Customer Service Business Plan

Answer the following questions:

1. What is your mission statement? A mission statement should be a summary of the following points as well.
2. What product do you produce? What are the components of the integrated products-services, distribution, support, relationship, etc?
3. Who are your customers? What are the major sub groupings of customers, or market segments?
4. Where are your customers? Geographically? On terms of level in their organization? How many steps are there between them and you? How do they get your products?
5. What do your customers buy? How close is it to what they need? How do you know?
6. What is your relationship with your customers? How do you know they are getting what they need? How do they learn how to use your products?
7. What do they do with what they buy?
8. Who are your known competitors? Who else provides products or services that could be substituted for you in the customers’ eye? Who will your competitors be tomorrow?
9. What is that your customers most value about your organization (not just your products)? About your competitors?

10.  What trends are there in your customers’ businesses or lifestyles that are likely to change what they will need from you?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Manager

The manager describes what a person does rather than what a person knows. A manager makes sure an organization operates smoothly and efficiently. Upper-level managers, known as executives, address longer-range concerns. They foresee problems years ahead by considering questions such as the following:

1. Is current technology at the company becoming obsolete?
2. How expensive are the newest technologies?
3. How much would they disrupt operations if they were adopted?
4. What other plans would have to be postponed or dropped altogether?
5. When would the new technologies start to pay for themselves?
6. What has been the experience of other companies that have adopted these new technologies?

Executives are concerned with these and dozens of other broad questions that go beyond day-to-day managerial concerns.

Managers want to know the bottom line. They have to get a job done on schedule they don’t have time to consider theory in the way an expert does. Rather, managers must judge constraints—financial, personnel, time, and informational—and make logical and reasonable decisions quickly. And they have to communicate with their own supervisors.

In writing to a manager, try to determine his or her technical background and then choose an appropriate vocabulary and sentence length. Focus on practical information. If you think that your reader will take your information and use it in a document addressed to executives, make your reader’s job easier. Include an executive summary and use frequent headings to highlight your major points. Ask your reader if there is an organizational pattern or format, or a strategy for writing the document that will help him or her use your document as source material.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Master Plan

Many people assume that a formal business plan is only for big time businesses. Wrong. A business plan is for anyone who wants to give their enterprise their best possible shot. It is where you detail out all the operational, marketing, and money matters of your business. It is, in essence, a road map. With it, you will better be able to reach your goal. Without it, you run the risk of spending precious time and money traveling in circles or unwittingly wandering into danger zones.

In response to the question, what a business plan is, follow the following”

• A business plan is written by the home-based business owner with outside help as needed.
• It is accurate and concise as a result of careful study.
• It explains how the business will function in the marketplace.
• It clearly depicts its operational characteristics.
• It details how it will be financed.
• It outlines how it will be managed.
• It is the management and financial “blueprint” for startup and profitable operation.
• It serves as a prospectus for potential investors and lenders.

A study for “why” of creating it, note:

• The process of putting the business plan together, including the thought that you put in before writing it, forces you to take the objective, critical, unemotional look at your entire business proposal.
• The finished written plan is an operational tool, which, when properly used, will help you manage your business and work toward its success.
• The complete business plan is a means for communicating your ideas to others and provides the basis for financing your business.

While you are to be the author of the document, you shouldn’t hesitate to get professional help when it comes to areas outside your ken, such as accounting, insurance, capital requirements, operational forecasting, and tax and legal requirements. Finally, in response to the question, “When should Business Plan be used?” note:

• To make crucial startup decisions
• To reassure lenders and backers
• To measure operational progress
• To test planning assumptions
• As a basis for adjusting forecasts
• To anticipate ongoing capital and cash requirements
• As the benchmark for good operational management

If you have been doing your research and homework all along, you probably have most of the raw material for the business plan, so it won’t be such an awesome task.

Business plans differ greatly, depending on the nature and scope of the enterprise. Some elements a person in a retail sales business would need in his or her business plan may be totally irrelevant for your service business. Similarly, business plans vary in length—from five or six pages or a virtual booklet; some are written in an engaging narrative style while others take another approach—just the facts. However, while business plans may differ in style, tone, length, and components, there is some common ground. Below is a list of items that should be in almost every business plan:

• A summary of the nature of your business and its principal activity with a detailed description of the product(s) or service(s) you will offer.
• A statement as to the form your business will take (sole proprietorship, partnership, incorporation) and how it will be managed and operated (with information on employees or subcontractors if applicable).
• A discussion of any extra-ordinary (and potentially problematic) matters revolving around such things as space requirements, production processes, and operating procedures.
• A discussion of major trends in your trade or profession.
• A discussion of your competition and the basis on which you will compete.
• A description of your target market that might include a profile of a typical customer or client.
• A discussion of your plans for pricing, sales terms, and distribution.
• A discussion of how you intend to advertise and promote your products or services.
• A detailed statement of startup and operating costs for at least the first year.
• A discussion of how your business will be financed.
• Profit and loss and cash flow statements for at least the first year of business.

If this list has made a business plan seem all the more scary and arduous a task, don’t panic. There are books on the market that will guide you through the process.

A clean attractive business plan is a sine qua non if you will be applying for a loan or looking for investors. But even if the document is for your eyes only, you owe it to yourself to produce a professional-looking document. Since it is your road map, the neater it is the better it will serve you when you refer to it at various stages of your entrepreneurial journey.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Executive Summary

The executive summary, sometimes called the epitome, executive overview, management summary, or management overview,  is a brief consideration of the document addressed to managers, who rely on it to cope with the  tremendous amount of paperwork they must read everyday. Generally, managers need only a broad understanding of the projects the organization undertakes and how they fit together into a coherent whole.

An executive summary for a document under 20 pages is typically one page (double spaced). For a longer document the maximum length is often calculated as a percentage of the document, such as 5 percent.

The executive summary presents information to managers in two parts:

1. Background: this section explains the background of the project: the specific problem or opportunity—what was not working effectively or efficiently, or what potential modification of a procedure or product had to be analyzed.
2. Major findings and implications: the methods are covered in only one or two sentences. The conclusions and recommendations, however, receive a full paragraph.

An executive summary differs from an informative abstract. An abstract focuses on the technical subject (such as whether the new radio based system effectively monitors the energy usage); an executive summary concentrates on whether the system can improve operations at a particular company.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Writing Business Summaries

Businesspeople are bombardedwith masses of information, and at one time or another, everyone in business relies on someone else’s summary of a situation, publication, or document. To write a summary, gather the information (whether by reading, talking with others, or observing circumstances), organize that information, and then present it in your own words. Although many pople assume that summarizing is a simple skill, it’s actually more complex than it appears. A well written summary has at least three characteristics..

First, as in writing any business document, be sure the content is accurate. If you’re summarizing a report or a group of reports, make sure you present the information without error. Check your references, and then check for typos.

Second, make your summary comprehensive and balanced. The purpose of writing your summary is usually to help colleagues or supervisors make a decision, so include all the information necessary for your readers to understand the situation, problem, or proposal. If the issue you’re summarizing has more than one side, present all sides fairly and equitably. Make sure you include all the information necessary. Even though summaries are intended to be as brief as possible, your readers need a minimum amount of information to grasp the issue being presented.

Third, make your sentence structure clear, and include good transitions. The only way your summary will save anyone’s time is if your sentences are uncluttered, use well-chosen words, and proceed logically. Then, to help your readers move from one point to the next, your transitions must be just as clear and logical. Basically, when writing your summary be sure to cut through the clutter. Identify those ideas that belong together, and organize them in a way that’s easy to understand.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

Using Judgmental Forecasts

Judgmental forecasts are based on subjective views – often the options of experts in the field. Suppose a company is about to market an entirely a new product, or the board is looking at plans for 25 years in the future. They won’t have any relevant historical data for a quantative forecast. Sometimes there is a complete absence of data, and at other times the data is unreliable or irrelevant to the future.

 Quantative forecasts are always more reliable, but when you don’t have the necessary data, you have to use a judgmental method. There are five widely used methods:

• Personal insight. This uses a single person who is familiar with the situation to produce a forecast based on his or her own judgment. This is the most widely used forecasting method – but is unreliable and often gives very bad results.
• Panel consensus. This collects together a group of experts to make a forecast. If there is no secrecy and the panel talk freely and openly, you can find a genuine consensus. On the other hand, there may be difficulties in combining the views of different people.
• Market surveys. Sometimes even groups of experts don’t have enough knowledge to give a reasonable forecast about, for example, the launch of a new product. Then market surveys collect data from a sample of potential customers, analyze their views and make inferences about the population at large.
• Historical analogy. If you are introducing a new product, you might have a similar product that you launched recently, and assume that demand for the new product will follow the same pattern. If a publisher is selling a new book, it can forecast the likely demand from the actual demand for a similar book it published earlier.
• Delphi method. For this you contact a number of experts by post and give each a questionnaire to complete. Then you analyze the replies from the questionnaires and send summaries back to the experts. You ask them if they would like to reconsider their original replay in the light of summarized replies from others. This is repeated several times – usually between three and six – until the range of options is narrow enough to help with decisions.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Writing a Resume Letter

The Resume Letter is not a true cover letter—that is, a letter of transmittal for your employment resume. Instead, it is intended to replace the resume and to convey sufficient information about your background to create employer interest in interviewing you.

In general, it is usually a poor substitute for the resume itself, and thus can frequently do the job seeker a great injustice if not properly designed. Specifically, if it is poorly planned and written, it does not provide sufficient information (when compared to the resume) for the employer to make a reasonable assessment of the applicant’s qualifications and for deciding whether to grant an interview. Additionally, it may frustrate the prospective employer by not providing sufficient detail, suggesting that the applicant is simply too lazy to prepare a proper summary of qualifications. Neither of these reactions will serve your cause very well.

It appears that the most frequent use of the resume letter is by top level corporate executives who wish simply to convey their availability and conduct a very cursory search of the job market. Generally, such letters are directed at the highest level of the target organization and are intended to convey availability and general interest in discussing appropriate opportunities. The typical logic supporting such letters is that the applicant’s current position and employer “speak for themselves,” and thus there is little need for a detailed resume.

Although this can be true, it is not typically the case. Obviously, if the individual is a top corporate or division-level officer of a Fortune 200 company, use of a resume letter may be sufficient. Sufficient is to say, however, that if the applicant is the Chief Financial Officer of a little known company, the resume letter will not have quite the same effect, and its use may seem somewhat presumptuous (if used in a place of a formal resume). In such a case, a full resume and a conventional cover letter is recommended.

The use of the resume letter by lesser known top executives, middle managers, and professionals is not recommended. Since employer’s name and position title convey little information to the reader in such cases, much more needs to be written to convey the same understanding about the author’s background and responsibilities. The damage here, of course, is that the letter will become unwieldy and will therefore not be read by its recipient.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight