By Eduardo Corona
Para mi buen amigo Martín Medina.
Ok, I am ready to write my one page business plan, but where
to start? It is a lot more difficult to envision a whole running business. My
values involved, my objectives and my personal touch, than only cooking my
delicious tamales, or be able to care and love my beautiful kids eight to ten
hours a day, or even cleaning this mess until this house looks like new.
Even if the logic sequence of a business plans starts with
the executive summary, where we can explain our whole idea running, we do not
need to start there, but talk about our first passion: our product or service.
We truly believe that our menu is good enough to make a
living out of selling it. We are
convinced to make money out of our ability of making things look good, or run
smoothly, or taste delicious. We have no doubt that we are experts in our
field, and no body can understand better than us the wishes of our client for her/his
garden, or kitchen color.
So the natural way to start your business plan is talking
about your passion, your expertise and your enjoyment doing it (if you do not
enjoy manufacturing your product or providing your service, please, look to do
something else)
We are here talking about our product or service, but now;
what to say? Easy, talk about all the things you know about your product and
service, be detail oriented, the first and most efficient description of your
product or service are the characteristics of it, what it is, what it's made of, what is made for: think of the tags
in the back of the food boxes that nobody reads. Write the specifications, directions,
cautions and so on.
Yep, this is the exciting part for you and the boring stuff
for the rest of us.
Can you see know why your product and service is so worthy?
Now, can you communicate this to your clients? Wait, who in
the world are your clients? I would say that your clients are all those people
that find benefits in all that stuff that your product or services offer… The
benefits of your product or service is a perception in the client’s mind, they
do not care if you have 30 years of experience in cleaning houses or if you use
your secret recipe to cook tamales… They care about getting an immaculate house
or a delicious taste after making business with you.
So make a list of the benefits that your product or service
will deliver to the clients, a clean house will benefit your clients with:
• A healthy
environment
• More time to
spend with their loved ones or making money
• Less stress
etc.
Delicious tamales will bring to your clients:
• A memory of
their own country or their vacations in exotic places
• Healthy
sensation
• Pleasure
etc.
It is very important to identify these emotions and feelings
that your product or service would make your client experiment. Those benefits
will tell you who are the people that will make business with you.
Once you find these four elements, product/service
characteristics, benefits and target market you are ready to talk about your
Vision, your Mission Statement and your goals.
Going forward with your product/service characteristics and
features, you will need to get a very professional description of your product
for labeling, canning and export: that is your technical file.
What a technical file should contain?
• Description
of the apparatus, usually accompanied by block diagram
• Wiring and
circuit diagrams
• General
Arrangement drawing
• List of
standards applied
• Records of
risk assessments and assessments to standards
• Description
of control philosophy/logic
• Datasheets
for critical sub-assemblies
• Part list
• Copies of
any markings and labels
• Copy of
instructions (user, maintenance, installation)
• Test reports
• Quality
control & commissioning procedures
