Consulting Seminars Business Plan

This is a small company with three employees: founder, sales and marketing manager, and administrative assistant. We may contract with additional seminar leaders as sales events demand.

7.1 Management Team

John Doe, 53, was president of [name omitted], and the principal author of its software products including Business Plan Pro and Marketing Plan Pro. He is also the author of several other software products, six published books, and magazine articles. He has given seminars on business planning, for large and small companies, in more than a dozen countries.

His most recent book, Hurdle: the Book on Business Planning, is a step-by-step guide to practical business planning. It was published in 1998 by Palo Alto Software, and is republished as part of the Business Plan Pro manual. He is also the author of CPA’s Guide to Business Planning, originally published by Harcourt Brace Professional Publishing, now in its fourth edition, published by Aspen Publishers (which purchased Harcourt Brace in 2000). Earlier he wrote Working Smart with Electronic Spreadsheets, published by Hayden Books in 1984, Jazz: The Inside Track, published by McGraw-Hill in 1985, and (with Jane Rovira) Mexico, New Look at a Maturing Market, published by Business International in 1979. He also wrote a monthly column in Business Software magazine during the 1980s, and articles published by MacWorld, Mac User, Mac Business Review, and Personal Computing. He has written software published by MLT Publishing. His works published by Palo Alto Software include Business Plan Toolkit, Financial Forecasting Toolkit, Sales and Market Forecasting Toolkit, Business Management Toolkit, Business Budgeting Toolkit, and Marketing Plan Toolkit, as well as the two still-living products noted in the first paragraph.

A Stanford MBA, Doe has been a successful business consultant and entrepreneur, a co-founder of Borland International, one of the largest companies in software, and consultant to high-growth computer companies. He is listed in the index of Fire in the Valley, by Swain and Freiburger, the history of the personal computer industry.

After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame and receiving an MA with honors from the University of Oregon, Doe was a journalist based in Mexico City during most of the 1970s. He was correspondent for United Press International, Business Week, Business International, and other publications. He became head of Mexico-based business consulting and research for Business International, and left Mexico in 1979 to enroll in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

While studying for an MBA degree he was a full-time consultant to Creative Strategies, where he became vice president for Software Research after graduating with an MBA degree in 1981. In 1983 he founded Infoplan, which later became Palo Alto Software. During the 1980s and early 1990s he consulted in business planning and marketing planning to companies including Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard, and IBM. Apple Latin America grew from $4 million annual sales to more than $30 million during the four years he did its business planning as a consultant, and Apple Japan grew from less than $200 million per year to $1.5 billion in sales during the four years he worked with that organization as a consultant. In 1983 he was a co-founder of Borland International, one of four members of the board of directors. He resigned that position in 1986 when Borland went public. He has been president of Palo Alto Software since it was started, and has taken it to market leadership, 30 employees, and more than $5 million in annual sales, without outside investment until this year.

7.2 Management Team Gaps

This business plan depends on finding the right sales and marketing person. This is a full-time job with a good future.

7.3 Personnel Plan

The personnel plan shows in detail in the following table.