The Video Transcription:

The Marketing and Sales part is broken into 3 sections:

Section A – Competition

  • Detail your competitors. Everyone has some competitors. The biggest mistake we see with promoters is that they come to us and say “Our product, our service is so unique that we have no competitors. All we have to do is to get the product into the market and we’ll go from strength to strength.” There’s always an alternative – horses rather than cars, 2 bed apartment rather than 3 bed semi. There’s always an alternative and, as a consequence, there’s always competition.
  • Detail the competitive advantage that your business has.
  • Sourcing and fulfilment – detail where your products come from, how they’re delivered to you and how you deliver them to your customers.
  • Technology – describe the technology involved in your business, state your secret sauce without revealing the Coca-Cola formula.

Concentrate on your initial products in this Marketing and Sales chapter. State what future products and services you hope to provide to show where the business is thinking of going. But do not over-elaborate on this section. You have to jump the first hurdle first to get to the last hurdle.

Section B – Target Market

  • Potential customers – identify how many potential customers there are for your business and also state how many customers are sufficient for your business.
  • Identify target market segments and not just “We are a shoe company, everybody has feet. Therefore, everybody in the world is a potential customer”.
  • Do not expand too much on very long-range plans.
  • Identify for the reader whether your target market is growing or contracting.
  • Identify a customer for each market segment. Sort of a super buyer persona for each segment – helps to develop the marketing approach to attract such customers to your business.
  • Include market research and market analysis in this section, whether it’s market research specifically carried out by yourself or from alternative research sources.

Section C – Marketing & Sales Plan

In this section we’ll detail how you propose to reach your target market segments.

  • Include a pricing plan in this section – low budget, high-value luxury brand or combination of both.
  • It’s very important to understand to whom you are marketing. As mentioned earlier, the super buyer persona helps. If you do not truly understand your customer, then it’s very difficult to design an effective marketing plan.
  • Detail the position your company, product and service will have in the marketplace. Price sends a strong message to consumers but it needs to match their requirements and expectations of the product and service. There are two overall messages in sales and marketing:
    1. Turnover is vanity profit is sanity.
    2. A good salesman is not someone who sells a hundred million a year but it’s a salesman who sells at a good margin. Any fool can give it away.

Download the “Business Plans/Seminar” PowerPoint Presentation below.

David Murray

David Murray

David is a fully and Highly Qualified Financial Accountant with an unblemished record for almost 30 years.

David has an extensive Academic Record including, inter alia – Gold Medal College of Commerce – First Place Chartered Accountancy (ROI) – Fastest Graduate to Qualify.

David has written many articles on International Trade Finance in Magazines and Sunday Business Newspapers. In addition, has been Late Late TV Show Tested on cases referred by them.

David has extensive Business Experience particularly in Property, Construction, Manufacturing, Equipment, Telecom, Service Companies, SME Sectors in Ireland, UK, Dubai, Poland, etc., Agent in Ireland Bank of Iran, Plc Bank Seminars “Finance for Builders”, etc., etc.

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