یک برنامه تجاری بهتر

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Better Business Plan

Where are you going? What’s holding you back?

It’s not clear to me why business plans are the way they are, but they’re often misused to obfuscate, bore, and show an ability to comply with expectations. If I want the truth about a business and where it’s going, I’d rather see a more useful document. I’d divide the modern business plan into five sections: Truth

Assertions

Alternatives

People

Money

The truth section describes the world as it is. Footnote if you want to, but tell me about the market you are entering, the needs that exist, the competitors in your space, technology standards, and how others have succeeded and failed in the past. The more specific, the better. The more ground knowledge, the better. The more visceral the stories, the better. The point of this section is to be sure that you’re clear about how you see the world, and that you and I agree on your assumptions. This section isn’t partisan—it takes no positions; it just states how things are.

Truth can take as long as you need to tell it. It can include spreadsheets, market share analysis, and anything else I need to know about how the world works.

The assertions section is your chance to describe how you’re going to change things. We will do X, and then Y will happen. We will build Z with this much money in this much time. We will present Q to the market, and the market will respond by taking this action.

You’re creating tension by telling stories. You’re serving a specific market. You’re expecting something to happen because of your arrival. What?

This is the heart of the modern business plan. The only reason to launch a project is to make change, to make things better, and we want to know what you’re going to do and what impact it’s going to have.

Of course, this section will be inaccurate. You will make assertions that won’t pan out. You’ll miss budgets and deadlines and sales. So, the alternatives section tells me what you’ll do if that happens. How much flexibility does your product or team have? If your assertions don’t pan out, is it over?

The people section rightly highlights the key element: Who is on your team, and who is going to join your team. “Who” doesn’t mean their resumes; it means their attitudes and abilities and track record in shipping.

You can go further here. Who are the people you’re serving? Who are the champions? What do they believe about status? What worldview do they have?

The last section is all about money. How much you need, how you will spend it, what cash flow looks like, profit and loss, balance sheets, margins, and exit strategies.

Your local VC might not like this format, but I’m betting it will help your team think through the hard issues more clearly.

Perhaps you’ve seen the shift

When you opened this book, you probably said, “I have a product and I need more people to buy it. I have a marketing problem.” By now, I hope that you see the industrialist/selfish nature of this statement. The purpose of our culture isn’t to enable capitalism, even capitalism that pays your bills. The purpose of capitalism is to build our culture.

Once you adopt a posture of service, of engaging with the culture to make change, the shift happens.

Now, instead of asking, “How can I get more people to listen to me, how can I get the word out, how can I find more followers, how can I convert more leads to sales, how can I find more clients, how can I pay my staff . . . ?” you can ask, “What change do I seek to make?” Once you know what you stand for, the rest gets a lot easier.

A glib reverse engineering of your mission statement isn’t helpful Too often, we get hung up on our purpose, our why, our reason for being. And too often, that purpose is simply a backward way of saying, “I’d like to sell more of what I’ve already decided to sell.” In my experience, most marketers actually have the same “purpose.” To be successful. To engage with people in a way that benefits both sides. To be respected, seen, and appreciated. To make enough of a profit to do it again.

That’s your why. That’s why you go to work.

Okay, got it.

But a better business plan takes that universal need and makes it specific—describing who and what it’s for. It outlines the tension you seek to create, the status roles you’re engaging with, and the story you’re bringing that will make change happen.

That’s not your purpose. It’s not your mission. It’s simply what you do.

If it doesn’t work, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re without a purpose, or that your “why” is doomed. All it means is that you’ve ruled out one more route in your quest to matter.

Now you can find a new one.