Mitch Carson |

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Your mission statement for your business should be a brief statement that represents what your business values and how it intends to fulfil its obligations to these values. Creating a mission statement can be an important part of your business plan and help to direct the rest of your plans.

A Business Mission Statement Should Represent Your Values
The first thing to consider when creating a business mission statement is to think about what you feel is important to your business. Do you value exceptional customer service, service to the community, or expert research into topics affecting the world? Make a list of those things that you feel are important in your business and why.

A Business Mission Statement Should Give Some Indication on How You Intend to Live Out Your Values
Values should affect our behaviour and so your business values should affect the way you do your business. Your business mission statement needs to reflect this. Once you have written down the things you value think about one or two main ways in which these values will influence the way you do business.

A Mission Statement is Concise
After writing down these values and how you plan to live them out you may have a couple of pages of writing but a mission statement needs to be a concise phrase. Take your values and their implications and think of a few short words that sum the whole thing up. This phrase needs to be able to be memorized so that it can stick in your mind and in the minds of your staff so that it truly becomes a way of life for those involved in your business.

Business mission statements are an important part of your business plan and need to reflect your values and how you plan on living these out within your company. Keep it short so that it can not only be memorized but imprinted in the whole way you carry out your daily activities.

Business branding is important not only in terms of having people know you are there and hear your name, but also in terms of building trust and creating a professional image. Trust is what is truly essential if you want people to purchase your products or services and so building a brand name needs to include building trust.

Build Trust with Social Marketing Techniques
Social marketing is an excellent way to brand your business and to create trust in your products and services. By its very nature social marketing is meant to build relationships and these relationships are based on trust. Get profile pages up on as many social media websites as possible and be real with others. Let them know what you are doing but be yourself. Share useful information and interesting content related to your business and people will begin to trust you as an expert in your field.

Use Testimonials on Your Website to Build Trust
When it comes to building trust on your website few things work as well as providing testimonials. Let others know that other people have used your products and services and benefited from them.

Be Contactable and Available
In order for people to be able to trust you they need to know that they can get hold of you and that you are not hiding or going to disappear with their money. It is therefore important to be as contactable as possible – share your contact details on your website, on your social profile pages, and share as many contact details as possible. The easier people find it to contact you, the more likely they will be to trust you.

Trust is essential for creating a strong business brand and this can be done in a number of ways including social marketing, using testimonials and being contactable and available.

One reason many new business owners create a business plan is to get investors to invest in their business start-up. How do you create a business plan that stands out to investors and gets the funding you require?

How Much Research Have You Done and How Well Do You Know the Market?
The first thing you should look at, and state clearly, is as much information as possible about the market you are looking at – your target market, your competitors, what advantage you are going to have over your competitors. All of this is important for people who are going to be investing in your business to see whether it is really worth their while.

How Much Money is already invested and how much is still required
Another important point that investors are going to look at is how much money you already have invested and how much you are requiring from them. It is important to mention all sources of income or resources that have already been committed to this project so that investors don’t feel like they are taking the whole burden themselves. Show that you are willing to make an investment into your business yourself, whether it is money, or other resources.

Your Financial Projections and How Realistic They Are
Your business plan should also include some financial projections of how much you are expecting to make, but it is important that these are realistic. You may say you are going to make millions but is this realistic? Investors don’t only want to know that their investment is secure but also that you are being honest about the level of security.

Who Is on Your Management Team
The management of your company is essential to its success and so investors want to know who is running your company and what qualifications they have to be in that position. Do these people have the necessary skills and abilities to run your type of business successfully?

Always Present a Professional Business Plan
Lastly, it is important to always only present a professional looking business plan to your investors. If you have a business plan that looks amateurish then investors are not going to be interested. Show that you have taken the time, care and money to create a proper business plan and you will build their trust.

Creating a business plan to win over investors is not easy and it is important to ensure that you answer all their questions – how much money is involved, how much can they expect to make, who is going to run the business and why? You will also always want to put your best foot forward and make sure that your business plan is professional and well thought out.