DocSnaps has made it into the finals of the Pan IIT Business Plan competition to be held in Chicago in October. In writing a business plan for investment it is always good to access the most recent and pertinent resources for your industry. Here are 5 great resources to help you get started.

1. Guy’s business plan advice – Why write a business plan? It is important to answer this question first before putting pen to paper.

2. Sequoia Capital’s business plan outline – This provides an outline of what makes a business sustainable and the company fundable. It also includes an outline of what to include in the business plan.

3. Market research – A general idea of the size of the market is essential to get started. This is a great starting point with statistics and numbers to give you a general idea of the market.  Other resources for qualitative research – BizShark, Crunchbase.

4. Competitive Strategy – A viable business is all about competing. If the idea is good then it safe to assume that somebody is already working on it. And to be successful a strategy has to be devised that makes you more successful than the other. Micheal Porter a university professor at Harward Business School helps you to analyze competition and create a successful strategy. Without a great strategy even the best business idea will fail.

5. Financials Basics – It is important to understand the basics of startup finance and take into account all startup expenses. A business might be profitable but for investors to be interested they would want a healthy return on investment for their risk. Your financial plan should provide general trends and ratios which helps answer these questions.

Biz plan competitions are always wrong – According to Seth Godin pundits are always wrong at predicting the future. So do not worry if your biz plan does not win any competitions.

Wall street Journal blog – http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2009/01/29/how-small-businesses-can-avoid-a-tax-audit/

Specifically:

- Keep organized records and receipts. Obvious, right? But it can’t be stressed enough. Messy records look like somebody’s trying to hide something or may have forgotten to document that one big payment. Use an accounting program that allows for double-entry bookkeeping, and keep very neat records and receipts.

It is vital to store your financial records (either as paper or images).  Every small receipt matters.  And the IRS does accept PDF images as proof.

An old friend of mine who started life as a techie is now a successful salesperson.  Listening to some of the challenges I faced he give me some pointers about sales that addresses my engineering background.

TIPS

1. People are resistant to change – The value you deliver should be compelling enough for them to adopt it.
2. Talk to the person for whom your product/service makes a big difference
3. Target the solution to the right audience – You might have several great features which you personally like, but you should highlight those that would solve the unique problems faced by that prospective client.
4. Quantify, measure, re-evaluate, and re-invent your sales strategy – In many ways sales is like an engineering process.
5. Listen and don’t challenge – Techies tend to argue and get into information/IQ wars which is detrimental to the sales process.

One or more of these tips were able to solve all my problems.

Problem 1: I did a presentation to a company which was very eager to use DocSnaps.  But after the presentation, not only were there no questions, but it took me an additional month to close the sale.

Solution 1: Always start a presentation by asking the audience about some of the problems they face, and get an idea of what is important to them.  If possible tailor your presentation to different segments.  In my case I was gloating over a particular feature of our product that was perceived as a threat to the job security of some people in the audience.

Problem 2: An accountant who was very interested in our solution only had a few of his customers use our product even after 2 months of usage.  I was expecting a lot more would sign on…

Solution 2: The problem was not that the accountant was not interested enough, it was just that the message was getting diluted when he spoke to his clients.  I was not selling to the right person.  The people who were making the buying decision in this case were his clients.  Eventually I did a presentation for his clients specifically geared towards their needs with a lot more success.

Problem 3: A company called hubspot was blogged by Techcrunch which has a following of close to 1 million readers, in May, 2008.  As expected there was a surge in website visitors to hubspot.  But how many of these did they convert to paying customers? 2.

Check out their blog.

Solution 3: Was it because 1 – It was not compelling enough? 2 – Techcrunch readers were not the right audience? 3 – Techcrunch did not highlight the right features on their website (this happens when a 3rd party such as an independent blog or newspaper reports on you) ? The company did some analysis and concluded that TC readers were not their target market.  The solution here is that now they know what to expect (or not) if they decide to target websites similar to TC.

For a Web 2.0 company, the way to incorporate these sales tips is by effectively communicating with customers through public facing channels like the website, blogs, forums, and engaging them in candid dialog.