milestones

[gib99]

Hello,

I'm writing a business plan and I'm filling out the section on milestones. Obviously, getting my first client is one of the major ones. I'm not sure it should be the first, but it's definitely one of the major ones.

How long is reasonable to expect to get my first client? I'm in the software business. Not sure if I'm going to start as a self-employed contractor or a small business with a staff of about 4 or 5. Either way, I'm going to hire a marketing expert to help me bring in clients. In that case, how long would it usual take to find my first client?

Besides that, what other kinds of milestones are good to put into a business plan?

Thanks.

[vangogh]

It's hard to say when you'll have your first clients, because it depends on so many thing. My first few clients were either people I knew or people I met through someone I knew. I tried all sorts of different things to gain more clients. Some worked within a few months. Others never worked at all.

How good is the marketing person you plan to hire? How much money will you be able to spend on advertising? On your marketing person? How much time can you put in to finding clients? The more you put into finding clients, the sooner you'll likely have your first client.

I don't recall milestones being part of my business plan. That sounds more like something you would include to keep people focused on executing your plan. I'm sure there are different approaches to writing a business plan though. For me the plan was really to help myself figure out how my business would make money. I wrote things like where I would try to find clients and what reason I could offer them to hire me, but I don't remember attaching specific times or milestones for when anything would happen.

[Bobjob]

I believe around half small businesses don't make it five years, so I would say that is an accomplishment.

When your business beings supporting itself (becomes profitable) is a big one.

[Harold Mansfield]

I say immediately. May sound unrealistic, but if you get comfortable with setting a future time frame you'll find yourself getting complacent because in your mind you still have "3 weeks left" of whatever you set. Getting money in the cash register should be the first priority and it should happen from day 1 and be your main focus at all times.

I'm with VG. I never set a milestone to give myself time to get customers. I spent every waking moment on getting customers.

[Paul]

I say immediately. May sound unrealistic, but if you get comfortable with setting a future time frame you'll find yourself getting complacent because in your mind you still have "3 weeks left" of whatever you set. Getting money in the cash register should be the first priority and it should happen from day 1 and be your main focus at all times.

I'm with VG. I never set a milestone to give myself time to get customers. I spent every waking moment on getting customers.

Milestones can be part of a bus plan, but they are just indicators of some event that indicates some accomplishment along a longer term path. Basic business plans don’t need them like Vangough mentioned. As Harold said getting customers is not a milestone. In a singular service type business it might be hard to identify real milestones other than more customers and revenue. But those are really projections and goals.

It would make more sense for a multi stage plan to include milestones. Designing , manufacturing and launching a new product might include milestones in a plan. IE: Milestone 1) Obtain Patent 2) Complete production engineering 3) Contract for distribution etc. etc. But you can see how that can be conflated with and overlap the action plan and other parts of the plan.

If you are following a “template” business plan don’t think that you have to fill in every blank. You don’t need to be repetitive in your plan. I often consolidate parts of a plan depending on the situation. My advice is unless there are very definitive events that must occur and are critical to the plan you can skip the milestones and just stick with an action plan.

[gib99]

Thanks everyone for your awesome advice.

And yes, I get that these business plans are not fill-in-the-blanks. I'm kind of treating it as fill-in-the-blank for now because my purpose isn't to write up a real business plan, but just to research and understand the concepts of some example business plans and to practice writing up something similar in a mock business plan of my own. The business world is new to me and I want to understand the basic.

This forum has been really good for that so far; lots of really great advice. Thanks!