Everyone wants to be successful; however success means different things to different people.

Some might want to double the size of their farming business. Others might want to free up time to travel or run a marathon. Others might want to bring the next generation into their business.

However you define success, you need a well thought out, practical plan to achieve it. Business and Succession Planning are essential steps to determining – and creating - your future personal and business direction.

At The National Bank, our experience, our long standing relationships with our rural clients, our comprehensive knowledge of the rural and investment markets and our proprietary planning tools mean we are very well placed to be a valuable facilitator for our clients’ business and succession plans.

When successfully implemented, good business and succession plans will help with:

• The planned creation of your business (and associated wealth)
• Successfully positioning your business for the future.
• Transferring your business to the next generation (if this is what you desire to happen).

Our Rural Managers start by working with clients to determine what is important to them in their personal and business lives. This is an essential step, because this way the clients find out what their strong motivators are (what really inspires them). Only when these motivators have been decided can clients start building their business and succession plans.

A good plan must have goals agreed by the business partners (and their successors). These goals should be broken down to key measurable milestones, which ideally need to be time bound.

To assist in this process, we use The National Bank’s interactive planning tool, Planning your farming future. It has been developed to help farmers develop their business and personal goals and milestones along with a practical plan to achieve them.

Using the Planning your farming Future tool, farmers develop an action plan by working through specific modules, including:

• People and staff management
• Farm systems
• Business risks
• Financial systems
• Succession planning.

If you would like to discuss how we can assist you with your business and succession planning and a demonstration of how Planning your farming future can work for you, talk to your Rural Manager or contact us on 0800 807 711.