There’s no excuse for not having a business plan

If you don't know the meaning of start-up costs, profits and loss statements or aggregation, you may end up one of the 33% of new small businesses in our country which fail within their first year.

That worrying statistic arose in a University of Technology Sydney study which also found half of businesses are likely to fail at the end of their second year. There are further worries: three quarters of businesses are likely to fail by the fifth year. The same survey found common reasons for the failures included poor record keeping, sales and marketing failures, and a certain Achilles heel which could have been taken care of right at the start: The lack of a business development plan.

Planning for success: It should be self-explanatory

Still, a worrying proportion of Australian small business owners don't understand how essential a business plan is. Paul Brown put it this way – if you launch into your business "planning how to make the world's best VCR," the market may shift to DVDs while you're still getting started. Piranhas lurking in the sea of opportunities for SMEs include insufficient sales, poor staffing, bad public relations, poor management of sales records, failures of suppliers, bad costing and detrimental market forces. Some of these aren't even your fault – yet they can be hard to manage without a carefully structured document to turn to in times of frustration.Small business owners need to utilise friendly business support services like WMC business and tax advisors to stop these problems from ever occurring. WMC Accounting, your friendly Geelong accounting firm, can take care of the fine details while you dream up the big picture. 

Setting yourself up to fail isn't good for anyone, which is why firms like ours give away free business development templates. Your business development plan only needs to be a page long initially. It's hardly a huge ask. Free templates will introduce you to concepts such as strategic changes and action plans which your friendly helper at WMC will cover in depth. Bringing a plan to us could also be the start of a long-lasting relationship, as WMC offers everything from accountancy services to auditing to wealth management. A sound business development plan will help you start thinking about: 

• Current situation analysis
• Competition
• Strategies
• Action plan
• Timing
• Marketing

Once that's done and you've booked your business advice appointment with WMC, you can use our resources including essential links, calculators, calendars of dates pivotal to business efficiency, templates and tax facts.