A business plan guide is a great place to start when you are getting ready to start a new business venture. Perhaps you have found a book about writing business plans, or are following a template, but chances are, these materials will only focus on the steps necessary to create your written report and will fail to point out the critical mistakes that most new business owners make. So let’s ignore the step-by-step tutorial for a moment and focus on the real world mistakes you need to avoid.

1. Don’t Put it Off.

Yes, writing a business plan can be a monumental chore. It’s easy to procrastinate while you focus on the more exciting processes of your business. Many new business owners will wait until the day before their scheduled meeting with the bank — and then frantically try to write a plan overnight. You can imagine the results.

Don’t wait until you have more time. There will never be more time. You need to clear your calendar for a week and make your planning a top priority. Or if that isn’t feasible, schedule a certain period of time each day to work specifically on planning. No doubt you have heard the old saying: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

2. Don’t Confuse Profit With Cash Flow.

Unless you have an accounting background, you are very likely to define the success of your business in terms of profits. A simple definition of Profit would be Sales minus Expenses equals Profit. But in the business world, profits do not equate to cash. Your profit formula does not take into account the amount of cash you have tied up in production costs for products that have not yet sold, or the customers who still owe you money for sales that have already been made. Your business can look quite “profitable” while your bank account is over-drawn.

In your written plan, make sure you include a table that addresses cash flow. Ideally, you should detail the monthly cash flow for the first two years of the business and annually thereafter.

3. Don’t Fall in Love With Your Idea.
Too many business plans blabber on for pages about the “newness” and “uniqueness” of the idea. But the truth is, investors want to invest in people, not ideas. It is only the people who can execute the systems necessary to bring the idea to life.

Instead of waxing poetically about your business idea, focus your energy, and your reader’s eyes, on the ways you plan to implement this great business idea.

4. Don’t Succumb to Fear and Dread.

If you have never written a business plan, the process may loom like Mount Everest. But, like most new challenges, writing your plan isn’t as hard as you have imagined it to be. You aren’t writing a doctoral thesis or the next great novel. If you have invested in a business plan guide, use it. You can easily find helpful resources such as books, software programs and templates. Remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time, so start chewing.

5. Don’t Over Sell.

Skip the vague and meaningless business phrases such as “best ever”, “highest quality” and “unsurpassed customer service”. You will lose your reader’s interest and respect if you engage in hyperbole that isn’t supported by measurable facts. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, which require tracking and follow up. Focus your goals on specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and measurable milestones. Think fewer words and more numbers.

6. Don’t Engage in One-Size-Fits-All

Business plans can have many different purposes and they should be written to reflect the specific purpose at hand. You may be using your plan to start a business, or just run a business better. Your purpose may be simply to sell an idea for a new business to one particular business partner. Your plan may be intended to secure a small business loan, or it may be needed to secure millions of dollars of venture capital. Each of these purposes would require different information, presented in different ways to meet the needs of different readers. Keep a picture of your intended reader firmly in your mind and your business plan will stay focused as well.

7. Take Off the Rose Colored Glasses

Optimism is a wonderful resource. Without it, a business owner would find it difficult to summon the energy necessary to launch a new venture. However, this is not the time to engage in unbridled projections. If your company’s growth chart is based on an “industry average” of fifteen-percent annual growth, you should certainly be prepared to prove that assumption. Provide supporting data and, when in doubt, be less optimistic.

By using a good business plan guide, and avoiding these common mistakes, you can prepare a plan that almost guarantees your business success. Best of luck!

Small Business Workbook on How to Start and Structure a Business …

Wilmington, DE (PRESS RELEASE – June 9, 2009) — Starting a small business with a focus and plan of action are the purpose of a business plan. SCORE Counselors. … Entrepreneurs can get the latest information on how to launch a Web site, attract visitors, and avoid e-commerce mistakes. SCORE CEO Ken Yancey says, “How to Really Start Your Own Business provides valuable information that can help start-up entrepreneurs achieve their business goal…

Business Plan Guide – 7 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Business …

A business plan guide can be helpful in teaching you the components you need to include in your business plan. But you also need to avoid the seven fatal pitfalls that can sabotage your business plan and your new business.

StartupNation Blog » Blog Archive » Small Business Profile …

What interested me most about my interview with Emily is her authenticity in reflecting that she didn’t start out with a plan to land where she did. She had always enjoyed art, color and type—but didn’t know what to do with it. … Lots of little mistakes and failures. What have you learned from failure? I try to verbalize to myself, to my staff (or to my husband) what went wrong, so I can avoid repeating it. If someone who was about to start a business…

Business Ideas And Entrepreneurship: How to Earn Extra Money ...

If you are new to blogging, then it is better to get a good blueprint on how to blog for profit and avoid the common mistakes that may lead to failure. 2. Make your opinions paid. There are companies looking for consumers’ opinions for … Don’t play with contra, especially in today’s highly unstable stock market, where the shares may rise and fall at any time; instead you should choose on what to invest based on your risk profile and the budget you plan…

A comprehensive Guide to Small Business Hosting « Business Hosting …

What is great about starting up an online business or other types of ventures, such as blog (if you plan to monetize it, of course, then, you see it as a business), is that you are given the license to choose between a free and … it is to start a business from scratch: from trial and errors and even to costly mistakes that we just have to make in order to get the right mix and the true formula. But when it comes to small business web hosting,

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, business plan guide, business plan preparation, sample of business plan, samples of business plans, write business plan

1. Don’t Put it Off.

Yes, writing a business plan can be a monumental chore. It’s easy to procrastinate while you focus on the more exciting processes of your business. Many new business owners will wait until the day before their scheduled meeting with the bank — and then frantically try to write a plan overnight. You can imagine the results.

Don’t wait until you have more time. There will never be more time. You need to clear your calendar for a week and make your planning a top priority. Or if that isn’t feasible, schedule a certain period of time each day to work specifically on planning. No doubt you have heard the old saying: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

2. Don’t Confuse Profit With Cash Flow.

Unless you have an accounting background, you are very likely to define the success of your business in terms of profits. A simple definition of Profit would be Sales minus Expenses equals Profit. But in the business world, profits do not equate to cash. Your profit formula does not take into account the amount of cash you have tied up in production costs for products that have not yet sold, or the customers who still owe you money for sales that have already been made. Your business can look quite “profitable” while your bank account is over-drawn.

In your written plan, make sure you include a table that addresses cash flow. Ideally, you should detail the monthly cash flow for the first two years of the business and annually thereafter.

3. Don’t Fall in Love With Your Idea.
Too many business plans blabber on for pages about the “newness” and “uniqueness” of the idea. But the truth is, investors want to invest in people, not ideas. It is only the people who can execute the systems necessary to bring the idea to life.

Instead of waxing poetically about your business idea, focus your energy, and your reader’s eyes, on the ways you plan to implement this great business idea.

4. Don’t Succumb to Fear and Dread.

If you have never written a business plan, the process may loom like Mount Everest. But, like most new challenges, writing your plan isn’t as hard as you have imagined it to be. You aren’t writing a doctoral thesis or the next great novel. If you have invested in a business plan guide, use it. You can easily find helpful resources such as books, software programs and templates. Remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time, so start chewing.

5. Don’t Over Sell.

Skip the vague and meaningless business phrases such as “best ever”, “highest quality” and “unsurpassed customer service”. You will lose your reader’s interest and respect if you engage in hyperbole that isn’t supported by measurable facts. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, which require tracking and follow up. Focus your goals on specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and measurable milestones. Think fewer words and more numbers.

6. Don’t Engage in One-Size-Fits-All

Business plans can have many different purposes and they should be written to reflect the specific purpose at hand. You may be using your plan to start a business, or just run a business better. Your purpose may be simply to sell an idea for a new business to one particular business partner. Your plan may be intended to secure a small business loan, or it may be needed to secure millions of dollars of venture capital. Each of these purposes would require different information, presented in different ways to meet the needs of different readers. Keep a picture of your intended reader firmly in your mind and your business plan will stay focused as well.

7. Take Off the Rose Colored Glasses

Optimism is a wonderful resource. Without it, a business owner would find it difficult to summon the energy necessary to launch a new venture. However, this is not the time to engage in unbridled projections. If your company’s growth chart is based on an “industry average” of fifteen-percent annual growth, you should certainly be prepared to prove that assumption. Provide supporting data and, when in doubt, be less optimistic.

By using a good business plan guide, and avoiding these common mistakes, you can prepare a plan that almost guarantees your business success. Best of luck!

Author: Barbara Dearing

Business Plan Guide

So let’s ignore the step-by-step tutorial for a moment and focus on the real world mistakes you need to avoid.

The Key to Business Success

Initially, writing a business plan may seem daunting and most entrepreneurs reluctantly embark on the task. Despite it being the most important document a new entrepreneur will ever write, most new entrepreneurs fail to understand that their business plan is an extension of the company.

Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes to Avoid

The plan needs to be right the first time and the content needs to be accurate, clear and also without spelling or grammatical mistakes.

7 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Home Business

Before you take on your business venture you have to be sure you have a nest egg to rely on, a back-up plan if things don’t work out, a feasible budget, and timeline for trying.

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, business plan guide, Writing a Business Plan

There are four critical areas causing business plans to change. All are changing trends in the business environment. The four areas we will examine are: 1) government trends, 2) economic trends. 3) technological trends and 4) cultural trends. Each one causes a specific impact on our decisions and requires us to make adjustments. Some changes are dramatic and require dramatic reactions to minimize their effect on our business.

First are government trends. There are several different sources caused by changes in regulations, tax policies and new legal precedence. Most of these are not a direct result of what we are doing in our business, but are the result of political and social shifts. On the legal side, changes result from court cases. It is absolutely necessary to address these changes because of both the financial and legal jeopardy. The result will be changes to not only our business plans but also our business conduct.

Second are economic trends. These changes occur because the local, national and international environment changes. Typical of these trends are changes in inflation rates, interest rates and the comparative value of currency (foreign exchange rates). Notice that all of these changes are directly and indirectly effects of government actions. These trends require us to adapt our business plan to the new conditions.

Next are technological trends. The amount of effect that these trends have on our business depends on how directly the changes impact our present operations. For instance, if we are making vacuum tubes when integrated circuits arrive, we will have to make some major changes. Note that the changes in our business plan may mean acquiring or learning new technologies, retraining our people, or seeking new customers and products. Inventors, with changes in product lifecycles or adopting new ideas, normally trigger these trends. We can prepare for these changes by keeping up-to-date with trends, new advances and what our competitors are doing. It may mean new sources of raw materials, different marketing techniques, or perhaps the loss or emergence of a new market.

Finally, cultural trends have a direct impact on our business plan and the business environment. The demographics of our customers may change, new social concerns can arise and new lifestyles evolve. If our customers move from the cities to the country, our business will be affected not only in what we sell, but also, in how we deliver it. Too, as social consciences change, acceptable business practices will change. These could include environmental and social programs. For example, government might require a business to provide a certain level of retirement benefit. These trends often burden businesses with new and unplanned costs but must be assimilated into the business plan to remain a viable enterprise.

Notice, these trend types have definite impacts on our business plan. They are all threats to present business operations and also present new opportunities. If we make changes in our business operations to become environment friendly, employee friendly, or technologically modern our business accrues new public interest leading to new sales. Too, we receive free publicity that positively impacts our business credibility and stature. Regardless of the fringe benefits to our business, we must continually be aware and open to new directions so that our business plan and operation doesn’t stagnate or become less functional in the changing environment.

Author: Michael Russell

How to Write a Good Business Plan

The business plan or the feasibility study of a business is the key to your banker’s wallet. If you plan to borrow money to start your business, it would be wise to write down your business plan first.

Perfection Paralysis in the Business Planning Stage

Essential Elements of your First Business Plan: What do you plan to do, what are the goals for your business? What does the market look like? What are the opportunities, where are the threats? What is your marketing strategy?

Writing The Dreaded Business Plan

If you can identify problems or issues that affect your type of business, describe how you plan to mitigate their impact.

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, Dreaded Business Plan, The 4 Business Plan Threats

Now you may be thinking what is a credit score and how to find out what is your credit score?

Credit score is a three digit figure which replicate the number of debts you have taken in the past along with your unpaid credit card bills, late payments or non- payments, arrears etc. Credit rating agencies such as Experian, Equifax and Transunion can provide you your credit report. You can analyze your credit report from different agencies to find out the errors if any. This will give you a better hold of your credit score. These agencies will also suggest you the ways to improve your score.

About the Loan…

Bad Credit Unsecured Business Loan is the best tool for getting the money for your business needs. The financial need of the business keeps on fluctuating as business sometimes faces profit some times losses. In time of losses you need money to cover up the deficit. The other need may arise when you are ready with your new venture plans but don’t have enough of your money to apply those plans. In such times going for a bad credit unsecured business loan apt decision for you without risking any of your valuable property.

Searching for a loan

It is not very easy to get a bad credit unsecured business loans, but with online lenders and brokers coming into the picture, it is not also much difficult. These loans basically suit those types of people don’t want to put their asset at stake or those who don’t have anything to offer as a collateral. You need to do some research work in the market or through online option to get a good deal

Filling the application form

Once you have found the right lender, you have to fill an application form with the following details.

Nature of your business

Purpose of the business loan

Name of your venture

Your social security number

Proof of ownership in case of existing business

Documents related to contracts, tax returns

Financial statements

Apply for an unsecured bad credit business loan for starting your business, buying office space for expansion of business, purchase of equipments or for any other necessity and see you business running smoothly.

Author: Peter Taylor

Bad Credit Unsecured Business Loan

Bad credit unsecured business loan is the prizewinning agency for effort the money for your playing needs. The playing requirement of the playing keeps on fluctuating as playing sometimes faces acquire whatever nowadays losses.

Key Elements of Successful Business Plans

Successful entrepreneurs know the value of business plans in securing capital. Business plans must cover certain elements to capture investor’s commitment and financing.

Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions

For those of you who don’t know, business plan competitions are held by universities who get their students to enter and compete to see who has the best business idea.

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, Business Plan Competitions, Business Plans, Nourishing Business Plans, Successful Business Plans

The future is the most challenging view of the three. A business plan provides a blue print of our vision of the future. We look into our crystal ball and make many choices about what the world will be like, what it will need and how we fit into that environment. The business plan we create is the embodiment of the vision and a measurement stick of our progress as the future becomes the present. A plan documents our desired outcomes and helps us measure our performance against it. Changing our business, or our business plans, to incorporate reality then eliminates deviations.

Next we look at the past. We are reviewing what has happened in our industry, the world and in other businesses similar to ours. We use this look to formulate our business future. How well we research and accurately interpret the past has a great impact on the reality our business plan will incorporate.

Finally, we have the present. This is our present operating environment. Our business plan foretold what resources our company would need and how they would be utilized to produce our marketable goods or services. A plan done correctly identifies suppliers, sources of funding and the other resources necessary to accomplish the business vision. The present reality is the measure of our predictions and the reality of the implementation of the business plan. If our operations closely agree with the plan, all is going well. If there are substantial variations, we must address them and correct our business progress to move toward our business goals. Thus, the present represents the actualization of the theoretical business plan. The present demonstrates how well we did in planning and predicting the business circumstances.

An overlooked use for the business plan is the marketing use when approaching suppliers and those from which we need resources to be extended to the business. Our business plan can be used to show the thought process and business plan. It can be used to convince resource suppliers we are a good risk and an opportunity to establish a new and important business client. Too, employees should be familiar with the business plan in as much detail as can be useful to them in helping to accomplish the business mission.

These three perspectives are very important to all business plans. In fact, a small business needs a business plan worse than a large one because of resources. Normally, large businesses tend to have sources of financing that can bridge problems until they can be corrected. Unfortunately, small businesses usually don’t have the same deep pockets so the risk of unforeseen circumstances or problems is exaggerated significantly. True too, small businesses tend to either fail to create a business plan or ignore them once they become involved in daily operations. Actually, this is when they need the plans the most because of their inherent comparison and grading of reality against the proposed. But, all businesses do much better if they have plans and follow them.

Author: Michael Russell

The business of going green

In truth we all benefit from a greener business environment and most CEOs would do what they can when they can and if success were measured in terms of social responsibility then I for one would want to write that business plan. Therefore, timely communication among employees, customers and partners becomes more critical. Competition and the race to shorten time-to-market compel executives to scrutinise expenditure and maximise their available hours.

New Business Models for News Project

We will attempt to answer that by projecting the future of news in a metropolitan area, concentrating on four perspectives — hyperlocal, the new news organization, publicly supported journalism, and the framework to support this new news  After this work is well underway and after the Aspen report in August, we plan to extend the project’s work to examine more business models, such as national and international content exchanges; interest-based sites and networks.

Business Information for Entrepreneurs

From an IT perspective, an outbreak of swine flu may have a negative impact on your business if employees are not able to access their work files from home. Explore the possibility of adopting an infrastructure system that allows employees to.  In the event that key employees are impacted by the swine flu or any other crisis situation, it is important to have a backup plan.

Technorati Tags: business consulting, business marketing, Business Plan, business strategy

Know your Audience
You must have a clear understanding of what your audience is interested in. Once you understand your audience requirements then ensure that the areas of interest in the Business Plan are very well covered. Sell your strong points to the intended audience but also be honest about your weak points and advise how you’ll mitigate these weaknesses. Also anticipate questions the readers of the plan may need answered and address these questions in the text of the Plan. For example, if you are using the Business Plan to seek finance or investors then there must be adequate coverage of the financial aspects of the proposal.

Be Thorough
Creating the Business Plan is an opportunity to be objective about your plan or business. As you document the business plan ensure that you are very clear about how the idea or business fits together and why it will (or won’t) be a viable business proposition. If something in the plan isn’t clear to you then it definitely won’t be understandable by the intended audience.

Business Plans Take Time
Business Plans take a lot of time and effort to complete. Good Business Plans, in my experience, tend to take a few weeks effort to document to a good level. If your audience has experience of Business Plans then they are sure to want a thorough and well thought out plan that takes some time to complete rather than a rushed and inaccurate Plan which will increase risk and uncertainty of decision making.

Professionalism
The Business Plan is a chance for you to communicate your competency and knowledge of an idea or business proposal. It also gives the readers of the plan a general impression of you. Spelling mistakes, incorrect grammar and the like are unacceptable in a Business Plan and do not inspire confidence.

Business Plans do take time to complete. It is however an opportunity to test your idea or processes whist documenting the Plan. Accept that the Plan will take time and effort and concentrate on the positives!

Author: Gary Eckstein

How to write a great business plan

How to write a great business plan.

Law Firm Business Plan

This is the real, hard core information you need so you can write your own great business plan. Absolutely NO ONE is going to try to sell you a $5000 “business plan package”. That just isn’t how we work.

How to Write a Home Based Business Plan

The format makes it easy to organize plans and ideas into a cohesive plan for business success. Here’s a quick look at how each section of the standard business plan can help get a business off to a great start- or back on track.

How To Write A Successful Business Plan

Whether you are planning to start a brand-new business, expand an existing company, or get financing for a business venture, you will need to write a business plan. The financials section is a great place to include visuals such as graphs, particularly if you predict a positive trend in your projected financials. A graph allows the reader to quickly take in this information, …

How to Write a Great Business Plan

In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture.

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, The Business Plan, Write a Great Business Plan, Your Business Plan

Business plan is a guiding map in order to implement your strategy to taste the success. Sadly, many of us don’t know How to Write a Business Plan and consider it very intimidating and complex task. So, let’s find out how easy it actually is…

Are you thinking of starting a new business? Then you must have come across the term ‘Business Plan’. Chalking out the business plan remains the most important task to achieve the success in the proposed business.

Business Plan
Business planning is about writing a certain result oriented organized and methodical script. You are required to design your plan to obtain your purpose. It is a plan which considers the available resources, identifies the opportunities and problems and manages those resources to get the optimum growth and success. Business plan is not the thing required only for starting business or for getting loans as perceived by most of the people, but it also helps to find out the shortcomings and run the business smoothly.

Although, business plans vary from each other depending on the nature, products and local factors, the general outline is same that includes the main components like Executive Summary, Description of Company, Description of Products or the Services offered, Market Analysis, forecasts and future planning, Business Strategy and its Implementation, information regarding Management staff and sustainable Financial Plan.

Here, you must ensure that your plan should revolve around sound cash flow strategy and its strict implementation before writing down your business plan. You should not mix up profits with cash. Again implementation of your strategy plays a vital role in success of any business. Assigning of the responsibilities in certain time frame and following up those plans can bring in desired results.

Need of Business plan
Business plan is like a road map. Here, you set your targets, identify the areas on which greater stress to be laid on, chalk out the measures to be taken and provide the business the ultimate cash flow and growth.

If you are intended to seek loans to fund your business then most of the financial institutions will ask you for a sound, feasible business plan. As, business plan is a clear refection of your future activities, it plays a very important role in getting you loans.

If you’re seeking investments in business then you require a business plan investment. The potential investors invest in the ideas, the people, their history, the technology the entrepreneur is using, the market analysis, and other local factors. The business plan serves the purpose to define the ideas and all these related factors and explain the concept of business to investors. While working with your partners you require such business plan to define agreements between partners and convey the future vision.

Perhaps, the most important need of business plan is for running the business smoothly. It also serves as one of the most useful tool for communication with your management team. While the daily routine business activities can be quite distracting full of surfacing problems, their solutions, opportunities and commitments, it helps in keeping the business on the right track by reminding our short term and long term goals. A business plan is required to sell a business, or to set a value on a business for tax.

It is high time to realize that this plan is not meant just for start-ups, loans, or investment. Moreover, the business plans are much easier to develop. You simply plan the steps and stages, identify and distinguish preferences, check out for the resources and try to reallocate them to get maximum output and manage the cash flow.

Before writing down a plan, let’s understand what the good plan is.

Good Plan
1. Try to keep your business plan simple, specific, realistic and complete to implement in much effective way to achieve your targets. While, simplicity enhances the communication process, specific writing can help you to lay stress on particular areas. Realistic approach can result in better success rate and it should conclude all necessary components.
2. The value of any good plan is measured by its contents and not by its length. A sound plan is broken up into meaningful paragraphs using readable bullet points, supported by useful illustrations of products, and business charts and graphs to illustrate important projections.
3. A good business plan sets the concrete goals, assigns tasks to different departments and sets milestones and deadlines for tracking implementation. Normally for every one part of strategy, ten parts of implementation should be there.
4. A good plan regularly reviews its position and alterations are made regularly to meet the changing demands of the business. It should be always practical.

Types of Business Plans
According to the specific situation and personal need, these plans are known as start up plans (the most common type of business plans), investment plans (designed to attract investment), internal plans or operational plan (as a guiding tool in the course of business for your management team), Growth plan (designed to show your future expansion) etc.

How to write A Standard Business Plan
There are conventional components of a standard business plan. Although the order doesn’t carry any great importance, conclusion of these main constituents can make your business plan appealing and acceptable.

1. Executive Summary – It is the concise summary of your business and though it appears at the top. Try to write it at last when you finished scribing other topics. It’s just a page or two of highlights.

2. Company Description – This contains the detailed pen picture of Legal establishment, history; start-up plans the information about your staff etc.

3. Product or Service – It is the description of the product you are selling. You should lay stress on the customer benefits.

4. Market Analysis – Description about your market trends, the needs of market, your target sector of market, the location of such targeted area, how to reach them, etc. All you have to do is to conduct a comprehensive market survey to conclude the analysis.

5. Strategy and Implementation – Be specific. Include management responsibilities with deadlines and specific budgets. You have to make sure that all these activities carrying out tasks are tracked regularly for results.

6. Web Plan Summary – For e-commerce, include discussion of website, development costs, operations, sales and marketing strategies.

7. Management Team – Describe the organization and the key management team members.

8. Financial Analysis – Make sure to include at the very least your sales forecast, projected Profit and Loss statement, projected business ratios and Cash Flow tables. It is highly recommended to use bar charts and pie charts to illustrate the numbers.

It is quite easy to write a business plan based on these guidelines. Remember, a good Business plan can make all the difference!

By Jayashree Pakhare
Published: 4/8/2007 

How to write a business plan

Detailed guide to writing an executive summary, description of opportunity, sales and marketing strategy, team and personnel, financial forecasts, operations plan.

Why You Need To Write A Business Plan

The business plan is the blueprint for your business. You wouldn’t walk over to an empty lot and just start nailing boards together if you wanted to build a house.

How to Write a Good Business Plan

The business plan or the feasibility study of a business is the key to your banker’s wallet. If you plan to borrow money to start your business, it would be wise to write down your business plan first.

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, Good Business Plan, How to Write a Business Plan

Understanding your industry and identifying your KSFs will help in building a successful marketing plan; one that is based on measurable progress and results. A key success factor is an element of a whole that affects your business’ ability to do well in your market.

Most businesses focus on between three and five of the most important (to their business) success factors. From time to time, or year to year, these key success factors may change, as the industry or the market changes.

15 Examples of Key Business Success Factors (and this is not a comprehensive list) are:

   1.  Number of new customers per year;

   2.  Number of lost customers per year OR the number of customers retained (it is important  to understand and measure the potential customer lifetime value for each customer on a regular basis);
 
   3.  Hire and retain excellent employees (measured by employee turn-over, job vacancies, customer satisfaction);
 
   4.  Successful new product introductions (measured by sales and costs);
 
   5.  Successful promotional programs (measured by sales and costs);
   
   6.  Good/healthy financial indicators: for example, working capital, acceptable ratios (in particular debt to equity ratios), profit margins, cash flow, receivables and more;
   
   7.  If in the manufacturing industry, high operating capacity utilization;
   
   8.  Strong supplier network;
 
   9.  Strong distribution network or channel;
 
   10. Successful product positioning;
 
   11. Low cost structure;
 
   12. Niche product/service – track the number of competitors entering and/or leaving the niche. Is the cost of entry into the market high or low?
 
   13. Market leader or follower or challenger, and is your relative market position and why? Are you able to support that position if under ‘attack’?
 
   14. Product differentiation: Do you have technology or service advantages that others can’t easily copy? How unique and differentiated is your product or service?
 
   15. Time to market: is your product or service able to be delivered quickly and easily; from the first point of contact to the time shipped and subsequently invoiced?

Once you have identified your specific KSFs, build strategies around those factors and integrate those strategies into your marketing and business plans to ensure business success. Develop measurement programs to help you track your progress against your success factors. You also need to assess your competition and see if your competitors’ key success factors are similar or different than yours (depending on your strengths and weaknesses and your marketing and business strategies, they might be very different). One way of comparing and assessing is to do a competitive strength analysis; find out what your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses are and build your competitive strategy accordingly. (A sample swot analysis can show you how to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that your business faces.)

For example, if retaining your existing customers is a key success factor, your business objective must be to grow sales with your existing customers. How do you do that? First, do a customer satisfaction survey to assess how satisfied your existing customers are (or aren’t). Then determine what needs to be changed and what you need to focus on. Make sure that you understand how your customers chose between competitors: is it price, service, quality, knowledge, reliability, relationships, or all of these factors? What product or service attributes are most important to your customers? What is the unique difference between your product or service and your competition’s product or service (from your customer’s perspective)?

Once you have identified your key success factors; built measurement devices to track them; assessed and compared your competitors’ KSFs – and the industry’s; built your strategies and objectives into your marketing and business plans(phew!); you need to act! Build your business on these key success factors.

Author: Kris Bovay

How To Be A Business Success

Monday, June 15, 2009 7:31. Posted in category Online Business Promotion. Through observing business people who have been successful, and how they achieved their success. It is very useful for comparing actual performance against what you planned and enabling you to make adjustments to lead to greater success. There are many useful software packages available to assist you with your business plan preparation.

A Guide To Successful Brand Identity Marketing

Develop Brand IdentityThere are several aspects of building and marketing brand identity.Systematic and practical approach can definitely earn you a good name to stand out in the constantly varying consumer world. Therefore,the key factor behind the success of brand is evolution and not revolution. Steve is a media professional and writes for different online publications on media and advertising industry.

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There are websites that have business plans on them and websites where you can get a free business plan outline to help you with this process. Recently, a start-up entrepreneur asked me about Good to Go Business Plans and I told them; “I do not know of this; Good to Go Business Plan Kit, but, you can get business plans for such things all over the place.”

Microsoft has “Business Plan” samples online for those who purchase Microsoft Office, and there are business plans for community events around, I’ve seen them, like how to do a bake sale, silent auction, etc. I’ve made some and put them online for free like how to do a bike-a-thon, car wash fundraiser, etc.

One thing I have found with business plans that are for sale is that most of them are cookie cutter, bland and not as relevant as you might think. I have purchased a bunch over the years from places like Entrepreneur Magazine and elsewhere and always have been underwhelmed. It’s like someone started by doing a business plan for “Boat Sales” or “Accounting Company” or some unique business type and then simply modified it for every other type of business. That’s no good.

Sometimes buying a business plan is like cheating on a term-paper, you see, it is the importance of business planning that you should be concerned with. If you adopt someone else’s ideas without thinking are you really planning? No, then why bother, and further, if you are not going to plan, you are planning to fail, and in that case, you’d be better off not starting your own business at all. Think on this.

Author: Lance Winslow

Buy an Online Business for making money

You will still have to rise a marketplace plan, get web trade, and all else which centers around compelling the business. Before you buy in to any Internet commercial operation you should take precautionary measures to have.

Your Internet Marketing Strategy

Internet marketing strategy or put more simply a plan for online success is probably the most essential ingredient needed for anyone starting a home based business. In the days when I first started out in the auto repair and towing business my bank manager had the following saying.  If this seems a little lack lustre to you and you do far better then that’s great news but buy setting your sights a little lower you won’t be setting yourself up for a fall either.

Building Online Business

When we say traffic, it doesn’t mean just about anyone visiting the Internet but a targeted traffic that consists of visitors who will buy your product or use your services. There are of course many ways or methods to bring traffic to … If your site is a business and your budget allows you to do so, It is suggested you hire Online Advertising a professional SEO expert as doing it yourself will be extremely time consuming and may not even lead to noticeable outcomes.

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, business plan outline, business plan software, business plan templates, online business plans

This is where the online business venture begins.The ecommerce business plan is a plan of action, without which nothing of real value can ever be achieved. The ecommerce business plan will cover a number of features from the design of the web site to the fulfillment service methods; each of these features should be the best available with a heavy bias towards the customer. The product, around which the whole ecommerce business plan will revolve, will have to fulfill certain criteria in order to make the online venture a success.

These are:

Homogeneity – the product, though obtained from different suppliers/sources will have to be of a homogenous quality and dimensions. Whether it is a mobile set or a book the item should be favorably comparable to the ones that are bought elsewhere.

Ability to ship the product – before you launch your online venture you should find out whether the product can be shipped easily. This is will a daunting task if the product is bulky or very fragile. If the customer cannot get the product quickly and in tact, you will loose repeat customers and word of mouth advertising.

Cost of delivery – in similar manner heavier items will cost more to deliver to the door step than lightweight items. The cost of delivery is an important factor that decides the customer uses when deciding whether or not to buy an item. Hence, keep this cost as low as possible.

Cost of the product – many customers are attracted to the online shopping because they get many of their favorite products at a much lower cost than in the real- shops. You need to keep the cost at least 10 percent less than what is available in the brick-and-mortar market.

Availability – do you plan to have a good stock of the product that you propose to sell or do you have a good tie-up with some supplier(s) which can provide you with the product on the spot. If the product is not available easily to the customer – after the payment is processed – you will have a very unhappy customer.

Target market – think whether you need to address the needs of a certain age group, geographical area, or it is to be available for all people, all over the world.

Payment options – what type of payment options you are offering will greatly influence the sale of your product.

All these and more will have to be taken care of right at the beginning; at the stage where the ecommerce business plan is completed.

By Kerry Ng

Small Business Workbook on How to Start and Structure a Business …

Wilmington, DE (PRESS RELEASE – June 9, 2009) — Starting a small business with a focus and plan of action are the purpose of a business plan. SCORE Counselors. … Entrepreneurs can get the latest information on how to launch a Web site, attract visitors, and avoid e-commerce mistakes. SCORE CEO Ken Yancey says, “How to Really Start Your Own Business provides valuable information that can help start-up entrepreneurs achieve their business goals….

Thinking Made Easy: Market Communication Plan for the Sunny …

Competition is an important factor to consider before entering a business. Companies should have successful competitive strategies to be able attract, retain and grow customers. However, before the company can plan and execute these strategies, ….. The Internet is changing the way we do business, whether it’s finding new streams of revenue, acquiring new customers, or managing a business supply chain. E-commerce removes the geographical separation …

Bodily Injury Blog » Potential Class Action in Lilly …

Although the buy microsoft access for mac best property management professionals are hired for the projects computer software gives a detailed analysis of the plan including calculations and statistical implications. … Those who buy photoshop uk have been in the e commerce business for a long time are surely familiar with what. So how purchase windows xp with service pack 2 does the average user keep dangerous spyware from infecting their computer and stealing personal …

Online Business Strategy – Key Steps to Success | Business Focuz

No matter what you are building, from a website advertising your services, to an affiliate portal, an eCommerce shopping cart site or a place to administer memberships or subscriptions, the same rules apply. … Work out an in depth plan with your VA so that you can have a step by step – tailor made plan. Take time to talk with your VA and explain your situation in detail, so that you and your new team can stay focused, moving as efficiently as possible…

Online Business Strategy & Marketing

Online Business, eCommerce Strategy and Marketing Blog, Webtarget, web target. … the website’s requirements in terms of functionality and design which both should support the performance objectives. Once the performance driven website is under production, organizations should then focus on their marketing plan (online and offline). And here again, performance should be the decision making compass in order to maximize return on investment and conversions.

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As you are writing your computer business plan, you need to think about a very important question: WHO will be benefit from your services?

   Many computer business owners make the mistake of chasing after prospects that only need services now and on a short-term basis. What you should be doing however is marketing to those prospects that will be with you for many years to come and bring you predictable, steady revenue. This is the core, but potentially $100,000+ difference between transactional-oriented cherry-picking, one-shot-deal customers and long-term, steady, high-paying great clients. Although many mistakenly use the terms customer and client synonymously, it’s a huge oversight because of their enormous differences in long-term potential to your computer business.

 They fail to see how working for fly-by-night customers will leave them scrambling to make their next buck and dissatisfied as they move from customer to customer, never establishing solid, mutually-beneficial relationships that can make computer consulting work more rewarding and successful.

Consider the following 4 ways to build a computer business plan around the needs of great clients, rather than one-shot deal customers.

1. Think About Customer and Client Acquisition Costs. As you are creating your computer business plan, think about the time and money that will go into your marketing campaigns. Customer or client acquisition costs are simply defined as those time and out-of-pocket expenses that can be directly traced to the acquisition of new customers or clients. In order to measure this correctly, you need to have controls and techniques in place to help you measure where your customers or clients originate.
2. Track the Origins of Your Customers and Clients. Tracking where your customers and clients originate is critical to understanding how to get more of the clients that will stick by you long term … and less of the customers that have no interest in building long-term relationships. For example, when you send out a postcard or other piece of marketing collateral to a set of leads or prospects, you can send them to a Web site landing page to fill out a form, register for a free seminar or request a free CD. If you use a special URL and landing page, you easily can count how many clicks you got and how many sign-ups you got. Then after the campaign, you can measure which percentage of sign-ups got qualified, which ended up becoming customers or clients and finally, how much new and eventual revenue can be traced to these specific new customers or clients from that specific campaign.
3. Measure How Much Time and Money Goes into Seminars and Relationship-Building Events. You need to know how much time and money goes into the seminars that you hold for your prospects, customers and clients, so you can understand the cost of acquiring a real client… and even more importantly, understand exactly what a really great client is worth to your computer business. As a simple example, think about what would happen if you invested $1,000 and 16 hours of time (that you value at $100 per hour) planning, marketing and holding a seminar event. From this, perhaps you got a new customer that spent initially $400. Then, that same customer might become a steady, high-paying client on a $12,000 per year on-going service contract. This basically means you spent $2,600 in money and time finding a new client that was worth $12,400 in the first year of your relationship. The client acquisition cost was $2,600. But what if you didn’t push on-going service contracts, and that client just spent $400 with you once? Then, that $2,600 cost was certainly not worth the trouble. The customer vs. client mindset makes all the difference in your computer business plan.  
4. Target Clients with Your Marketing Activities. Unless you have a huge Fortune 1000-sized marketing budget, you have to work smarter when it comes to marketing. You have to focus on small businesses that are most likely to become steady, high-paying clients. There’s a world of difference in the lifetime profitability potential or lifetime value between customers and clients. As you design your computer business plan, you can’t afford to market to any companies that don’t have the potential to become steady, high-paying clients. The targeting and lead qualification becomes mission critical

Author: Joshua Feinberg

Online Business Marketing: How To Promote a Website

New websites are created everyday and competition is tough. If one just waits to be discovered, they are going to be waiting a long time. Here are some basic tips for getting a websites promotional plan on track. … Business Networking. It’s easy to feel stuck to the computer when promoting a website. However all promotion should not be online. Networking in the community is key to getting the word out about a website,

Computer Business Plan Tips for Getting Great Clients

In this article we gave you 4 tipsbusiness around getting great clients rather than one-shot-deal customers. Learn more about creating a computer business plan that will get you great, steady, high-paying clients …  

Contingency Plans for Business Repair – computer repair business…

The more thought and time you put into a contingency plan, the more you will be on track for success and be able to avoid getting derailed as you make the definitive choice and say, “I am ready to start my computer repair business!” … 4 items that should be included in a contingency plan for your repair business. Learn more about what you can do when you decide, “I want to start my computer repair business” to get great,

How to Build a Business Plan for Computer Consulting 

… of just winging-it or flying by the seat of your pants. In this short video, we’ll look at 3 tips to help you stand out from the crowd with your business plan for computer consulting, while fef you attract great, steady high-paying clients. 

Small Business: Canada – QuickTips

Learn how to use a goal setting formula that includes an action plan to set goals that you will actually achieve. Phone Answering Tips to Win Business How you answer the phone says a great deal about your business. … Audrey Field provides tips for ensuring that your small or home-based fef business presents a professional image at all times, including how to handle phone calls and client bookings in a professional manner. 

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, business plan software, business planning, Business Plans, computer business, computer business plan, online business plans

When starting a cleaning business, or any business for that matter, a business plan is extremely important. It gives other interested parties such as investors, lenders or partners a clear idea of the opportunity at hand and it gives the business owner a way to compile his or her research in one place. A plan is all about knowing where you want to take the business and setting goals and targets to get there.

Many people don’t know where to start when it comes to preparing a cleaning business plan. This article gives you a basic structure to build upon and towards the end lets you know how you can find some sample business plans that have been used by cleaning services.

1) The Executive Summary – An introduction and outline of the basic concept or idea.

2) Ownership structure – What parties will have an interest in the business and if they will be active in the management or only passive investors. Outline the management structure if there is more than one owner actively involved.

3) Goals and targets – Set out your businesses objectives or what will be achieved by certain dates.

4) Mission statement – Outline the purpose of the business, it’s values and a company philosophy.

5) Start-up requirements – List down the things that must be acquired before you can start. How much money will you need to get started?

6) Market research and analysis – Compile the results of your research into the local market. What cleaning market segments offer the best opportunities? Who are your target customers? Who are your competitors and how do you plan to position your company to compete with them?

7) Marketing – Set out details and a budget for your cleaning business marketing strategy. What methods will you use to attract enquiries? How will your sales approach turn these leads into new accounts? What is your advertising budget?

Employees – Set out the process for hiring employees, estimate costs and set out a timeline for taking on staff as your business grows.

9) Financial estimates – Do some hypothetical cash flow forecasting. Make estimates of monthly income and expenses and plug them into a spreadsheet program. You can then estimate how much profit you will make over the first few years of your business’s life. Remember that many business owners are overly optimistic when they start out so you should run some worst-case scenarios with low monthly income forecasts just to give you an idea. Run some best-case scenarios too to allow you to see how much you could make if things go to plan.

Before you start out in the cleaning industry make sure that you have a solid cleaning business plan in place so that you are organized and 100% certain about the direction that you want to proceed in.

Author: Steven Sutherland

Why Not Start Your Own Cleaning Business

If you don’t mind cleaning offices and houses or getting your hands dirty then you might want to consider starting your own cleaning business. 

Real Business Opportunities

The cleaning equipment needed, depending on how you plan to operate your blind cleaning business, comes in a variety of forms.

Commercial Cleaning Business Plan

Creating a business plan for your commercial cleaning business takes a little time (not a lot, you can do it over breakfast). After all, if you can download a template, how can you be sure that you’re doing it right?

Technorati Tags: Business Plan, Cleaning Business Plan, How to Prepare a Cleaning Business Plan

An article that discusses the important aspects of business plans for entrepreneurs and small business startups.

Few areas of business attract as much attention as entrepreneurship, and few aspects of entrepreneurship attract as much attention as a business plan. Increasingly, business plan competitions are springing up across the world, partly helped by the marketing gimmicks of business schools. Indeed, judging by all the hooplas surrounding business plans, you might want to ask yourself what happen to all those eventual winners, many of those MBA graduates would no doubt went on to work in investment banks, drawing huge bonuses managing venture capital and private equity funds rather than taking the uncertain path of entrepreneurship.

Nothing could be further from the truth, in my experiences with the hundreds of entrepreneurial startups, business planning persistently ranked as one of the least important aspects of entrepreneurship. In fact, most wasted too much time and effort on numbers rather than actual implementation and the more elaborately crafted the documents, the more likely the venture would flop. Don’t misunderstood me, business plans are necessary for the eventual entrepreneur to soul search and clarify to himself his actual thought process, address unforeseen issues and to analyze likely market competitions and potential structural changes.

There are plenty of existing business plans templates you can google on the Internet. On will provide an automatic formula for winning. Rather, business plans are meant to be temporary and subject to changes all the time. There is no need to follow the execution plan step-by-step. Rather, the general strategy should comprise of the following three core of interdependent factors critical to new ventures:

a) People – The people starting and running the startups. Without the right people, nothing else really matters. "I invest in people, not ideas.", is the famous saying of Arthur Rock, a legendary venture capitalist associated with the likes of Apple and Intel. The men and women involved should also include third parties providing key support and resources to the venture.

b) Business Profile – The profile of the business itself. Selling the right thing is a battle half-won. These include questions like who will be the expected buyers, how fast can the business grow and what factors stand in the way. The business owners need to be specific on where the source of income is going to come from.

c) The Big Picture – Social and technological evolution that are beyond the control of any entrepreneurs. Imaging trying to sell pagers 10 years ago. For this particular factor, would entrepreneurs must prepare to eventually cut their loss and stopped their businesses or switched to another products and services should situations changed. Many successful ventures adapted to new market environment and were in very different lines when they first started. This is also where a shift in market environment can turn an unattractive idea into a highly profitable ones.

Good business planning is like a video show into the future, and discuss people, business profile and the big picture as a moving target. Be prepared to tear up the original plan and go back to re-write it as you move on.

Linus is a successful entrepreneur based in Asia. He contributes this article to Very Small Businesses, an online information resources for entrepreneurs and small business startups.

By Linus Leong
Published: 8/21/2008 

Business Plan

Creating a business plan is an essential regardless of the size of your business. Skipping this step is tantamount to planning for business failure. Get tips here.

Become A Entrepreneur 

To become a successful entrepreneur you need to expert in different fields. You have the practical knowledge of business plan, business structure, future.

Entrepreneurs must develop a good business plan

“A good business plan should be well packaged, have a good executive summary, have a realistic vision and also have a tight financial discipline”, 

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Business plans are like narrative stories. They’ll have a beginning, then a middle, and then an end which will lead to a new beginning. This goes on in what’s called a continuous planning cycle. And no health club plan succeeds well without having a mission, vision and goals, not only for the business but also for its customers.

Like any good plan, a health club’s will address every traditional business metric or benchmark which helps to gauge success. These can include funding sources and short-to-long term planning horizons. Keep in mind that the farther out a horizon is, the more flexible the intermediate steps need to be in getting to that far off destination.

Probably the one area where health clubs go the most wrong is in not understanding how vital marketing itself needs to be. If they think on it at all, it’s as a part of some undefined "advertising" section in the plan.

Failing to get that advertising is one part of an overall marketing strategy fails to fully harness the ability of a plan to coordinate all the little parts into a seamless marketing whole. At a minimum, marketing strategies include short and long-range advertising programs, with quantifiable measures of success.

Successful business plans also account for the ever-changing nature of technology. What many people don’t get is that specific models of computers themselves become obsolete within two years of their introduction. So if that’s the case, why isn’t a savvy business designing its plan around such facts about technology? When it does, it can better position itself for rapid technological change in its advertising and marketing programs.

Look at it this way: Failing to grasp that what is effective marketing today may be redundant and boring a year or even six months from now is a recipe for failure. A smart health club marketing plan, as part of a wider business plan, accounts for this. That way, it can be adjusted quickly to take advantage of the new advertising or marketing environment it encounters.

Author: Joe McLee

Know How Business Plan Influence Your Home Business

Business plan is used in presenting your concept in business. You must focus on the things that you should achieve, where your home business should go and how you plan to get it.

Business Plan Guide

A business plan guide is a great place to start when you are getting ready to write your first business plan. Perhaps you have found a book about writing.

How to Prepare a Business Plan

In a couple of weeks I will be speaking to lawyers on an ABA Recession Recovery Teleconference Series. My subject will be how to effectively plan for your success. Client development activities start with a Business Plan.

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How long should your Business Plan be? There is really no correct answer. It depends on your business, the purpose for writing, and your audience. There are norms however if seeking funding, and since your bankers expectations may be based on them, you should keep this in mind when designing your plan:

Start-up small business, small loan request ———— 10 pages or less plus attachments.

TIP – Looking for a very small business loan? Contrary to what most people tell you, a formal Business Plan is not always necessary. Many lenders accept a Summary Sheet (see Executive Summary), accompanied by the loan application and supporting documents (usually three years of income and tax records) if the loan request is small.

Start-up seeking $200,000. or more, or a mature company seeking expansion funding or investor capital —-10 to 40 pages.

OK – let’s look at what goes in each section of your Business Plan:

The Cover Page – just that – a cover to identify your business from all the rest that are probably sitting on your bankers desk. Include your Business Name, your logo if you have established one, address, contact information (phone, Email and website if already established) and the name(s) of the principals.

Your Executive Summary – The Executive Summary is nothing more than a summary of all the other parts of the plan. It goes first, but usually gets written last. It is the one part of your plan that most bankers or investors will read, so make sure it shouts "hey, read the rest, this is a great idea that can’t fail". Any time you are writing for anyone other than yourself, your Business Plan becomes a Sales Proposal!

Section I – The Business

A. Description and location

1. Organization structure, location and Principals.

2. Products or Services sold and geographic area served..

3. Operating plan (how will the business operate?).

B. The Market

1. Customers or Clients (who are – or will be – your customers or clients?).

2. Marketing Plan (how are you going to reach these customers or clients?)

3. Market stability and opportunity for growth

C. The Competition

1. Major Competitors.

2. Your Advantages (why are you unique and able to capture market share?).

Section II – Financial Data & Projections

A. Beginning Balance Sheet (optional for a very small start up)
B. Twelve month Cash Flow projection
C. Three year Cash Flow projection (show projections by quarters)
D. Break Even Analysis

Section III – Supporting Documents

In this section you would attach copies of supporting documents, such as; Incorporation or other organization filings, State or federal required professional licenses, Resumes of Principals, Franchise contracts (if franchise), Partnership Agreement (if Partnership), Leases, Capital Equipment list, and any business brochures or other promotional materials you may have already produced.

More information on Business Plans ?? I’d suggest http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner a site provided by the Small Business Administration for persons starting a small business – great resource and a site with a lot of good information. Another source would be www.score.org, an affiliate of the SBA providing FREE counseling to small business owners.

Author: Dick Bendtzen

Measurement Plan Basics for Loyalty Marketing

The foundation of the plan must be tied to clearly defined financial objectives and underlying assumptions outlined in an approved Business Case.

First Step in Starting a Business

The very first thing you will want to do is create a business plan. A business plan will allow you to get all of the details worked out prior to actually opening the business.

Business Plan Basics

The best way to show bankers, venture capitalists, and angel investors that you are worthy of financial support is to show them a great business plan. 

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