How to Create a Killer Business Plan in Under Two Hours

There are plenty of ways that a business plan will add value to your business, from being able to clearly discuss your plan at networking events, to designating accountability to make sure actions get done. Creating an effective business plan doesn’t have to take days of your time or stop you from getting other tasks done. A great business plan can be developed in less than two hours using the Vision Orbit Planning Tool.

At Goliath Property Group, this tool is integral to our success. We love this tool because it is really visual and you can glance at it quickly to remind yourself what you are working towards. As partners of the business, we sit down together each year to quickly use the Vision Orbit as a framework to plan out the year ahead and the next two or three years after that.

How to use the Vision Orbit Tool

The tool is set up ready to use with a number of tabs. The first is three-year growth targets, the second is the Orbit diagram and the third contains the objectives. So this is nowhere near as cumbersome as many of the business plans you may have seen. The emphasis really is on high level strategy and to produce something visual rather than pages and pages of text.

Key business indicators

When you are deciding your key business indicators for the three-year growth targets, think about your objectives for the business, what you are trying to achieve. There are eight rows for these and anywhere between three and eight is good, any more than that is too long really. To give you an example, one of our key business indicators is sourcing fees, the fees that we are aiming to bring in from sourcing property for other investors.

Another key business indicator for us is the number of investors on our list. So we set numbers for each of these indicators, so we have a specific target. If you take a look at the Orbit Tool, it looks like a big bullseye with all of the business indicators pulling out like spokes to make a wheel. So like we said, it is really visual and you result in a snapshot that you can put up on your wall as a reminder and a motivator.

One-year objectives

In the one-year objectives we are looking at the key business indicators in more detail. So we need to outline the strategies, techniques and methods that will enable us to achieve our targets. So for example, our key business indicator of packaging fees, we are going to use AdWords and Facebook for lead generation. This section delves into the ‘how’ side of the objectives.

Accountability

Once we have all of our objectives down, we start to look at accountability. This is essential because if nobody takes accountability for an objective, or responsibility is unclear, it won’t get done. So assign people to each of the objectives and they will be responsible for that objective in meetings etc. Try to avoid going into task level and keep your Vision Orbit as high level as you can.

So that is how you can develop a killer business plan in under two hours. Just think about what you can get done in all of that extra time you can earn with the Orbit Tool!