Business Planning Specialists Orangeville ON

In Step 3 of " 10 Steps to Open for Business ," answering the “Defining Dozen” questions is vital to writing a good business plan . The Sloan brothers describe them in detail in StartupNation: Open for Business , their book. Here is the fifth of those questions, in a special book excerpt:

How big is the market and how big will you grow? Exploring the market and understanding the growth potential for your idea is essential. To get a handle on this, you have to understand the demographics of people in your target market . Distill those people into categories of low level of need, medium level of need, and high level of need for your offering. You can actually construct a target, like the archery target you may have tried to hit as a kid (the one with the concentric circles). Except the “bull’s-eye” in this case is your sweet spot—the target market that will be the focus of your initial marketing and sales efforts . Once you’ve penetrated that inner circle, you can grow bigger by broadening your offerings and your marketing and sales efforts to include the people with a medium level of need and so on.

To get a fix on the degree of need that may exist for what you’re going to offer, try to figure out which market is easiest to penetrate. Is the market growing? If so, by how much? Can you figure out if the market is already saturated, mature, or shrinking? We find that a great deal of the information you’ll need can be readily gathered over the Internet.

Author: The Sloan Brothers

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