4 crucial components of a solid business plan

It’s important that your ‘team’ consists of a power accountant, top lawyer and high-quality staff.

Every aspiring entrepreneur has a business plan that incorporates goals, budgets and product marketing. Those are the elements you know. What about those you may not have thought of?

Here are four tips to ensure you’re off to a flying start – business plan in hand.

1. Get a good accountant

Understanding your cash flow and tax liabilities is a vital step towards maintaining a successful business. Most people struggle with this if they try to do it on their own.

If you do, you’ll run the risk of making mistakes, but you’ll also find that it takes up a lot of your time. However, not all accountants will provide the same level of help and experience.

A good accountant will give your company a big boost in the area of finances. As well as handling your business’s basic accounting, they will show you how to save money and create sound fiscal planning for the future.

A sensible way to look for an accountant is to ask other entrepreneurs you know to recommend a good one. A reliable accountant will save you cash in creative ways and if he does a great job, his services will pay for themselves over time.

2. Hire the best people you can

There are a few issues that could hinder you from hiring high-quality staff you need. For a start, you might not invest the time necessary to do the research and get the right people.

It does take time to conduct a thorough recruitment process. However, if you get it wrong because you’re cutting corners, you’ll have to go through the exact same exercise all over again.

You may also run the risk of setting a salary budget that is too small to pay for top-class staff. Or perhaps you fear hiring someone who’s more knowledgeable than you, and who might end up running your show.

The truth is, hiring the right people is one area where you should invest in quality. You may need to be patient to identify the right employees, then figure out a way to creatively reward them. It will be worthwhile when they end up making a big impact on your business growth.

Although it may eat into your personal time occasionally, networking plays an important role in ensuring the growth of your business. (Rawpixel pic)

A good idea is to give them a chance to earn from their performance and the growth of the company that they help to catalyse.

This means giving them incentives and commissions linked to achievable targets. This approach could also help you avoid paying a big salary with little return on your investment.

3. Choose a reliable lawyer

You could easily get tangled up in legal matters for any number of reasons. It makes sense to have a solid established relationship with a lawyer you trust and can call on whenever needed.

It might be tempting to go for the cheapest legal advice, but if your business gets any legal matters wrong, it could prove to be extremely costly.

Instead, you should always play it safe and get professional advice from someone you can trust in legal matters.

4. Keep on networking

It is easy to think that a solid business idea coupled with a lot of hard work will lead to the success you crave. In reality, there is still lots of networking that you need to do as well.

This can prove to be a particularly big problem for anyone who moves from a desk job or a technical role to running their own business.

The time is sure to come when you realise that your entrepreneurial plans are only going to come to fruition if you start approaching the networking aspect with enthusiasm.

Getting started on this new task can take a lot of effort if it is something completely new to you.

Devoting time to networking will probably mean working far longer hours and might even lead to a blurring of the lines between your professional and private lives.

However, this is one of the sacrifices business owners make. After a while, you might even find that you start to enjoy going to trade events, conferences and other networking opportunities.

Source : FMT Lifestyle