you can use automated spreadsheets or a program that displays your metrics graphically.
Considering Having a Strategic Advisor
Form a working relationship with a strategic advisor, such as an accountant, who can help you interpret numbers to formulate challenge-mitigating solutions. Such professionals can assist in identifying and resolving potential problems that may crop up before they become major financial hurdles.
Often Updating Your Forecast
Despite making estimates and forecasts in your business plan when crafting it, they consisted or resulted from the best information at your fingertips. As time passes, you’ll learn more about your organization, market, and customers to warrant realistic forecasts and projection changes.
As you search for the most viable business model, you’ll make fundamental adjustments to your startup or existing small enterprise, leading to updating your business plan. Your mission, company structure, or product and service offering may change after launch as you discover what works and what doesn’t.
Conclusion
Your entrepreneurial journey starts with creating a business plan, after which comes hard work, persistence, and dedication to your plans. It’s time to take action so that your vision can become a reality, and you’ll focus on branding, evaluating, expanding, adjusting, and building networks and collaborations.