Basic Business Planning in Action

Basic Business Planning in Action

Jodi Rhodenwww.birdseye.info

Introduction to Today’s Workshop

• Welcome• Who is here? Your name, name of farm, location,

email address, specific areas of concern• Birds Eye Business Planning and Mountain BizWorks • Goals for today’s session– Gain aerial perspective of your farm and farm goals– Explore four key areas of business planning

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Create an aerial snapshot of the farm business or concept today

• Imagine that the sky is clear and the roofs are lifted off of any structures. What is happening down below? Take 3 minutes to describe this to the person next to you.

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Create an aerial snapshot of the farm business 5 years from today

• What does it look like from this aerial perspective five years from now? Where are you in the picture? Take three minutes to share this vision with your partner.

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The four key areas of business planning we will focus on together in regard to each of

your lines of business:

• R&D • Financials• Operations• Marketing

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Research and Development• In thinking about each line of business you are currently

offering or are planning to offer, are you engaging in R&D to improve this product or service?

If not, is this something that you need to do? How do you gauge in relation to your competitors?

• Spend the next few minutes thinking through R&D in relation to your existing lines of business. We will then spend a couple of minutes thinking about “R&D” in relation to your 5 year vision.

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Financials

• How do things look behind-the-scenes in relation to finances in your business? – Do you know your margins and guard them well?– Do you have a close understanding of your cash flow? – Are you paying your bills on time? – Are there any foreseeable big changes in your business

model that will affect the financial picture of your business?

– Do you have an initial grasp of your current expansion, overhead, and unit costs in today’s snapshot? What about for the 5 year snapshot?

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Operations

• Now we will take a look at the systems and structures that hold up creation and delivery of your products or services and the recordkeeping of your sales.– How do you fulfill orders or sales? Is this system working

efficiently?– Are you understaffed? Are the right people doing the right

jobs?– How do you keep track of your finances? QB? Pencil and

ledger?

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Marketing

• How are you currently “generating awareness” about your existing products or services? – How is the quality of your messaging? How do you

solicit feedback on your marketing? What is it telling you?

– What are the gaps you can identify in your marketing?– Do you feel like you are “behind”?

• For the five year vision, what kind of marketing efforts do you think you will need to ramp up or revision?

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Next Steps

• Take a breather and return to that aerial perspective (It’s always quiet up there).

• Look over the lists you have generated and the conference offerings today. How could you make some in-roads into accomplishing some of these action steps?

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Contact Information

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Patrick [email protected](828) 253-2834

For classes and general information: Megan [email protected]

For consulting:Annie [email protected](828) 712-7381