Martin R Crowson

Martin Crowson is a retired international development banker, management consultant and certified public accountant.

His SCORE mentoring focus is on helping clients start-up and grow their businesses by, first, developing these 2 tools:

• Specification of at least one feasible, actionable “4Ps Marketing Mix”:

  • Value Proposition – To whom they will sell what in successful competition with customers’ alternative suppliers.

  • Persuasion - How those clients will persuade potential customers to pay attention to sales presentations and act favorably on those offers.

  • Market Place – Where clients will make sales presentations and close sales (maybe, in customers’ offices, online e-commerce websites, or trade shows).

  • Payment – How prices and payment terms for sales to retail or wholesale customers will be set, to achieve adequate profitability while remaining competitive.

• Quantification of estimates of 5 sets of key start-up business plan variables and assuring that they are mutually consistent and achievable (SCORE has an Excel model for this purpose):

  • Required upfront investments in equipment, expense prepayments, working capital funds, etc. and their financing sources (carefully committed in stages so as to control risks).

  • Staffing needed to deliver sufficient products or services revenues (the immediately following plan variable), and its costs especially owners’ compensation expectations.

  •  Sales revenues, by product and service line and customer segment, less direct costs of selling those lines; estimating those direct costs demands clearly understand supply chain mechanics.

  • Fixed expenses (those which do not vary directly with sales volumes) such as plant depreciation, rentals, advertising, property taxes, travel, customer entertainment, etc.

  • Net cash receipts and balances resulting from the estimates above ----- Projected cash in must exceed cash out; if it does not, re-work this process until it does.