Business Plans Kit For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4. Understanding Your Business Environment

In This Chapter

• Investigating the condition and trends of your industry

• Defining your customers, including why and how they buy

• Tracking your competition

You're writing a business plan, so it's a safe bet that either you're launching a business, preparing to take an established business to new heights, or working on a business turnaround.

Whether your business is new or already established, by now you're probably clear about your business idea (see Chapter 2). Also, you've probably crafted your mission and vision statements and set goals, objectives, targets, and timelines to guide your way. (If not, see Chapter 3.)

The next step is to get real about your business environment. Today's challenging market conditions have shifted the landscape of entire industries, dramatically altering how businesses operate and how customers buy. In the current environment, even if your business sells the biggest thing since sticky notes, your product may not be enough to ensure success on its own. More than ever, you need a plan for finding customers, and for giving them a pretty compelling reason (or set of reasons) to choose your offering over competing alternatives that are available around the corner or over the Internet.

Use this chapter as you conduct a straightforward analysis of your business environment, your customers and prospective customers, your competition, the economic conditions you face, and what you have to do to move the market in your ...