12/21/10 - 3 Tips: Business Planning Tips, Marketing Tips for Finance, Sales Planning Tips

Hosts: Leo Wisniewski, Lauren Milligan and Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

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Guests:

Michael Cooper of Sales Kitchen

• Email - Mike@SalesKitchen.com
• Phone - 630-548-9723
• Web - http://www.saleskitchen.com/
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Leo Wisniewski

• Leo and Sybil Ege talk about "Beyond Your Business Plan"
• Sybil Ege is the owner of Reach Out Marketing - an outsource marketing company working with other businesses who are too small to have their own marketing organization or just don't feel like doing it themselves.
• The key point of last week's discussion - when you are creating a business plan, it's always critical to create some sort of business plan but the specifics depend on the kind of business that you are going to do. The level of detail really depend on the kind of nature of your particular business. If you are in business, you should have created a path/direction for the next 12 months that you could follow.
• After you have the business plan, what are you going to do now? You need to use your business plan because it is a forecast of where you're going, what kind of marketing are you going to do, what kind of revenue do you expect to bring in, and what kind of expenses do you have. I would be a good idea if periodically you could compare how you are doing according to plan comparing the actual results with the projected results.
• You always want to tack marketing as well as finances.
• From a finances point of view, you track your income, revenues, and expenses to see if they are close. Within 5-10% would be good but if you are off by 25% or 50% in any particular category, you need to look very carefully what you are doing wrong and need to make a correction.
• The same thing is applicable to marketing. You need to put in your plan the various marketing tools or techniques you wanted to implement and budget for it. You should have predicted the kind of results you would get from those activities and if you are not getting the customer, the question is , "Are you doing those activities?" or "Are they not effective?"
• One of the challenges for small business owners is the feel isolated. It is recommended that you talks to an outside counsel in terms of business. Somebody who has a lot of experience in your industry but not a competitor or who is an experienced entrepreneur.
• You can reach Sybil at http://www.reachoutmarketing.net/ and proceed to the "contact us" page or call (630) 365-2959.
• Leo's Bio Page
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Lauren Milligan

• Lauren is on vacation.
• Lauren's Bio Page

Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

• Summary of Jacqueline's Segment:
• Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz Bio Page
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