Help with Business planning/goal setting software

[emoeric]

This one is for the business owner, future business owner, or anyone who knows business plans and goal setting.

Can someone help me find some software or two software titles that they LOVE to use for business planning and/or goal setting. I am wanting to detail and make notes of my 3 year goals to opening up a business. I need to make moves on this soon, as I have investors interested in my propositions.

Time for me to get to work on presenting a clean business plan. It doesn't have to WOW them, but it would be nice if the business planning software produced an end product that was presentable.

As for the goal oriented software, I have heard of some type of goal setting software called GTD (Get Things Done). I do not know if this is a type of software or if it is the actual software. I have tirelessly looked; can someone help a future business owner out?

P.S. Sarcastic Commentary is not appreciated (ie: 'go look on google, duh')

 

[blodwyn]

This one is for the business owner, future business owner, or anyone who knows business plans and goal setting.

Can someone help me find some software or two software titles that they LOVE to use for business planning and/or goal setting. I am wanting to detail and make notes of my 3 year goals to opening up a business. I need to make moves on this soon, as I have investors interested in my propositions.

Time for me to get to work on presenting a clean business plan. It doesn't have to WOW them, but it would be nice if the business planning software produced an end product that was presentable.

As for the goal oriented software, I have heard of some type of goal setting software called GTD (Get Things Done). I do not know if this is a type of software or if it is the actual software. I have tirelessly looked; can someone help a future business owner out?

P.S. Sarcastic Commentary is not appreciated (ie: 'go look on google, duh')

I've tried a couple of titles for the PC years ago (Business Plan Pro was one of them). I never found them all that helpful versus a decent book. All they do is provide a framework that you enter your information into for the various sections, and the income and expense forecasting tools were crude and inflexible compared to a spreadsheet. They don't write your plan for you, although they do have some sample content as examples to help explain what type of content goes in each section. You still get to do all the heavy thinking and hard work to generate the content for your plan.

The investors will be interested in your sales and marketing plan primarily, as it is your sales that will generate the income from which they will get their ROI. If they believe you have a credible plan, and the ability to execute on it, then they will be more interested than if you have a vague plan with a set of goals but no substance behind how you're going to achieve it. A solid lead generation plan is a must for almost any business, so this is where I'd start to dig if I was one of your investors. For a lot of people, the 'bible' for marketing in small businesses is a book called Guerilla Marketing.

A good business planning book will be a better investment than Business Planning software IMO. A browse through your local book store or Amazon will give you dozens to choose from, so some of the reviews might help. Goal setting and milestones are good, and should be part of the Sales and Marketing, and the fulfillment plan. The content is what is most important, you can easily present your plan using Office, iWork, or an open source suite.

GTD is an approach to managing tasks, projects and actions, and is very good. It originated in a book by David Allen. There are various software titles that model this approach. I personally use Yojimbo, and rely on tags and smart folders to keep me organized. GTD doesn't help with goal setting, except in the respect that it helps you organize the tasks and actions that help you achieve your goals, which sometimes helps you think through your goals a bit better.

Hope this helps, and good luck