If the thought of business planning strikes fear into your heart (or just plain turns your stomach), you're not alone. Many agents dread building a business plan. At the same time, it's an invaluable tool that can take your enterprise to the next level.

Today, we're going to provide a few tips, tricks, and tools to make the process less daunting.

Be Prepared

If you're building a detailed business plan, there will probably be some financial and other information that you'll need to reference. The process of writing your plan will go much more smoothly if you have this information at your fingertips. So, open up your accounting software, or get your production reports from your broker.

Tell the "Story" of Your Business

Did you ever take a journalism class in high school or college? If so, you're familiar with those essential elements of a good story: who, what, where, when, how and why. These are the questions that your business plan should answer.

• What do I do?
• What am I best at?
• Who knows this?
• Why do they care?
• How can I extend my sphere?
• What message should I focus on that defines me?
• What are the costs/trade-offs of my business plan?
• Who needs to review it? How will I hold myself accountable for the goals outlined in the business plan?
• What is the timeline for each of the steps in accomplishing my goals?
• Why are these my objectives? The world has changed, and so have our industry and your customers. It's time to look closely (and honestly) at the strengths and weaknesses of your business.

Set Goals

The biggest part of creating a business plan is setting goals and identifying the action items you'll need to complete in order to accomplish them. Sometimes, this is where entrepreneurs get stuck.

You want to take your business to the next level, but you're not sure what that next level should look like. Should you double revenues, triple revenues, quadruple revenues? What will it take to accomplish each of those growth levels? Ask yourself honestly if you're willing to do what it takes to accomplish these aggressive levels of growth. In answering, you may find that you're only looking to grow slightly, or even stay just a bit ahead of last year.

Find a Format That Works for You

Your business plan is a roadmap for the future. As such, it can be as unique as you are. One business plan may only consist of only a few pages of loosely sketched info. However, a more traditional business plan will probably be about 20 pages long and contain a variety of elements, such as:

• Executive Summary
• Business Description
• Market Strategies
• Competitive Analysis
• Design and Development Plan
• Operations and Management Plan
• Financial Factors

Rather than start from scratch, you may want to try pre-structured business plan creators. Here are two to get you started:

• Market Leader's Real Estate 2014 Business Plan
• The realtor.com® Ultimate Business Plan

The Plan is Just the Beginning

Once you've written your business plan, your work is just beginning. You'll need to follow-through with all the action items in order to meet your goals. Make sure you know who is responsible for what, and check in regularly to track progress. Hold your team accountable! But also be prepared to roll with the punches – in the real world, things rarely work out the way they do on paper.

Finally, be sure to update your plan regularly to reflect changes in the market and in your business.