With the first of the year on hand, many benefits professionals will be making the business equivalent of New Year’s resolutions: a business plan. Most will face this task with dread. After all, no one ever got into sales out of a love for paperwork.

Business plans, however, are far more than paperwork; they are an extremely effective means of guiding your business through change and aligning your team. I’ve explained how business plans accomplish this magic in previous columns. Suffice to say the Trailblazed Sales Project Study found a high correlation between having a business plan and sales success. You can make substantial sales without a business plan, but it’s easier with one.

The good news is that writing a business plan doesn’t have to be hard. The book that grew out of the study, Trailblazed: Proven Paths to Sales Success, lays out one simple approach to creating a meaningful plan.