Consulting Seminars Sample Business Plan

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Consulting Seminars Business Plan

Executive Summary

Seminars is a focused seminar company that offers a powerful combination of seminars along with the software to make them useful. It is being founded in Eugene, OR. It will offer business plan seminars and business plan software together.

1.1 Mission

Seminars in business planning and related subject areas offer their participants an accelerated learning environment including both tools and the know-how to use them. This is a focused educational experience that short-cuts normal business schools with the fundamental knowledge required, in a practical setting. The business provides a comfortable living for its owners, fair compensation to employees, and a creative, healthy work environment.

1.2 Keys to Success

• Repeat business with corporate customers.
• Seminar-oriented sales and marketing to generate people in the seats.
• Leveraging on sales and marketing alliances.

1.3 Objectives

• Achieve cash flow self sufficiency by the end of the first year.
• Repay debt from original financing by the end of the second year.
• Provide an income for founder-owner with income growth possibilities.
• Sales of $200K in the first year.
• Sales of more than $500K by the third year.

Company Summary

Seminars is a focused seminar company that offers a powerful combination of seminars along with the software to make them useful. This company is about realizing the potential of its founder, John Doe, to develop his skills and knowledge into a viable business.

2.1 Start-up Summary

Start-up costs and initial financing are shown on the following table. John Doe will be investing $25,000 of savings and guaranteeing a loan for another $30,000 with personal assets. The Web development vendor, Designato, has agreed to develop the website for $10,000 to be paid in a year’s time. That will go on the books as an interest-free loan.

2.2 Company Locations and Facilities

Seminars will be located in Eugene, OR. Eugene is not an ideal location for a seminar business, because it is not within any major market; but local costs are lower than average, and it is striking distance from Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and of course Portland, OR. The main consideration is that the founder lives in Eugene, and this business is for his benefit.

2.3 Company Ownership

At its initial stages, Seminars is a sole proprietorship owned by John Doe, founder and president. It will be registered with the county as a fictitious business name. We will move up to incorporate as recommended by our attorney later, based on growth of the business and conditions as they arise.

Services

The founder likes public speaking, and particularly likes his hands-on seminar-and-software combinations that develop business planning by providing not just the know-how, but the tools as well, to help people in business plan better.

He’s done a lot of it. He’s given full-day business planning seminars in the U.S., Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. He’s also done them at SBDC sites in four states, and at business schools including University of Oregon, Harvard, and UC Berkeley.

We won’t use seminars to sell software. We hate the use of seminars as thinly-disguised sales pitches. Instead, we insist on bundling the software into the seminar so we can focus on the real task at hand, the tools provided, and how to get the most out of them. If we don’t have time for the full hands-on treatment, or the event calls for a more general discussion of business planning, I’ll still take the date but the discussion will be more general. We won’t include product details or a sales pitch.

We can’t teach business planning in a one-day seminar. We can, however, achieve basic familiarity with the process and the tools. We can also break down the fear. Sometimes the hardest thing about a business plan is getting started. As participants walk out of one of these sessions, they walk out armed with not just the desire to follow up and make it work for their business, but also the tools to make it happen. The software used in these seminars is very high quality and professional business and marketing planning software, each the market leader in its category: Business Plan Pro, Marketing Plan Pro, and Web Strategy Pro.

3.1 Service Description

Business Planning

We’ve done speaking and seminars on developing a business plan in more than a dozen countries, as well as all over the United States. I’ve spent more than 20 years developing business plans, writing about business plans, and developing software to help people develop business plans.

Marketing Planning

As co-authors of the book on Marketing Plans (On Target) we can take a group through the process with emphasis on real-world practical planning, with implementation built in.

Entrepreneurship

How to start your own business, business start-ups in general, managing the start-up company, the process of developing and financing a new business.

Developing a Web strategy

John Doe has been involved in a very successful Web business, with complete download store, hundreds of affiliates, revenues and profits.

3.2 Competitive Comparison

Business plan seminars run from free seminars intended to sell products or services to high-end seminars sponsored by the American Management Association and similar organizations. We don’t feel that the market is well covered. For a broader view of competition, we look at both other seminars and other competing offerings of similar tools and know-how:

• Books.
• Magazine articles.
• Classes in local junior colleges, night school, business schools.
• Stand-alone software.
• Low-end, often free entrepreneurial seminars. Some are offered by Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) for little or no money.
• Professional seminars for $100 or more.

3.3 Sales Literature

Our main sales literature is the website at www.[omitted].com. Sales literature is obsolete for our purposes, we use the website to explain and back up.

3.4 Fulfillment

Seminars presentations will only be given by true experts, either John Doe himself or substitutes with proven track record, academic background, and practical business experience. They must be good speakers and good seminar leaders. We cannot afford to have anything but the best.

Seminars should always be delivered with projection of presentation materials through a projector. Seminars more than three hours should always be delivered with at least one computer per every three participants, so they can follow along with the software. We cannot afford to compromise quality with second-rate delivery. Always the best equipment, always well prepared, well rested, and well delivered. This is vital.

3.5 Technology

Laptop and projection are absolutely essential. We’ll upgrade the technology as better becomes available. For now at least that’s enough to guarantee a minimum level.

3.6 Future Services

We will remain aware of new technologies that might lead to new services, such as the online seminar or video/CD seminar, that can be packaged and made available to our clients.

Market Analysis Summary

There are several separate markets for this kind of seminar:

1. Corporations with interest in improving the planning of groups or individuals either inside the corporation or related to the corporation. The most obvious are the larger corporations that market through separate channel entities, such as distributors selling to dealers, manufacturers selling through dealers.
2. Owners and managers of smaller- or intermediate-sized businesses.
3. Individuals looking to either start their own businesses or improve their business planning skills and knowledge.

4.1 Target Market Segment Strategy

• For the corporate market we need to focus on specific companies with specific opportunities. They should all be companies that work with independent channel points, because these are the most likely buyers. Channel development or channel marketing is the main job area for the first push.
• For small and medium businesses we need to focus on organizations that can lever our market offering: the American Management Association, for example, the AICPA, trade associations and industry associations, perhaps some magazine publishers if they survive the 2001 shakeout.
• For individuals we need to lever off organizations that cater to individuals looking to start up their own businesses: that might include SBDCs and publications, websites such as www.bplans.com, and others.

4.1.1 Market Trends

It’s hard to find businesses dedicated to developing this kind of seminar. In general, seminars are an additional revenue generator in businesses or organizations that have other major objectives. For example, seminars are developed and offered by SBDCs, the AMA, chambers of commerce. As a result, market trends are unclear. Has the development of software affected this market? We’re not sure. Larger well-organized seminar businesses have not developed.

4.1.2 Market Growth

We have no indication of market growth in this pulverized and diffuse market. No statistics are available. What we do know is that there is growth potential, and plenty of potential market.

4.1.3 Market Needs

The underlying need is accelerated learning. Developing business plans isn’t a skill people normally include in standard curricula for standard education, it is a skill considered ad-hoc, a specialized skill developed and exercised for a specialized task.

Those who don’t have time for academic learning still need to develop business plans, and the seminar gives them a chance to gain familiarity in a few hours. Combined with business plan software, they can move forward and reduce the fear, break the pattern of procrastination, and move ahead with their planning. In some market niches, seminars may serve their participants as continuing education required by professional licensors. This could be true for CPAs, for example, or attorneys.

In the large corporation context, there are additional market needs. Companies that market through channel partners need three things related to business plans:

• Business information from the channel partners about business conditions, plans, projections, and business programs.
• Consistency of numbers, definitions, business models, forecasts, and analysis.
• Useful realistic planning.
• Occasions suitable for regular meetings with events–such as business plan seminars–that can attract independent small businesses to attent those meetings. They use the meeting to announce new products, marketing programs, etc. Meetings are often held in attractive vacation locations so channel partners can combine business with vacations.

4.2 Service Business Analysis

The business plan seminar business is very diverse. It ranges from the high end, colleges and universities and some consulting companies offer serious multi-day seminars in planning and strategic planning for hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

4.2.1 Competition and Buying Patterns

• At the high end, colleges and universities and some consulting companies offer serious multi-day seminars in planning and strategic planning for hundreds and even thousands of dollars.
• There are also very serious seminar offerings from organizations such as the AMA, AICPA, etc. These tend to cost above $500.
• Useful seminars are offered as well by SBDCs, smaller colleges and universities, community colleges, and even high school night school programs. Many of these are free, or close to free.
• There are also related seminars offered by vendors of get-rich-quick schemes and multi-level marketing programs. These unfortunately add noise to the market, confuse potential participants between real value and thinly-disguised sales pitches.

4.2.2 Main Competitors

The way this business is positioned, we should try to work with our main competitors, instead of compete with them. AMA, AICPA, and business schools could be co-sponsors and allies rather than competitors. Other competition would be business plan consultants, and in a sense all low-end business plan seminars.

4.2.3 Business Participants

The business plan seminar business is very diverse. It ranges from high-end seminars lasting more than a day and costing more than $1,000, to free sales pitches intended to draw would-be entrepreneurs for the purpose of selling products.

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