YOUR BUSINESS
Do you need a
business plan?
F
BY CHRIS PUCKRIDGE RURAL AND SMALL BUSINESS FINANCIAL COUNSELLOR, RURAL WEST
or many people running small to medium sized businesses the thought of writing a business plan can be horrifying! Why would I need it? We know what we are doing! Sounds like a waste of time! We are too busy to be mucking around with that! Our business is only small, we don’t really need it! I have a business plan, it’s in my head! These are common responses when the idea of a business plan is raised.
A business plan can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be.
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WA Grower SUMMER 2020
So why would you need a business plan? In many businesses things can change fairly quickly, the owners of the business might be long standing but there are others, who work for or work with the business, that often come and go.
An example of this could be the key staff in the business such as employees, or key suppliers who are critical to the business success. Other key players, such as agents that have the role of marketing produce, or perhaps bank managers and other financiers who provide long term and seasonal funding, may need this information.
And then there are supporting businesses like agronomic services, labour contractors and many others who can be critical to a business’s success. The business owners themselves also need to be clear, especially when it’s a family run business and there are two or three partners working as a team. How do you keep this wide range of critical people and organisations on board with what you are doing and what you want to do? How do you keep on the same wavelength and how do you change when you need to, and how do you stay firm in what you are doing when you need to be consistent and all “sing of the same sheet”? The answer to all of the above questions could be: a business plan!
3 THE plan can be broken up into different sections as there may be parts of it that you don’t want to share with third parties.
