Creating a business plan

All starts with a plan. The team is sitting around a table and starts talking about what the competitor X has done and was super, what the company Y has done. One hour has passed, two, three…four … the final decision came: We need to schedule a new meeting.
After an initial plan has been drawn and agreed by the team, the plan must be put in an electronic format. And the real work begings now: the colors are not ok, the format should be changed, vision is not good enough…etc, etc. Version 1, version 2, version 3…version 10…and so after 3 month of work, the plan is ready. Meanwhile, the market trends changed, the competition moved quicker than planned and the plan is out of date.
Lately, I start thinking what can I do in order to prevent this situation and I have collected some ideas:

• Continue create a plan: even if you do not discussed it with your colleagues or your manager.
• Continue watch what the competition is doing (if they launched a product one year ago, but they stopped the communication on that product and the support is not able to solve an issue, then the product failed. DO NOT included in your plan!
• Do not try to only copy your competition successful ideas.
• Listen to your customers and to your competitors customers. Analise better what does your competition do in order to keep their customer happy.
• Listen to market, read a lot about the new trends and analyze their impact in your products.

Tags: art of planning, business plan