Do you have a Professionally Written Business Plan? Congratulations, you are in a small minority. And if you have a Professional Business Plan, do you use it? And have you looked at it in the last few months? If the answer to these questions is yes, you need to read no further.
However, most business owners who go through the trouble to partner with a (Scam) Business Plan Expert have left it languishing on their bottom shelf, gathering dust!
Taking the time to engage the services of a Business Plan Expert will pay for itself many times over. The Business Plan Expert will force you to think about your business (whether a startup or an existing company). A Professional Business Plan will help your business get off to a great start and stay on track and will decrease your chances of making one of many fatal mistakes that can happen in business.
To make a Business Plan work in your business, you need an experienced Business Plan Expert to drive it, NOT a Template and NOT a Con Artist.
But, if, like most so-called Business Plan Experts in South Africa, they only use a ‘Business Plan in a Box’ or ‘Business Plan Template’ that they want you to buy, don’t expect them to tell you this. Posing as a Business Plan Consultant and using Business Plan Software to churn our hundreds of business plans is the easiest way to make money.
No less than 5 so-called Business Plan Creators in South Africa uses a combination of LivePlan, Business Plan Pro, and other Business Plan Software to write their clients’ Business Plans. For as little as R200 per month, they have access to hundreds of US/European-based Business Plan Templates. So, if you pay them R7,000 for a Business Plan, they will access a Template, change a few words here and there, update the Template-driven financials and present you with something they call Unique and Bespoke. What a business! That is R7,000 profit for a day or two’s work.
That is why so many fly-by-night Business Plan Consultants enter the market. The saddest is that prospective clients don’t know this at the first engagement. Most of these scam Business Plan Consultants have the right websites, use the right terminology, and make empty promises.
Most startup entrepreneurs look for a quick fix to a mammoth Business Plan problem.
A funder like IDC, Business Partners, SEFA or a private investor asked them for a Business Plan. With an already limited budget, paying R7,000 for a promised (tongue in cheek) amazing Business Plan will do the trick. Until the same entrepreneur realised that an investor would laugh them out of a room when presenting this hogwash.
R0 in funding for the entrepreneur and lost credibility and R7,000 for the scam Business Plan Consultant.
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And a Business Plan is not a quick fix. To be effective, you can’t just hand it to someone else.
It requires you to put in some effort. Not what a consultant wants to tell you. Once owners have prepared their “fill in the blanks” plan, they expect it to transform their business overnight just by its mere existence. But it doesn’t, so the plan is left and forgotten.
We have seen numerous examples where clients come to us and show us the work of these scam artists – who are based at our doorstep in South Africa. Some of them don’t even make all the changes on the templates they use… leaving different company names in, forgetting to change the currency from US$ to Rand, using US English and not SA English, etc.
That’s the beauty of being a scam Business Plan Consultant.
You go to bed at night; your bank accounts are heavier than yesterday. The client you conned go to bed unhappy, poorer, and has a tarnished reputation, knowing very well no investor would give them a 2nd chance at submitting their Business Plan.
Business Plans do work, but you have to make them work. You have to ignore the cheap Consultants and do your due diligence. It is not a once-off exercise.
Beware of these so-called Business Plan Writers that steal your money. Since the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, we have seen a drastic increase in clients coming to JTB Consulting to redo these Affordable Business Plans they received from the cheap alternatives.
Business Planning is a real soul-searching exercise for the business owner. A journey that a reputable and experienced Business Plan Writer will guide you through.
Need a Business Plan? Contact the Leading Business Plan Experts in South Africa [Click Here]
Don’t gloss over the flaws in your business. You will only be kidding yourself. Even if you prepare your Business Plan yourself (without a Business Plan Specialist), get someone else involved to keep you honest! Looking at examples of what others have done can help, but your business will have different strengths and weaknesses and operate in a different marketplace. And lastly, make sure any off-the-shelf product you choose will show you how to implement your Business Plan into your business.
Business Planning is not an easy process. It takes time and commitment. It is literally like writing a mini-MBA thesis. You don’t just do it once. But unfortunately, this is not what business owners want to hear and what most Business Plan Consultants won’t tell you because it might cost them a sale.
But the rewards from a well-implemented Business Plan are worth many times your investment.
