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Create Professional Business Plans with LivePlan

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (2)
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

[Quick disclosure – Palo Alto Software, the makers of LivePlan, also make Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing, which I re-sell as part of my business. I don’t sell LivePlan or make any money from LivePlan – I just like the folks at Palo Alto and think they make great products]

Our friends at Palo Alto software continue to work on making it easier for business owners to create and maintain professional business plans with their latest offering, LivePlan.

Live plan is delivered as a web application, so rather than having to buy and install software on your computer, you can access your business plan from any computer with an internet connection. No more worrying about whether you have Mac or PC compatible software.

Another great benefit of being web based, one which I think is particularly important for business planning, is it makes collaboration much easier. You work with your peers, employees, and advisors all in one place. No more sending plans back and forth via email and wasting time making sure you have the latest version. LivePlan allows you to set various permission levels, so you can control who sees what.

You can also add as many guests (people who can read but not edit the plan) as you like for free. Guests do not count as a user for licensing purposes. Invitations can even be sent from your smartphone, so you can invite your advisors on the fly.

Just like Business Plan Pro, LivePlan comes with hundreds of sample plans that you can use as a starting point for creating your own plan.

The basic subscription is $19.95/mo which includes 2 users and 3 active plans. Updgrade options are available if you need additional users and/or active plans.

Here is a short video overview of LivePlan

For more information, visit the LivePlan website.

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Categories : Software, Uncategorized
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Sales and Marketing Plan Pro from Palo Alto Software

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Disclosure – I am part of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network. Duct Tape Marketing and Palo Alto Software are Strategic partners. The marketing plan piece of this tool is based on the Duct Tape Marketing methodology. Long story short – I’m biased – but I’m not getting paid to write this.

The folks at Palo Alto Software are launching a new product today called Sales and Marketing Pro. This software builds upon their Marketing Plan Pro software – expanding to include more help for managing your sales planning and execution. Just like Marketing Plan Pro, Sales and Marketing pro combines great planning software with plenty of deals from “best in class” strategic partners who provide the tools you need to go from plan to implementation.

Sales and Marketing ProHere is the dashboard (click on the image for an expanded view) that you see when you launch Sales and Marketing Pro. The dashboard is divided into 3 main sections:

  1. Sales
  2. Marketing
  3. Toolbox

Sales

This section contains software tools to help manage your sales process. If you need a customer and contact management system, Palo Alto has teamed up with Batchbook to give you six month’s access to their social crm program for free. You’ll also receive a free, customized training session to help get you up and running.

Setting and managing sales appointments is one area where it is easy to spend a lot of time better spent elsewhere. That’s why I was happy to see that Sales and Marketing Pro includes a 3 month free trial for Appointment-Plus. Once you start setting appointments without the back and forth of multiple emails to find a mutually agreeable time, you’ll wish you had used this service sooner.

Want to focus on your sales forecast and milestones without having to create a complete marketing plan? The Sales Plan section allows you to do just that by breaking out the sales related sections of the full marketing plan software.

Marketing

Sales and Marketing Pro still helps you create a Duct Tape Marketing style marketing plan just like you can with Marketing Plan Pro. Start with the Basic Marketing Plan to get up and running quickly. Later, you can change to the Standard Marketing Plan as you need to add more detail to your plan. The software is loaded with examples and audio files to guide you along the way.

In addition to the planning software, Sales and Marketing Pro includes other marketing tools to help you implement your plan. Email plays a big role in small business marketing and Sales and Marketing Pro includes offers from Vertical Response to help you with your stay-in-touch marketing campaigns. Also included is a 3 month subscription to Email Center Pro – a  very cool tool that helps you stay on your email communications with your customers. If you have more than one person that handles email accounts like “info@” or “customerservice@”, then you will want to take a look at Email Center Pro.

And if you still need a website (you have one, don’t you?), they have even included a free domain name for 1 year along with a 3 month trial website hosting account from Network Solutions.

Tool Box

The toolbox is a collection of resources that will help you implement your sales and marketing plan.

In the Sales and Marketing Library you will find a collection of articles on everything from pricing, to customer service, to creating a marketing forecast. The library also includes 2 eBooks – one about social media and one about search engine optimization. Rounding out the library, there is a special offer to purchase a copy of the Duct Tape Marketing book for only the cost of shipping.

Sales and Marketing Pro is currently selling for $99.95 which includes free shipping and a 60 day money back guarantee. Learn more on the Sales and Marketing Pro website.

Stayed tuned as I plan to have a webinar demonstrating Sales and Marketing Pro along with some giveaways of the software.

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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Plan, Small Business Marketing
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Marketing Plan Engagements–Focusing on the Right Things

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Tim Berry’s post about Business Plan Software and Business Plan Consultants really struck a chord with me. Once again, Tim took a point a view that I really believe in and expressed it much better than I.

By the way, in addition to Business Plan Pro, Tim’s company also makes a piece of software called Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing – so now you know my bias.

Tim’s post is about what he feels is the right way and the wrong way for business plan consultants to use software in a consulting engagement. Tim mentions a few reasons why experts often chose the “wrong” way. I’d like to offer a couple of other reasons, based on my experience both as a consultant and working with consultants, as to why consultants may chose the wrong way – both of which can be summarized as misplaced focus:

Focusing on billable hours – Tim’s post was about his pet peeve, and this idea that “experts sell time” is one of my pet peeves. There are lots of reasons I’m against the billable hour, but one of the biggest reasons is it tends to makes us think we should be trying to be efficient when we really should be focusing on being effective.

Being effective takes time. Teaching someone to use a tool (software) takes time. Not only to learn the tool, but to change habits as well. But, once we learn to use the tool, we become more efficient.

Ironically, rushing to get things accomplished early often leads rework, and we end up not really saving time at all. Looking back, how many time would a little patience at the beginning of a project saved time and effort in the long run?

Focusing on the plan (document) rather than the process. Along with the billable hour issue, I think this misplaced focus distorts whole customer\expert relationship. As Tim mentioned, the customer owns the business plan and the plan lives in the customers space – at least that’s how it should be.

When the focus is on billable hours and the document, the plan belongs to the expert until it is turned over to the customer for payment. The focus is on the writing, rather than the planning, testing, gathering feedback, adjusting, etc.

The roles and responsibilities tend to get mixed up in this scenario as well. Rather than working together, the expectation becomes that the expert drives the process and is responsible to “ask the right questions” until the plan is delivered. Then once the plan is delivered, the customer’s role becomes that of the editor and the critic.

Is it too bold to say these problems stem from focusing on us (consultants) vs. them (customers)? It’s easy to say we focus on our customers, but it takes effort to put that into everyday practice.

And what about when we are the customer? Are we taking the easy way out by pretending all of the responsibility belongs to the consultant?

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Categories : Marketing
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Half Price Marketing Plan – There Is A Small Catch

By Bill · Comments (0)
Monday, May 11th, 2009

This week, I’m trying to work a couple of win-win-win deals. My friends at Palo Alto software could use a few more sample marketing plans for their mplans.com web site. So here’s the deal, I’ll help you create your marketing plan in Marketing Plan Pro through my Marketing Plan Quick Start Program for half price if you agree to a few simple conditions.

Here’s the catch  – you must:

  1. Own or purchase a copy of Marketing Plan Pro.
  2. Agree to let me post your plan as a sample plan on mplans.com.
  3. Have a business in one of the industries listed below.
  • real estate
  • bar
  • night club
  • construction
  • automotive
  • day spa
  • children's products
  • education
  • training
  • wedding planning
  • music
  • event planning
  • engineering
  • restaurant
  • clothing
  • software

That’s it, easy-peasy.

I’ll only be doing one plan per industry, on a first come, first served basis.

Just give me a call, leave a comment, or drop me an email if you would like more information or want to sign up.

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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Simple Marketing Tactics That Pay Off Big

By Bill · Comments (0)
Monday, February 9th, 2009

John Jantsch is teaming up with our friends at Palo Alto Software to present a free webinar for businesses interested in taking small action steps today that will pay off big tomorrow.

Simple Marketing Tactics That Pay Off Big in a Slumping Market is a free
webinar scheduled for Wednesday, February 11th at 12 noon Central Standard Time.

John will present 7 marketing tactics that any business can and should employ
right now and in any economic climate.

For more information and to register for this event
http://www.bplans.com/fundamentals

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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Adjusting Your Attitude About Business Planning

By Bill · Comments (0)
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I recently posted about Tim Berry's new book – The Plan-As-You-Go Buinsess Plan. One of the reasons I like this book is Tim's approach to using the business plan to manage your business. Contrast this approach with the old thinking of creating a huge business plan once, because someone is making me do it, before doing any work on the business, and then never look at it again.

Tim recently posted a great video that explains the thoughts behind the second chapter, Attitude Adjustment, of his book. You can find the video here on the Plan-As-You-Go web site.

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Categories : Small Business Marketing, Software
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