Would someone please rip apart my business plan?

In a recent brainstorming session with a co-worker, we started developing ideas to supplement our income. I took a variation of one of Dan’s old “one time money makers” and we started adding and modifying it until we have the following business plan. Let me give you an overview of what we are wanting to do. I’d welcome your thoughts:

We are wanting to print a cellular phone directory for each of the 56 churches in a local denominational association. Also, we will have an online version as well that can be updated as it changes. (The selling point for this is especially noticeable for us - we go to a larger church, and how many times do we need "So and So's" phone number, but, they aren't listed, either because they don't have a home phone, or, their number is not listed.) In each directory, for each church, there will be a business card sized ad for each business that's represented in the church (providing, they buy an ad, of course.)

We figure that each church has an average of 10 businesses, or business owners, represented in it. We would sell this as a "sponsorship," and, charge $300 to be in the online directory, or, $600 for both the online and the print directory. (I may adjust these prices, but, I wouldn't think very much.)

What we would do with this money would be this: (and the selling point would be equally stronger to the people buying the sponsorships, as well as the leadership of this denominational Association)

We would take all the pastors and their wives in this area and put on a special retreat for them, whether it be to take them to The Cove, which is Billy Graham's retreat center, a beach retreat, or, my personal favorite, take them to the Gatlinburg Area for a 3 day, 2 night retreat, where there will be a speaker of some clout come in, as well as various ways to "pamper" the pastors and their wives, i.e., pedicures, manicures, massages, shows, fancy eats, etc.. You and I both know, pastoral leadership is very tried and tired, and they have no end to the constraints put on them. This would provide a very good way for their churches to bless them, each while expanding the potential reach of their own businesses.

We may also look at bringing in a "big name speaker" into our area, and providing a big outreach event (something along these lines 10-15 years ago would have been to bring in a Billy Graham, or something,) but, we'd need to examine this locally. This would be a great event to sponsor, provided we had enough sponsorships purchased

Again, what we'd provide, is once, or maybe twice a year, is to provide an updated phone listing/directory for each church. I'd like to just do one, but, the issue is that many churches have a lot of churn, so, it may be necessary to do it twice a year. That being said, any instances of people leaving or joining a church can be handled immediately on the website that we would develop for that church.

Each church would have a seperate site that their members could go to for contact information for anyone in their church. Also, on this website, there would be a listing of each business represented in their church (with an ad,) and also a link to another website that would have every business owner/business in this local association.

The selling point is that more money can be kept "in" the local association. For the business owner, the benefits are very strong - very low cost advertising to reach a very specific, target niche and also, being able to bless their pastoral leadership at the same time. For the association, the benefits are equally strong - the more money "in" the association equal more tithes, and also, the fact that we'd be blessing their pastors with a fine, relaxing, needed weekend, with no cost to them, and, if we did decide to do a big local event, it would make it even stronger.

I'd love to know what you're thinking. Do you think that I could be right about the ten businesses represented per church? If so, do you think that this could be an easy “sale?” I would hope to present it not as a sale, but, as a sponsorship.

My co-worker believes, that for the most part, this would be one "big" sale to the local association, and then, he thinks the members are so interconnected, that it may "weave" down through the ranks pretty well. If that's the case, it will indeed be an easy sale. Also, in my mind, this would be a VERY easy renewal once per year, so, once we did it, we could hopefully have a good, steady, residual income.

If it did work here, I’d immediately go to the next association, one county over, and do the same thing with their 50+ churches. I think that within a year, we could have set up maybe 5-10 associations, and then, have a good residual income. I don’t know if we could handle any more than that.

I honestly think, start to finish, we could have this whole thing started, sold, set up, printed, and distributed in less than two months, three months tops.

I think that we could probably do a 25% commission on each sponsorship sold, so, for hopefully 2-3 months of work, if we really could average 10 sponsorships per church, our salesperson could easily make $40K plus, if they just do the $300 sponsorship. Obviously, if they each do the $600 sponsorship, her pay would be $80K plus.

Anyway, I’d welcome your thoughts. Thanks.

 

It all involves value. Will people use your product and find value from it? Without serious eyeballs and customers, it is tough to sell advertisements. I also think that the contact and coordination could be better solved with another type of product.

 

Heya.

I have experience in this area and I'm currently involved in business competition involving canidates with business plans.

I havent got time right this second but thought I'd let you know I'm interested in taking apart your plan. Perhaps opening up a few loopholes that you could fill.

I'll post my reply here and on my blog ina bit: http://www.rhys.eu

regards

Rhys

 

always provide more value than you are charging for.

 

I think the sales staff I am in the process of "hiring" will be able to do that. We're going to position it as the opportunity "for only $300/$600, not only do you promote your business to 10,000-15,000 that will want to do business with you, but, you get to bless your pastor with an AWESOME, expensive retreat, all at the same time."

Of course, I was thinking yesterday about raising the price to $395, and saying that we'd recruit some super, big name talent (evangelist/pastor/speaker) to come into our area and hold a conference/seminar.

Thanks for the input.

 

Just a few ideas...

http://www.rhys.eu/index.php/2010/03/phone-directory-–-business-plan/

it's only brief

 

Wow. I really appreciate the feedback.

As far as one of the main objectives, here in the US, more people are going to a cellular phone system, and those numbers are unlisted. I myself go to a 400+ member church, and if I want to find a way to get in touch with Joe Smith, I have to call 3 or 4 people to finally find someone that may know his number.

The "kicker" is that this directory will include 56 churches - so, there will be a way to market to others as well with the general directory. The fact that we're budgeting $40,000 for a retreat for the pastors is a nice "bonus," so, they get to promote their business, and bless their pastor as well.

 

OK, you asked for a critique, so here are my constructive criticism thoughts:

- Collecting the cell phone information for every member in the church is hard if the church doesn't already have it.
- The churches already have some basic CRM-esque systems. Likely poor quality, but they have lists that they mail to. Unless you are replacing this system, giving the churches another place to update is likely to be more of a pain than they are willing to undertake
- pastoral retreat? why? too expensive... creates perverse incentives for pastors...really, stay away from this.
- expect maybe 10% of companies to buy ads (on a positive note).

 

This could be a positive. Set up something like SugarCRM for the Church & run it on your server -- free to them, but it encourages them to stay with you & it means that when it's time for the updated version you already have the membership list at your fingertips..

Maybe give a % of every ad to the church instead, you really need to get the Pastors onside to make this work.

 

One of the reasons for the retreat...it's a nice incentive to give. For the most part, and there are exceptions, pastors are overworked, underpaid, on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, are called upon for deaths, sicknesses, job losses, they provide counsel, they have to neglect their own families. I know the pastors that I have had in the past have at times given more than they had, just to take care of their church families.

I really feel called to help restore this group of people. This is a way to monetize my passion.

 

I hear you on this.

What would happen if you went to the businesses you want to advertise and said to them "I'm raising funds to send Pastor X & wife away for a retreat, can I put you down for $50?"

So, let's turn that into part of the sell for your directory. "I'm creating a directory ... ... and $50 from every ad goes into a fund to help Pastor X go to this retreat"

 

What is SugarCRM?

 

I like that. I've actually figured about $30,000-$40,000 for this retreat. I could break it down and tell them a percentage, or dollar amount, per ad that goes to it.

Thanks for your suggestions. Any other ideas?

Jeremy

 

its a widely respected customer relationship management system. There's an open source version and installers like fantastico and Installatron can set it up for you. If you search this forum for sugarCRM you'll see a huge number of threads mentioning it.

I'm new here & these urls are too long to break up / rejoin, but if you search google for "using sugarcrm for church" up high on the results are two interesting articles, first from their support board using it for a church "CRM for church management - SugarCRM Forums" and the other "'Pastor uses CRM system to track congregation contacts" from Heal your church website ... interestingly enough there's a link from there to some specific systems that may be better for churches.

 

Now..here is a dumb question. What is a "Customer Relationships Management System," and, how does that relate to a church, or my business?

 

The Wikipedia article describes it as

How is it relevant to churches? Many of the same functions that businesses have for keeping track of customers apply to churches keeping track of their members.

Your business? If you have clients, prospects, sales people, it's a way of co-ordinating them.

 

Yep agree. It is about value and eyeballs/ traffic. Would they be willing to pay $300 or $600 for such a service? The technical part isn't exactly very difficult - more difficult is getting those lists from the churches.
Numbers like salespersons making $40K or 80K is crazy ambitious- even if you get top notch salespersons (like those who can sell ice to Eskimos) selling for you, you still need a good value proposition. So as someone said for a start you need to have a huge discount off your numbers like assume 10% of companies will buy ads. Big numbers always look good on paper but in practice you get tiny % of that.
Also wouldn't such a database idea be better if you load it on social networks like Facebook+Twitter and then integrate to mobile phone

 

Well, not really. Most people that live in this area would not do that. I think that the printed + online directory hopefully is good value.