Generally Business people do business based on their needs. They workout their inflow based on the required outflow. The true Business people will not ask how much I have to do or how much we can do but their focus will be how much the market can give!
Sometimes we wonder, even when there are many players for the same line of products and services, the total market share of all the brands together is not 100%. Always there is a place for new players and place for new approach and strategies.
Going from known to unknown is the progress, have a chart with all the known attributes and score your business for each attribute as well to other businesses in the line of your industry, do not worry much about the accuracy of data, start with the available data, you can keep improving yourself as you get to know the new facts and data.
Rate yourself and your competitors for the attributes you set, find who is at the top and how many ahead of you and how many follow you in the scorecard, the business next to you shows the direction, the business at the top shows you the destination, to go beyond.
When you write your business plan do not write based on your capabilities and available resources, but plan to the market potential. You can do market research to know the market potential or keep growing double every 6 months and ensure the proportionate progress in the business outcome.
Basic spreadsheets are sufficient to start with for business plan and to monitor the progress. Gradually you can build the ERP system to your business based on the style of your business operation.
This is applicable to any type and any size of business, one of my client was comfortably doing the business with nominal income, once I got an opportunity to reflect the data to him to show the business potential to the market potential, his business has launched into a different orbit ever since – you too can!
