When you are starting a new business up or planning on expanding your existing business, then you probably already know that the most important thing you can possess is a strong business plan. Bizplanit is an online company that specializes in business plans. Essentially, they are a group of business plan writers that can either write your business plan for you or coach you if you are a do-it-yourselfer.

Bizplanit has been in the business plan writing and consulting game since 1997 and according to the company they boast many happy clients. You can go to their website and see for yourself what others have said about their services on their ‘testimonials’ page. These testimonials are of actual clients who used the services of Bizplanit, but you should also go online and check out some other reviews not connected directly o the company’s website.

The company approaches business plan writing as a team concept. The ‘team’ is their professional writers and you. They don’t simply take what you have done an give it a thorough edit, but rather get in depth with you and your business and ask you the types of questions needed in order to figure out what you are looking for and how they can best shape your business plan.

No matter what type of business plan you are after, Bizplanit has a plan that you can likely utilize. They offer everything from writing an actual business plan to writing your M&A selling memorandums. The company also offers help in the following areas:

• Business Plan Coaching
• Business Plan Review
• Bank Loan Business Plans
• Financial Projections
• Investor Presentations
• Tactical Business Plans

All this may seem overwhelming and rightly so. However, what might be the best feature with the company is that they offer a consultation to you so that they can discuss with you what exactly you may need.

Bizplanit’s turnaround time for your business plan is among the fastest in the industry. According to the company’s website, they can have your complete and comprehensive business plan finished and in your hands within one to two weeks.

The company is available to answer questions that you may have and they have several ways in which you can get in touch with them. You can call them by phone, though it is not toll-free, call them using Skype, or e-mail them. While they do offer a multitude of ways to get in touch with them, they do not have any times listed as to when it is best to reach them.

Your business will not stand a chance if your business plan is lacking. The first thing that any financing institution will look at before they decide to lend you any money will be your business plan. Whether you plan on doing it yourself, or hiring someone to do it for you, you should seek out the help of professionals. If you are in need of business plan writing or consulting then Bizplanit may be worth checking into.

Read the following BizPlanIt customer reviews to help you decide if their business plan writing service is right for you and your business. Learn more about BizPlanIt business plan services and receive a free consultation.

An essential component of understanding what your clients and potential clients really want is communication. Be sure to create a variety of ways in which clients and potential clients can communicate with you.
-    Have a blog with a section for comments after each post.
-    Write articles and include your contact information in the resource box. Invite comments and suggestions from readers.
-    Do email marketing with contests and other interactive features to get customers involved.
-    Conduct live events like webinars that allow instant feedback.
-    Create social media accounts in Facebook and Twitter, as well as others. Be sure to respond to the comments and questions left by others. This is especially important if the input is negative. How you handle negative feedback speaks volumes about the integrity of your company.
-    If you have salespeople, be sure that they understand the importance of frankly relaying concerns and suggestions from clients.
-    If you have a storefront, have a suggestion box available. Train those who work with customers to share feedback.

Research will also help greatly in the quest to understand what clients want. Do online searches on subjects that touch your industry. What are people talking about? What are they frustrated by? What are they looking for that they can’t find? What similar products and services don’t quite meet their needs? This is all priceless information to help you build your product and service line.

Break it up into manageable sized portions. Writing a 500 word “article” on why you are choosing one methodology over another is a more manageable task than completing an entire section of your document. Tackle these portions as stand-alone projects, bearing in mind that they comprise a bigger document.

When possible, use information that is already prepared by you or for you. You don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” for your business plan. Take advantage of things such as:
-    your resume
-    any website content you have already created
-    information you have blogged
-    relevant statistics from reliable sources
-    marketing and annual report information from competitors (In fact your analysis of the competition should include accurate information from each of them.)

Tackle your business plan writing at the beginning of the day when you are freshest, your energy level is highest and you have minimal interruptions. By steadily working at your business plan in an organized, professional manner, you will have it finished in no time and in the process, you will have armed yourself with a plethora of vital information that will help with the start-up and growth of your business.

One of the best ways is article marketing, which will drive customers to your website. If you write the articles yourself, article marketing can be free. If you hire commercial writers to create your articles, you will have a one-time very affordable, marketing investment that will pay off long term. Once your articles are online they continue to market for you indefinitely. Similarly blogging is inexpensive or free and will keep working for you as people discover your website.

Creating and distributing press releases, both online and in the traditional media can snag you some great free publicity. Online distribution of such press releases ensures long term usage, unlike traditional media.

Social media marketing is also an excellent way to get the word out. Create accounts for your business in a variety of different social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube and Biznik. They are free and will enhance your online presence and help potential new customers find you, especially as you make connections with existing customers.

With these and other low-cost or free online marketing strategies as the basis of your marketing plan, you will begin to steadily drive traffic to your website without investing a ton of money. Before you know it your business will taking off.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What are you exceptionally good at?
• What do you need help with?
• What aspect of business do you know practically nothing about?
• What tends to be the thing/activity that causes you the most stress?
• What slows you down?
• What motivates you?
• What do you already know about the industry and the business you are about to start?
• Are you good at time management?
• Are you good at managing people?
• Do you like to work with others?

By answering these and other probing questions about yourself, you will be able to best plan how you can overcome your obstacles and make your new business successful. Once you have identified your strengths, focus on your weaknesses. Do you need to teach yourself techniques for time management, people management or new skills needed for the business? If you are lacking in business know-how, take the initiative to research and learn about those areas. With knowledge on your side, you will be making fewer preventable mistakes.

Seek out ways to compensate for the things that are a challenge for you. If accounting tasks will take away too much precious work time from your business, subcontract it. If you struggle with dealing with people, hire a customer service specialist or an office employee with good people skills. Identify where you need help and get the right help and you will be on your way to starting an exciting and profitable new business.

Business.com is an online, paid business directory. For a yearly fee, they will include your business in their comprehensive online directory. This service is a highly affordable form of advertising. Rates start at just $299 per year, and can be lower during special promotional times or with a promotional code. Any company can make room for this effective marketing opportunity in their advertising budget.

Often recently established companies will clamor for your advertising money. Business.com is an established company. They have been in business for over 10 years, since 1999. They only offer business advertising which means that their services are specially tailored to the unique concerns of the business market. Their website functions similarly to a search engine although all the results are businesses. Their listings are specifically intended for a business audience which means that these customers are looking for services rather than just browsing. They offer many unique services to business owners.

Advertising with Business.com is simple. You select from a variety of advertising options with a range of prices and opportunity. The simplest and most cost effective choice is a simple listing in the Business.com directory. You will select the category for your business and it will be listed under that category for $299 each year. For an additional charge, you may select to list your company under other categories as well. This option is especially effective for companies with a wide range of specialties.

You directory listing will offer potential customers more than just a name and number. Customers will have access to your company name, website, and a description of your company and its services. There are often promotional codes available to provide an extra bargain to customers as they sign up.

Additionally, you may choose to use their pay per click or PPC advertising options. Your ad will be displayed not only on the business.com site but also around their network of sites. The cost of these ads is determined by the number of unique visitors to your site that are generated. There a variety of PPC plans which opens this option to a variety of different budgets.

Premium ads are placed separately from other ads. They are listed exclusively as featured listings. There are no startup costs associated with this option. Each click will cost your company 40 cents. Sponsored listings will be found on the side bar of various sites. These cost 20 cents per click with a startup fee of $25. You may also select a standard listing. These listings are $99 for the year with no additional charges when the ad is clicked. These ads are only included as a part of the already generated search listings. Banner Advertising on their site is also available. Contact Business.com directly for pricing information.

This easy and affordable advertising option just may be the perfect advertising option for your company. Before you make a final decision, here are a few final points for you to consider.

Business.com has an excellent and very thorough staff. Your listing will have to comply with specific guidelines for content on their site. These guidelines may make your initial listing more complicated, but will pay off in results. Business.com is a great tool for businesses to advertise their services.

There are however a few negative aspects you need to be aware of before selecting to list your company with Business.com. Their entire site is a paid site. This means that your listing is no different than the other listings on the site. Additionally, since some ads are PPC, you may end up paying for site visitors that are not interested in making a purchase. Carefully monitor your listings and advertising charges. Whenever using a pay per click advertising option it is important to carefully watch for click fraud as this can prove very expensive for your company.

Now that you understand Business.com a little better you will be more prepared to determine if this advertising option is right for you.

Save off the cost of Business.com advertising by using a Business.com promo code when you sign up.

Therefore, before you even open for business, create a website. It does not have to be fancy or expensive. You just need to be there for now. Fix whatever you don’t like later. If you’re already in business and don’t have a website, make it priority number 1 to be online in the next 3 days. It is that important! Research different strategies for getting your website listed high in the search engines. This will likely entail creating search engine optimized web content; submitting your site to the different search engines; and getting started on an information marketing campaign with things like blogging and article marketing. Another quick and easy tool to use is social media marketing. Create a presence in the social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Focus on local internet marketing if you are a business that primarily serves a specific geographic area.

Prioritize your online presence to ensure the stability of your business and to keep a constant flow of new customers finding you.

In this article I will discuss the pros and cons of do-it-yourself business planning versus having a business planning consultant do it for you or with you.

The Do It Yourself Business Plan

Particularly if you are seeking capital of less than $200,000, consider creating the plan yourself after taking a class or reading some books or getting some coaching for someone who has written successful business plans.

Consider taking a three-hour business planning class through SCORE or the local Small Business Development Center. Even if you decide afterwards not to write your own plan, you will have a much better idea of what you want out of the process and what to expect.

There are some good reasons for an entrepreneur to do the business plan:

• First of all, because you can. If you’ve read sample business plans and find their accounting jargon intimidating, you are not alone. But as long as you can clearly get your message across and have other people such as you accountant look at the plan before it goes to lenders or others, you can do this work yourself.
• It is in learning the business planning process that you develop analytical thinking skills necessary to run your business with an intimate understanding of your own business model. Going through the planning process is an invaluable business experience.
• You need to know the plan inside and out and really understand the variables involved. You are the one who will be asked the tough questions by potential investors or lenders, such as “What will you do if only half your expected revenue comes in?” or “What will you do if you find out that direct mail is not working for you as your primary marketing tool?”

Outsourcing the Business Plan Process

Entrepreneurs are fire fighters. One of the most important jobs of an entrepreneur is to manage time, and do those things that you are best skilled to do. Many entrepreneurs decide to hire someone else to do their business plans, often because they have an urgent need for the funding and can’t afford the learning curve to be able to develop a high-quality plan that will meet the needs of lenders or investors.

In addition, if your funding requirements are more than $500,000 my recommendation is to get some professional help with this project, even if you do some of it yourself.

Some reasons to consider hiring a consultant:

• It will get done! Business planning is done much faster with someone who knows the process. Every entrepreneur has good intentions about getting plans completed, but months later they still haven’t done all the work. Planning should be high priority work, but it is hard to get to when customer calls and employee problems require immediate attention. The sooner the plan is completed, the sooner funding can be attained. And the price of hiring the consultant will be small in comparison with the increases in growth and profitability of the business.
• It will get done in a way financial professionals will respect. Business planning is done better by someone who knows how finance people look at plans and what they will and won’t question. Once you’ve been through the business plan process many times, you know what it takes to get funding – what to emphasize and what to play down.
• The consultant’s objectivity will allow for non-emotionally-based projections and expectations for the business. A consultant will be much more objective in the process and question your assumptions, making it less likely that the business will have problems after the funding comes in.

No matter what, don’t let a business planning consultant talk you into putting any information into your plan that you aren’t comfortable with. If it doesn’t look right to you, it probably isn’t. It is your business, and you will be stuck with the plan long after you’ve paid the consultant’s bill. Make sure it is the plan that you want, one that matches your goals and objectives, and captures the way you look at business and the spirit of your company.

If you do decide to hire a business planning consultant, here are some of the important questions to ask to make sure you get the greatest value from your investment:

1. How many business plans have you written for my type of business? How many of them were funded?
2. How much time will you need of mine during the planning process?
3. When will the plan be completed, and how many drafts should I expect to see and have the opportunity to comment on?
4. Will you be writing the plan yourself or do you have associates who do the work with you?
5. Will there be an opportunity for you to present the plan or for me to present the plan to my other advisors before the final draft is done?
6. How do you work in collaboration with my partners and advisors so their input is taken into consideration during the writing of the plan?
7. Do you do the market research and the financial spreadsheets, or are those things done separately (and charged for separately)?
8. Does your price include revisions or customization for certain types of funding (to include different information needed by investors versus lenders)?
9. Does your price include coaching to prepare me to talk with lenders or make financing presentations?
10. Will I have an electronic version as well as a hard copy version of the final plan (so I can make changes later if I need to)?

The Optimum Solution: A Blended Approach

At best, the planning process should not be at either end of the spectrum, but squarely in the middle. In my experience, plans that win funding come from a true collaboration between a skilled consultant/facilitator and the entrepreneur’s team of employees and advisors.

A business planning consultant can act as a coach, first assessing the job to be done, and then recommending who is best to do it. The business plan should be a compilation of work between the vision and goals of the entrepreneur, the technical understanding and expertise of his or her accountant and other professionals, a consensus of employees or others, and the research and writing abilities of the business planning consultant. The consultant should meet with all parties involved, talk about what is needed for the plan, and use all the resources available to get the work done as quickly and cost effectively as possible. It is the consultant’s responsibility in the process to take all the pieces and make the final plan into a readable, accessible document that will stand up to investor/lender scrutiny.

My final caveats:

• Don’t pay more than a few thousand dollars for a plan unless you are looking for capital of well over $1 million. I have heard more than a few horror stories by people who have hired university professors assuming they are the experts (they aren’t) and paying tens of thousand of dollars for a poorly written or incomplete plan. Ask your banker for business planning consultant recommendations, or better yet, talk with someone who had a good experience having a business plan written for them. It is reasonable for a consultant to expect you to pay half of the fee up front and the other half at the completion of the plan. And you can’t hold the consultant responsible if you don’t get funding based on the plan – too much is based on your own credit and management skills.
• Don’t expect to get a finished plan that is a roadmap of everything you need to do to have a successful business. That isn’t the purpose of the business planning process. A traditional business plan is intended only to document your strategies for the business very briefly – but well enough to get funding. If you are hoping for something that will tell you how to market or how many people you need to hire, you will have to start with a deep strategic planning process, and probably buy lots of consulting time to get you going.
• Don’t expect a great a business plan from a poor business model. If your costs are too high to make your business profitable, the business planning process will help you discover that. Then it will be up to you to make the hard decisions about changing your costs structure to make the business work. The business planning consultant is a skilled professional, not a miracle worker. A good business plan can help you highlight your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, but it cannot make an unworkable business model into a thriving business.

And one final thought: Don’t go on to start a business or make changes in your current business if everything in the business planning process tells you it won’t work. Things don’t get better out in the real world if they don’t work on paper. Deal with the weaknesses – get more training, consider product redevelopment, or have a home-based business to reduce costs until you can sustain the rent for an office. Businesses fail finally because they’ve run out of money. If your plan tells you that you can’t make enough money to make the business work for the long run, pay attention to that reality.

About The Author

Jan B. King is the former President & CEO of Merritt Publishing, a top 50 woman-owned and run business in Los Angeles and the author of Business Plans to Game Plans: A Practical System for Turning Strategies into Action (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). She has helped hundreds of businesses with her book and her ebooks, The Do-It-Yourself Business Plan Workbook, and The Do-It-Yourself Game Plan Workbook. See www.janbking.com for more information.

jan@janbking.com

Author: Jan B. King
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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If you are starting your own business, follow these 5 rules and you will never have to declare bankruptcy.
-    Have a business plan.
-    No loans.
-    No luxuries.
-    No employees.
-    Keep your day job.

Plan how you will use the money you have set aside for your business. Decide at what threshold of sales you will make additional investments in equipment, marketing, etc.

Do not take out a loan to start your business. Save enough money to finance it yourself before you start. This also means you cannot use your credit card to finance your business, nor your personal line of credit nor the equity on your home. These are not wise financial moves. Start very small if you must, reinvesting everything you make to build the business up. Do not get a loan until your business has been up and running for at least a year and is making money.

Do not spend money on business luxuries. You do not need high end office equipment when you are starting out. You just need reliable equipment. Skimp on things you will use personally and splurge on things that make an impression like business cards.

Do not hire employees for your small business if you can avoid it. If you need help, use sub-contractors. They are available for everything from accounting tasks to secretarial to computer work and much more. It will save you a great amount of money and you will easily be able to make cutbacks when business is slow.

Keep your day job, if you have one, so you do not have to rely on the income from your business to keep a roof over your head. Small businesses in start-up mode are notoriously bad sources of reliable income.

Live by these rules as you start your business and you will avoid the pitfall that many business owners find themselves in.

A well written business plan can literally mean the difference between you getting the seed money you are after or shutting down before you ever get started.  However, you may not feel confident in writing your business plan by yourself and you may not be able to afford a business plan writing service, so what are you left to do; business plan software.

Business plan software is the most cost effective way to write a quality business plan the right way. The nice thing about business plan software is that it usually comes with all sorts of templates for you to choose from. By looking through the templates you can get ideas as to how you want your business plan to be laid out. Once you find a template that is to your liking you then simply need to fill in all the blanks.

Again this is where business pan software can come in handy. That’s because many types of business plan software will have cues and suggestions as to what should be written in those blanks. This way you know what information you need to put and where you need to put it.

Even after the writing part is over, business plan software continues to give you value. The financial section of a business plan is probably the most important piece of the business plan and is the part that many investors will thumb right to. Knowing that, your financials have to be perfect.

Just as business plan software has templates to accommodate the writing portion of the business plan; it also contains many fill in the blank type templates for financials as well. Now you simply need to know what your hard numbers are, or what you expect them to be and then find where those numbers go.

A good thing to look for when selecting business plan software is customer support. Many will offer it and some will not. Always opt for the ones that offer customer support by phone so that you can call and talk to a real person should you get stuck along the way. While e-mail support is a nice added value, when you have to rely on it by itself it can cost you time.

When you use business plan software, you will be left in the end with a professional and well written business plan that you can feel confident in giving to anyone you want. Most business plan software programs even allow you to print the finished product in any format you desire.

Writing a business plan can be a stressful and daunting task and should not be taken lightly. By using quality business plan software you can effectively write a great looking business plan and do so without losing your hair.