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Business Planning for Contractors
A business plan is a contractor's road map at the begining of his firm's journey. The business plan is similiar to a pre-job plan. Both documents are essential in keeping wasted time and adverse events to a minimum. The reason for planning is simple, it is foolish to make up your process as you go. In other words, if you don't plan, you don't have a business, you have a job.
Business Planning is not an exciting event. Contractors want to do something now. They are action biased people who like to see something physically built every day. As we said, A business plan is similar to pre-job plan. However, pre-job planning is energizing since there is a new project to build.
Business planning does not make one's heart quiver with excitement. Since, we don't have a project to build, it becomes a very abstract, dull exercise. Hence, we have to sit quietly and think through the details of our new business.
Construction people are visually attuned. They love to see physical progress. A business plan is mostly an invisible thing. It is emotionally hard for a contractor to put one together.
For the remainder of the article, please email us at mstevens@stevensci.com. To order the book, go to Stevensci.com, Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble, Browns Stationer's (UK), Reiters, Walden Books and other fine book retailers. You will find a section in the book outlining "Effective Business Planning" . Remember, Stevensci.com bundles the book with 60 Excel Templates and an On-Line Course, a solid value.
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Matt Stevens is a management consultant who works only with construction contractors. He has performed training and business consultation for the contracting community since 1994. Matt can be reached at mstevens@stevensci.com.
search terms: Pre-construction, post-mortem, lessons learned, Construction Contracting, Working Smart, Profit, Cashflow
Posted by Matt Stevens at August 13, 2005 6:55 AM
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Comments
Thanks for this great post. You've got some really good info in your blog.
Adam Butler
Posted by: Adam Butler at February 8, 2006 1:03 PM
Great reading, keep up the great posts.
Peace, JiggaDigga
Posted by: JiggaDigga at April 7, 2006 1:02 AM