Understanding the key components that make up a successful business plan is the biggest favor you can do for yourself and your law firm. Here are the seven components you need to identify to get your business plan headed in the right direction:
- WHAT: Ask yourself what you do and come up with a clear definition. Understanding your firm’s purpose is the first step in modeling the rest of your business,
- WHO: Identify who you are doing this for. Research your target market by looking at demographic, psychographic, and socio-economic details. Doing this can help you find your target market and meet them where they are instead of trying to get them to come to you.
- WHO ELSE: Understand your competition through a competitive analysis or simply identify who your competition actually is.This can include fellow attorneys and even websites and online services such as LegalZoom where the public can help themselves.
- OBJECTIVE: Figure out what it is that you hope to accomplish. Clearly understanding your objectives allows you to map out your firm’s goals.
- GOALS: Whatever your goals are, make sure that they are measurable and realistic. Don’t set your firm up for failure.
- STRATEGIES: Your strategies state how you will accomplish your goals and gives you a framework for coming up with strong tactics to help achieve them.
- METRICS: Looking at your metrics helps you know if what you are doing is actually working for you. Additionally, your metrics show you what isn’t working and lets you know where you need to make some
Having a business plan is critical to building a successful practice. By honing in on these key components, and dedicating time to clearly identify each one, you can develop a plan that will help bring your firm more success.
