Businesses do not grow on their own yet. They need long-term planning and successful execution. Therefore, you better learn how to plan your business finances smoothly with our 9-grid plan.
According to a report shared by Investopedia, 774,725 startups were registered in the 2015 FY. Approximately 255,394 of these were failed within the two years. It means 24% of businesses failed in 18 months due to bad financial planning. Thus, we pulled out this 9-box plan in discussion with marketing leaders.
In this “9-Grid Plan”, we will define your roles and responsibilities and actions you can perform to expand your business successfully and accomplish your organizational goals. Let’s dig deep and check what this 9-Grid Plan looks like in execution.
If you are still in the development phase, you can check our 7 Proven Financial Tips For Successful Startups and Small Businesses.
9-Grid Business Financial Planning: How It Works?
This business plan will help you outline your business process – how it will generate revenue, how it will serve the customers, and many other essential steps for your organizational growth.
- Strategy
The first yet very essential part focuses on formulating an overall business strategy. This is a big thing that you and your team will follow as a roadmap of growth & success. Also, it is the only part of the 9-Grid plan that changes the least. You cannot change your financial and strategic goals every month or year. Some potential strategies include:
- New markets to land into
- New products or services to launch
- New audience to target
For instance, if you’re a logistic firm that provides transportation services to small businesses, you can think about introducing other specialized services or joining a chain or retail store.
- Talent and human resources
You might have a small business setup, but if you’ve decided to expand into a five or six-figure operation, you will need to recruit people.
At first, it might not seem important, but the more your business grows, the bigger your workload will be. It will make it complicated to handle on your own, and you will need to hire people—contractors, temporary workers, or permanent employees.
If you think why cannot grow with the existing team, look at the reasons below:
- The marketing manager who once handled all your regional marketing with a low budget might not accomplish the same results with a huge multi-channel campaign.
- The operation manager who helped streamline business functions early might go mad with managing four or five different teams.
- The designer who designed your websites might fail to develop your website or software to align with the emerging business operations and needs.
- Financials
An often overlooked part can be turned so scary for many entrepreneurs. Financials are the lifeblood that ensures your business runs smoothly. However, if you want your financials to grow as your business grows, you will have to follow a few steps.
You must start with detecting loopholes in your business and fix them for steady financial growth. But, consider the things that affect your financial growth:
- Nature of Business. …
- Size of Business. …
- Production Technique. …
- Promotion Cost. …
- Economic Social Environmental. …
- Time Taken in Sales of Production. …
- Terms of Purchase and Sale. …
- Business Cycle.
- Products
A product could be anything—software, an application, a service, or physical software. Whatever it is—your product always acts as an extension of your strategy. It represents your customers, their engagement, and their experience. Moreover, your product will continue serving in this way to the ever-emerging market.
If you wonder how to plan your business finances smoothly, we will recommend improving your customer experience and adding more value to your business. After all, these things will count at the end of the day.
Remember this 9-grid plan is to strengthen your plans. Therefore, always have big goals out there—and don’t be afraid of stretching them. The bigger your goals will be, the more your efforts will be to accomplish them.
- Marketing & Growth
More often than not, online business owners are likely to make considerable investments in marketing. Though it makes sense, no business will take off without a great marketing strategy.
In this 9-grid business development plan, marketing & growth are just two pieces of the puzzle. You put them in the right place, and the big picture will appear soon.
Talking about the most reliable marketing techniques, Search Engine Journal recommends leveraging Search Engine Optimization and paid marketing tactics, including PPC and social media marketing, to make the most out of your campaign.
Also, ask yourself:
- How to encourage people to buy more products?
- How do you get people to buy products or services frequently?
- How to convince customers for a referral program?
You might have stuck for a few seconds to answer these questions, and that’s where marketing specialists will help you.
- PR and Brand
Often considered a part of marketing strategy, PR and branding are two different corners of a growth-focused marketing bucket.
The branding part mainly focuses on your brand image, the way you represent your brand among the general audience. On the other hand, PR focuses on marketing your brand through press releases and other media marketing tactics.
PR doesn’t necessarily have to be online content. It can be distributed through videos, audio, radio, podcasts, or other evolving marketing tools.
- Tech Needs
Being in an ever-emerging online world demands the best strategies to stay ahead in the competition. In the online world where everyone works hard to get an edge, you must think about changing your virtual landscape.
In this bucket of a 9-grid plan, you will need to find different ways to grow your business leveraging technologies around you and your customers.
Whether you run an eCommerce store based on Shopify or if you’re a freelancer with a simple website, there are always some ways to transform your digital space through refining your tech needs.
- Partnerships
You can never accomplish your organizational goals alone, or if you do, they won’t be of any recognition. You will always need to partner with other businesses to tap into new audiences and segments to grow faster.
If you wonder how to plan your business finances smoothly, associate with your ideals, and it will simplify your approach dramatically.
- Milestones
In this 9-grid plan, this is the last yet most essential aspect. We would like you to think about how many customers you have, the revenue you generated, your rating, and anything else you want to quantify.
You may want to set different milestones for each of these, and that’s important as well. For instance, you may want to double your revenue or grow your team from 20 to 200 in a specific period.
That’s all that you need to do to develop a roadmap. Now, you just need to stick to that plan, and success is guaranteed with this 9-grid business plan.
