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okay now everybody should see marketing plan pro on this screen and this is just the start
a plan
screen for marketing plan pro
i'm going to bring up the chat panel so i can watch for any questions
i'll keep the teleconference unmuted through the entire demo so
as long as there's not any background noise and everything if you do have any questions
i'll keep the conference unmuted so go ahead and ask
the question you don't have to wait until the very end or if i go past something
too fast
and you want me to
give you a little bit more detail feel free to interrupt with the question
so this is the start a plan screen for marketing plan pro eleven you have two options at this
screen and that's to create a new marketing plan which will give you a brand new plan with
no information in it
but it will include all of the examples and instructions that you need to create your entire
marketing plan
or you can choose to open an existing plan if you're already working on a marketing plan
from another computer
and you need to bring it over to this computer you can click more here and then browse to
wherever your marketing plan is saved
and then select it and open it
and then you'll have it on this computer as well
at the bottom of this screen are just a couple of quick links to help resources for the
software so
if you want to watch the introductory movie which kind of guides you and introduces you to
marketing plan pro you can click this link
it'll open up a window and play a little flash movie for you it's about five minutes long
and then we have the p_d_f_ file that's the getting started guide that kind of walks you through
the initial use of the software to get you used to some
of the features
that's also really good if you have the time and really want to do that
so what we're gonna do for today is we're gonna choose to create a new marketing plan so i can
kind of demonstrate starting from scratch here
it's gonna take a moment to prepare that marketing plan file and
let me bring it over to the screen where we can see it here
it'll take a moment to prepare that marketing plan file
and then it'll just open up the program and display the
plan set up wizard so it kind of guides us through
setting up this plan for our initial use
and this entire program is gonna be filled with wizards like this that
just gives you some information about what you're going to and then you click the next task
and it starts to take action
on the actual plan
and here's another link to that introductory movie if you missed it on the start a plan
screen but
we'll go ahead and get right started
so the very first question here is going to be about what type of marketing plan you need
to create with the software at this time
and all of these
question in the plan set up can be changed later so
you can start with a really
simple plan here if you need to get a plan
ready for a meeting or get out the door with a plan really quickly
and then later you can come back and change to one of the more advanced plans if you need
to do a more detailed marketing plan at a later time
so the thirty minute plan is just the basics a really
simple marketing plan
that you can get done quickly in about thirty minutes if you have all of the information right at hand
a basic plan is a
scaled down marketing plan kind of a standard plan with just enough information for you
that takes a little longer to complete
and then a standard the actual standard plan contains all the extra information you need for a really
detailed marketing plan
so you can change this option at anytime you just pick the option that you want to start
with
and then fill in the information for that type of a plan and then later just come back
to the plan setup wizard
and make any changes if you want to go to a
straight to a standard plan at that point it'll add everything in there for the additional information
for
today's demo i'm just going to choose a standard plan so we have
all the items in the plan to start from
the question here is asking when you want the plan to start and this isn't when the business
starts that's different
this is when you want your
forecasting in this marketing plan to start
marketing plan pro is going to take this date
as the starting date for all your financials and then you'll forecast your
first year in monthly increments out from this point
and then your second and third or fourth and fifth year will be beyond
this beyond that first year
marketing plan pro does use a
twelve month year for the first year in the plan
so if we chose
january of two thousand nine we'd be forecasting
in a calendar year format where we'd be forecasting from january through december
but if we choose february to make it very current as our starting month
then we'll be forecasting from february of two thousand nine to
january of two thousand ten and that would be a fiscal year so the program's gonna
labeled the year as
fiscal year and your first year will be
fiscal year two thousand ten because
fiscal years are labeled in the year that they end in
you also have the option here to replace your month and year labels with generic labels
so if you're not quite sure when you want to start forecasting from you can check this box
and then the program won't worry about the starting month and year it'll just label all of
your months and
years as
month one month
two month three year one year two year three
so that makes it
easier so you don't have to worry about the starting date rate
now and then later when you're sure of your starting date you can come back and uncheck
this option and then choose your starting month and year in the program will relabel everything
for you automatically
this question just asks for the plan title
the program uses the plan title as the default file name for your marketing plan it
also put the plan title at the header of every page so most people just type in
their company name for the plan title and then the program will use that to just pick a title
and then this question asks if you need to do a
standard term marketing plan which is a three year plan with the first year being in monthly
increments
and then the second and third year being and in annual summaries
or you can do a long-term marketing plan which is a
five-year plan
again the first year is in monthly increments and then the second third fourth and fifth year
are annual forecasting
so just choose whichever
term marketing plan you need to do
and then click next
and then this question has to deal with your sales forecasting
whether you want to do your sales forecasting
based off of a units-based forecast or a values-based forecast
the difference between the two of those are
if you choose a units-based
forecast the program is going to ask you to list out all of your products or services
and then it'll ask you how many units you're gonna sell in any given month or year
how much you're selling each unit for so what your retail price is
and then what percentage of that
price that you're selling it for is
attributable to
cost of sales
then the program will take the number of units
times your unit price to
come up with your sales
and then it'll take the number of units times your unit cost
to come up with your
cost of sales and subtotal everything up for you
if you do the values-based or the the values-based forecasting
then the program will ask you to list out all of your products and services again
but this time it's just going to ask you how much you're going to sell in dollar amounts and how much
it's going to cost you in dollar amounts
and you have to come up with those numbers
units-based
or the values-based forecast is a little bit easier to set up initially
but the values or the units-based forecast is
a lot easier to make changes to in the future so if you get through with your plan and
then realize
i really need to increas the price that i'm charging for
this service or this product
you can go back into the units-based forecast
make a change to your price and the program will recalculate everything for you
whereas if you're using the values-based forecast
you'd need to go back to your sales forecast
figure out what the difference is going to be in price
as far as what it's going to
make a difference to your
sales and then
your cost of sales and then enter that manually
so it just is a little bit different as far as when you need to make adjustments in the future
for this demonstration we'll just go ahead and choose the units-based forecast
because we normally recommend that
then this question asks if you need to include a second year of monthly data in your financials
normally we recommend not including a second year of monthly data just because of the challenges
of forecasting out in monthly increments
and two for two years
however there are some
specific situations where you may need
two years of monthly data like if your plan starts mid year and you want a to
stick to a calendar year so you're gonna
have monthly information for half a year for the first year and you want a whole year afterward
those situations
would be a
position where you may need a second year of monthly data
or some specific loan application will ask you to include a second year of monthly data in your
financial as well so
we do have the options here and you can use it
and this just changes your second year which would normally be an
annual forecast
to a monthly forecast
so you can fill in that data
and so i'll go ahead and say no to that and we'll go ahead and click finish
and now the plan is setup for our initial or initially set up for our use
so we have the information that we want