It doesn't matter if you're talking about product development, marketing, or finance all business strategy requires asking some variation of seven basic questions.
We've put together a list of online and in-person resources to help you find the people, tools, and templates to help you develop a business plan and create a business strategy.
Some of the resources do require a small fee, but they're all budget-friendly and most are free. (Yes, I said the F-word.)
An 8-week course to help you target customers, develop business strategy, and adopt tools and processes to streamline your business now.
Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) is an official SBA partner for providing free and budget-friendly classes and workshops. In addition to live events, CWE also offers online learning and business mentoring.
NOTE: While most of the programs are held in their Nashua office, CWE frequently runs workshops and classes in locations throughout the state.
The NH District of the Small Business Administration (NHSBA) has online tools, articles, and links to partner resources. As the guarantors of SBA loans, the NHSBA is actively working to promote small business lending to women and minority-owned businesses in the Granite State.
NOTE: All of the people I've interacted with from the NHSBA have been very helpful and professional. If they can't help you, they can usually suggest a partner organization who can.
NHSBDC offers a large variety of free online tools and classes, and budget-friendly in-person mentoring & business advice.
6/19/19 After many complaints about the local SCORE chapter I attempted to try the mentoring program myself, and it was a disaster. There are too many other options to waste time and energy on SCORE mentors who are either out of touch with modern business or simply fail to show up. See 3 Strikes and You're Out - Why I Gave Up on SCORE
The SWOT matrix is an old school business tool for quickly reviewing a business product, idea, or status.
The standard matrix uses a basic 4-box grid with strengths and weaknesses on the top and opportunities and threats on the bottom. There are many versions of this classic tool online, but the basic bare-bones version is all you need to take a quick snapshot of anything from sales & marketing, to product development, customer service, or even your company's billing process.
We all know the importance of planning when it comes to starting a business, but why would you want to waste your time writing a fifty-page business plan when a one-page snapshot will do?
We love this planning model so much that we've expanded it to include versions for marketing, production, and revenue planning and have plans to build versions for website planning and product development.
