One of the most popular and respected blueprints for business plan writing was laid down in "How to Write a Great Business Plan" by  Harvard Business School professor William A. Sahlman. He says a plan should be built around four components:

• The people who will be launching the business, with emphasis on any past experience and success they've had working together.
• The opportunity being pursued, meaning a full discussion of the proposed business and how it will operate.
• The context in which the opportunity is being pursued, showing an understanding of the marketplace and economic realities that will be confronted.
• The risks and rewards that will be run and reaped as the opportunity is pursued.

Sahlman identifies specific questions the plan should address regarding the people and opportunity and offers tips on how to realistically demonstrate risk and reward. Print and electronic reprints of the article can be purchased from the Harvard Business Review's Web site.

Once a new business is up and running, the business plan morphs into a strategic plan. Think of it like this: A business plan gets you going; a strategic plan keeps you going. If  the plan is to be useful on an ongoing basis, it must be revised regularly to account for changes in the operating environment. It can also be more streamlined than the full-blown business plan that preceded it.

So:

• Drop the rhetoric aimed at outsiders, including the executive summary and elaborate discussions of the management team.
• Reduce the operating, marketing and finance plans to outline form.

The plan should be updated at least once a year and take into account the business' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This self-examination should be unstinting.

Finally, the updated plan should include quantitative and qualitative goals and a strategy for achieving them — in other words, what gets done when and by whom.

Don't make the mistake of thinking your business plan can be shelved once you've secured funding and launched your business. To do that is to ignore one of the most powerful planning tools you have at your disposal. Of course, to have lasting value a plan must be put together properly in the first place. A good plan incorporates two key characteristics:

• A  plan must be realistic and accurately reflect the business to be launched and the environment in which it will operate. Exercises in fantasy serve no useful purpose, either when you're trying to secure start-up capital or later on.
• A plan must be mutable, able to change as rapidly as the environment it's attempting to address.

It's this second aspect that makes a plan useful in all phases of preparation, whether month-to-month or year-to-year. Just remember, your marketplace isn't static and your plan shouldn't be either.

Motivating and empowering employees to deliver good service isn't enough. As the boss, you've got to stay on top of the process. Do this by:

• Talking to your customers. Go where the action is. Look customers in the eye and ask them for their honest feedback. Then ask yourself if you're treating them the way you would like to be treated. Usually the answer will be "yes," but sometimes ...
• Listening to your frontline employees. In the course of selling your product or service they glean potentially valuable intelligence. Could you change a feature of what you're selling to make it more attractive? Is it being distributed in the most effective way possible? Is your pricing right? If customers have a gripe in any of these areas, your employees probably will have heard about it.

The closer you stay to the point of sale, the more responsive you'll be to customer needs and concerns.

The devil may be in the details, but so is the opportunity to increase your sales. By offering customers a variety of small inducements, you convey that you care about them. And they'll respond to that caring attitude with cold hard cash.

To get this caring message across,

• Add value. Offer discount coupons or some other means by which customers can qualify for price breaks. You may want to offer special deals to regular or volume buyers.
• Increase availability. Consider extending your hours of business or making home deliveries. By increasing the time your product is available, or its distribution points, you increase sales.
• Elevate responsiveness to an art. Make it a rule that the phone is answered by the third ring, that repeat customers are always greeted by name and that no customer question is left unanswered.
• Offer a freebie or two. Never underestimate the power of a free cup of coffee.