Whatever your business is you need to offer these extra discounted upsells to each and every customer that walks through your doors or makes a purchase from you online.

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Mr. Tucker is the Associate Director of http://www.Indocquent.com, an online resource and social network, where you can advertise your business, products or services without pay-per-click prices or auction fees.

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"I like thinking of possibilities. At any time, an entirely new possibility is liable to come along and spin you off in an entirely new direction. The trick, I've learned, is to be awake to the moment." By: Doug Hall: Professional inventor and idea guru.

If you are thinking about starting a business or maybe have an idea that you think is great and you can turn it into a business, there is no question you need to get your thoughts down on paper.

This is normally done in the form of a business plan. However, most people think business plan and immediately cringe and start fearing it is beyond their means.

I like to watch the show ”The Big Idea” hosted by Danny Deutsch on CNBC. It is a very motivational an educational show about getting you on the right track in starting a business or becoming a successful entrepreneur. In one of their most recent episodes they were talking to some people that, yes, did have a business plan, but it was not the traditional one that you might imagine.

It did not have all the bells and whistles of a Madison Avenue type of plan, but then again most business plans do not. What they all do need to have is your thoughts written down in a clear and concise format that you can understand with information that is pertinent to what you are trying to accomplish.

For one person on the show, her plan was simply a drawn out diagram of how she could get her product from point A (the starting point) to point B (into the customer’s hands as a sale). Your plan may require more work, or then again it may require less.

I have put together some questions that you need to ask yourself as budding entrepreneur. Use these questions as a guideline for your plan, or even the plan itself. Most importantly, answer these questions honestly and thoroughly and you will soon see a clear vision of what you want to achieve come into light.

MISSION STATEMENT
Come up with a mission statement. Before you do anything write down your mission statement. In other words what is the mission you are trying to accomplish with your product or service?

YOUR BUSINESS IDEA
Write down your business idea. If you are selling a new product write down what it is.

NEED
Write down what need your product or service addresses. Whatever it is you sell it must fill a need otherwise no one would buy it. Define the need that it fills.

SALES AND PROMOTIONS
Define how exactly you are going to sell and/or promote your business. Are you going to be a brick and mortar storefront or sell and advertise over the web? Don't worry about financials of either right now. In this process we are trying to define your business’s purpose and who your customers are.

DIFFERENTIATE
Write down what makes your product or service different from all of the other similar products out there.

THE MARKETPLACE
This step will require some research. I recommend going to the library and asking a librarian to help you out. In this step you need to define how big your market is for your product or service and how much your customer is willing to pay for it. Based on this information define how big your market can grow. If you sell women's suits that appeal to the 35 to 45 year old crowd, you can obviously come up with your growth and market numbers.

KNOW YOUR ROLE
Define what your role will be in your company. Are you in sales? Marketing? Accounting? Maybe you are all of the above. You need to define your role.

YOUR STAFF
Will anybody be helping you? Do you need to hire additional help? If your new business will require help from others here is where you will write that down. Define what you need and what their roles will be.

INCOME
In this step you need to write down how your customers will pay you and based on your market research under “The Marketplace”, how much your product or service will cost your customer.

HOW MUCH
This also requires some research. How much money will you need to get your product based or service based business off the ground? Write down everything it will take to get your product from design, through production and into the customer’s hands. If it is a service, define the cost of getting this service to the customer, the tools you use and so on.

HOW ARE YOU PAYING FOR THIS
Define where your startup money is coming from. Now that you know how much you need, where is it coming from? Friends, family, banks, savings etc.

SUCCESS
Define your success. In order to know whether or not you are succeeding, you need to define what it means to you to be successful. If your goal is to sell a million dollars in suits, write that down. Maybe you want to sell 1,000 suits, write that down. Whatever success is to you, then you need put it into the plan.

MILESTONES
Write down your milestones. Every business has a milestone. Whether it is getting your first customer, making your first dollar or selling your first product, these are all type of milestones. Date each milestone and that will hold you accountable to your plan.

Answer each section above thoroughly and you will have the plan you need to succeed. Just remember to revisit your plan on a daily basis and update it with new information that you find. This will keep your plan up to date and current.

By: M. Podlesny

About the Author:
M. Podlesny is a freelance writer for http://www.Indocquent.com, an online resource and social network, where you can advertise your business, products or services without pay-per-click prices or auction fees.

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"Until you can apply the information that you’ve learned, then and only then will you be rewarded." - Andy Fuehl: Founder, Wealth Builders of America.

I am sure you like me have spent a lot of time for your business doing many hours of research to decrease the chance of failure. Now the fact is at some point in your business career, if you haven’t done so already, you will hit failures and roadblocks. Do not let that discourage you. I will get to more failure in another article. For now I want to concentrate on the importance of research, how to do it, and show you that unless you do something with it, you won’t be rewarded.

As the quote above by Andy Fuehl translates to, all of the information you gather will do you no good unless you actually do something with it. I have seen so many people in both their business and personal lives, gather a plethora of information to help better them, and then do nothing with it.

Let’s start with information gathering and some ways you can look for what you need and how it pertains to the business world.

Step one is to take the time to sit down and write out exactly what information you need and the questions that you need answered. For example, let’s say you want to start a business on selling cookies. Now that you know what you want to do, write a list of information that you will need when you start your research. I do not know much about the baking industry, but a quick question that comes to mind is what is a recipe or recipes that you will need?

Continue coming up with every possible question that you need answered to see if your idea of selling cookies could be a profitable one. Once you have all of your questions written down, it is time to start answering them with a little research.

Start with the internet. I know this sounds obvious, but there is more to it than that. Although I would start with Google and type in search keywords, do not let Google be the end all for your search engines. Use other search engines such as Yahoo!, Lycos and Ask.com. You’d be surprised as the different results each brings back.

After you go through searching that method visit some business oriented websites such as CNBC, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine or the Wall Street Journal. Contact people from those sites and ask them some questions. They will gladly help or point you in the right direction.

Keep in mind the questions that you need answered are important. The more information that you have increases your chances of success and good decisions.

Visit your local library. If you are stumped on information or need to expand on some information that you already have, visiting your local library and working with the professionals there is a huge benefit. The people that work at the library are highly trained in research. You want them on your team. If you are fortunate like me and live in a town where you can contact your librarian through their website then you definitely want to find out how. Your librarian is a resource you should not be working without.

Finally, do not be afraid to ask someone already in your business or has retired from your business. In our example we would visit a local bakery or the bakery shop in our grocery store or super market. Ask them for some advice. You’d be surprised as to the help they would give you. They are experts and I have found in the past, experts love sharing their experience.

Now that you have all of your information and are an expert in the field in which you are pursuing, if you put all that information you just gathered into a big binder and put it on top of your refrigerator to never look at it again, do you think you would ever get off the ground? Of course not. That would be ludicrous and unrealistic. This gets us back to the point Andy Fuehl made in his quote, that you can only be rewarded if you do something with that information.

Now you need to do something with the information you have just gathered. Ask yourself what is it you want to do? If you are trying to start a business, then visit the people at score.org. The free counselors there can help move you even further toward your end goal of success.

By: Bruce A. Tucker

About the Author:
Mr. Tucker is the Associate Director of http://www.Indocquent.com, an online resource and social network, where you can advertise your business, products or services without pay-per-click prices or auction fees.

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