your customer, your competitor, your geographic location and the weather for that location, the demographics of the area you service such as residential or commercial, the financial demographics of that area, if it is a low-income area or thriving businesses, and, of course, you help decide your market. There may be other factors, as well, and if you have lived there a long time, you know what they are.
YOUR BUSINESS PLAN You often heard me tell the story of my wife and me going away for a few days at the end of the year to discuss business for the next year. I can’t tell you how important it is to have some type of idea what you plan on doing with your business the next year.
YOU DISCUSS THINGS LIKE: 1. Are you going to add trucks,
YOUR VALUE
or delete trucks? 2. Are you going to hire any new people? 3. Is there anyone you should let go? 4. Are you going to add any new business? 5. Are you going to open up new locations? 6. Are you going after new contracts?
Define what makes your company more valuable than your competitors. The objective is to set yourself apart from the competitors by defining what you do differently than others, how you look compared to others, and what makes the people that work for you different than others. Maybe they are bilingual or have more training or wear uniforms. You want to do whatever you can to show value in your company. You would be surprised at the little things you can do to make your company look good.
RESOURCES Once you have identified your market, you need to know what resources are necessary for you to meet your customers’ needs. A successful business uses its resources effectively. When my wife and I laid out our business plan for the year, we knew exactly what was need to get the job done. It might be equipment, or people, training our staff or getting a website, but regardless of what was needed, there were many resources available to meet our needs. The services www.danmessina.com now offers, such as website development and SEO along with consulting, provide you top-notch services at a price that can’t be beat. We used a lot of contract labor just to avoid expense while selecting the professionals we needed to get the job done. Sometimes you throw money away by using non-productive people or even doing it yourself when it would have been more productive using different resources.
www.towprofessional.com | Volume 2 • Issue 6 | Tow Professional
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