Every business needs a business plan. It can be a rather intimidating task to sit down with a pen and paper and start creating one for your business. It’s absolutely essential for you to do though, and as a Virtual Assistant you will in all likelihood discover that you don’t need to do all that much, as it’s improbable that you’ll require a lot of funding for your start up costs. I would suggest that every start up business, Virtual Assistant or otherwise, should go through the steps of preparing a fairly detailed business plan. The very act of putting your ideas onto paper helps you to focus and clarify your ideas. There are a great variety of templates available to help you, and I suggest that your first step should be to check out the selection on the Microsoft website.
When you start, you should begin with a very simple document that deals with the following items:
1. Your Elevator Pitch – A thirty second description of your company and the services you provide which you can use when networking to introduce yourself in 30 seconds or less.
2. Market Analysis/Market Research – Is the research that you have pursued to locate your market, the target market for your products and services, your competitors and your services. You should provide a detailed description of the various groups of targeted customers which are in your market analysis, and express why you are choosing these specifically as targets. You may also want to describe the Virtual Assistant market by summarising the market growth over recent years and some trend analysis of where the market is likely to be headed.
3. Marketing and Sales – You should have developed plans to market your products and services, and to close sales. Your marketing strategy needs to include how you intend to concentrate on your target market, what sort of media you intend to utilise to establish awareness of your business and how you intend to position your business online; this will require developing your unique selling position. Your sales strategy on the other hand will deal with how you’re going to close the deal and get the client on board; this will include pricing, delivery, terms and conditions.
4. Operations – You need to describe how your business is going to be set up, including premises and equipment, you may also want to include how you see this changing as your online business grows.
5. Management and People – This area should encompass a rundown of how the company is set up, what support staff you use currently, or may want to utilise in the near future.
6. Finance – This is the part that generally scares people to death, but there is really no need to panic. You should do this to ensure that your business has the potential to succeed, and so that you have a few specific financial goals and targets to push for. You can easily download spreadsheet templates from the Web if you use Microsoft Office. I personally suggest that you acquire them from their website as they have a huge variety of completely free templates. This will comprise of :
* A personalised spending plan so you are aware of what expenditure you will need to cover from your income.
* A worksheet showing how you’re going to fund any start up costs you might have.
* A Sales Budget – You will probably want to use value based pricing for this. You can reasonably estimate your sales by working out your billable hours per month at the rate you expect to charge.
* A Costs Budget – You will need to identify your fixed costs and your variable costs. There is no requirement to calculate the cost of sales because as a Virtual Assistant you are merely offering a service.
* An Operating Budget/Profit and Loss – This is a strategy for your business which details the sales and expenditure accounts in one form.
* Break Even Analysis – This will demonstrate the amount of hours you need to bill in order to cover your costs, and then anything in excess of that is profit. To complete this type of analysis you need to know your variable costs/unit, sales price/unit and fixed costs.
* Cashflow Forecast – This will be the most critical document to you. It’s the heart of your business. Bad financial management is the primary reason for business failure. This will assist you with monitoring the cash flowing in and out of your business, and it will assist you with identifying when you’ll have cash available, or when you may not have enough cash and should make alternate arrangements with your bank before the coming problem wrecks havoc.
That’s everything you essentially require to make a start. This should even be all you really need to set up a business bank account. You can add things like an executive summary at the start of the document, which is a section designed to give a brief overview of your business together with highlights from sections 2 -6 above. If you wish, you could add appendices to include your CV and so on.
Don’t forget, your business plan should be dynamic and you should use it as a yardstick of how effectively you’ve met your targets. It needs to be reviewed at least every four weeks from when you start your business, but this can be extended as your business grows, although it’s always best to monitor the financial section at regular, short term intervals.
Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a cutting edge Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists organisations and enterprising individuals with every detail of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Do you want to peruse some further information on these incredible online business building success strategies? Enter the Campaign for FREE Virtual Assistance as soon as possible!
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