At this time of year there is great excitement and not only in America as Super Bowl XLIV approaches. Millions of American football fans around the world ready themselves to party, meet with friends and enjoy the spectacular show that is the Super Bowl. How does this relate to your business? Well I could take the easy way out and say buy advertising during the Super Bowl, but how many companies can afford the prices? However and more importantly I am focussing this article on new businesses and smaller companies and what they can learn.

At the start of the football season all teams prepare themselves with the hope, and for some the expectation, that they will reach the Super Bowl. Teams build their plans for the coming season, what players will be in the squad, what positions they will play, how they will train, what their diet will be and what plays they will run. As the season progresses tactics change, plays are altered, players get injured. However what the coaches are doing is following their plan, reviewing the results from the plan and then making amendments to the plan to bring the results back on track. Some coaches and teams do this better than others and they are the teams that progress further, two teams ultimately make it to the Super Bowl, one to become champions.

How is this similar to running your business?

Well, if you don't have a plan you don't have a business. When you start up or indeed are running your business you need to have a plan as to how you will run and grow your business. What products or services you will sell to the market, how will you market these products, what sort of infrastructure do you need to support the business e.g. staff, systems, facilities, how will you get paid, who are your target customers and how do you target them? In addition you will need to plan your forecast revenues against your forecast costs (fixed and variable) and from a cashflow point of view monitor these continually. As you can see from a game plan point of view in running your business you are doing nothing different to a coach running his football team. The question is do you have a plan? Do you monitor it? Do you review your plan and make changes to it to keep your business on track?

If you do this already then congratulations, if you don't then how do you know what you have to do day to day and month to month and more importantly are you successful? All of our businesses will not do the equivalent of winning the Super Bowl however it would be nice to be recognised as a challenger.