The Business Plan - How To Write It Correctly & Get Results!
Todays business plan is an
indispensable document for any company or individual who is in business
and needs, for one reason or another, to raise money, find investors,
justify their actions, or simply to chart his own course of action in an
intelligent and businesslike manner.
Write your business plan
correctly and you will present a great image and get what you want.
Before Starting Out
Before you start out
writing a business plan you will need to assemble as much information as
you can regarding the business itself.
The object of the business,
your management details, everything about the market you are in, how you
plan to produce and sell, all the elements for a financial analysis, your
time parameters, and what to do when things go wrong.
When you have gathered all
this information together, you are still not ready to start.
You need to decide who you
are addressing the business plan to.
Will you be speaking to a
bank, an investor, a funding source, potential buyers, re-organizers, your
own group, or just yourself?
Having decided who is the
target you are ready to begin.
Organizing the Business
Plan
The following is a classic
structure for a successful business plan. Follow it and you will be in
good company with other successful business people. These are the sections
you need.
Executive Summary.
This should be SEPARATE
document from the body of the main plan. Keep it short, from 2 to 4 pages
only. It must be comprehensive and express all the information of the main
report.
Be sure to include your
mission statement, summarize all the other topics you see below here, and
end with a summary which convinces of the success you envision.
The Business Described.
This will include
information about the company, a profile. It will speak about the business
sector you are in, and can cover new services, products, or other crucial
information that will set the tone for rest of the plan.
Give reliable industry
forecasts, and if you quote some data or numbers, you must give a
reference each time where you took the information.
Services Products.
In this section you must
give specific information about what you do, produce, and sell. You must
compare yourself to your competitors, and show your own benefits and
advantages.
If you are doing something
new, include it here.
Management
Key Personnel and Company
Organization. Point out here who is doing what, stress your strengths and
combined years of experience. If you plan to expand, describe it here.
State clearly the management goals.
Analyze the Market.
Here you go into your
market, your competitors and your market share, show who your customers
are, what opportunities may exist, and if there is a niche to fill.
Marketing and Sales Plan.
This has to be rather
academic and following a deliberate strategy. There is no set form for
this, but you must support all your claims.
Production Plans.
If you are producing
something, you must show how you do it, and give financial details. If
yours is a service company, in this section you cover how you provide your
services, or how you will provide new ones.
Financial Plan.
Here you add the classics
of cash flow, income and expense statements, financial projections for
some years, and if you are looking for money, you must include that
feature here.
Time Management.
This is where you give all
the schedules for the implementation of your plan, and include mile posts.
Contingency!
What will you do if things
go wrong.
Think it out, and you must
have some real scenarios here. Remember who your target is. If you are
doing this plan for a bank or lenders, they will be interested in how they
are going to get their money back if things go wrong.
Summary Statement.
As in the Executive
Summary, your summary statement must draw up all the conclusions in a
comprehensive way.
You must be convincing
(always keeping your audience in mind. Who are you writing this for?), and
be convinced yourself. If you are not, no one else will be
Those are the classic
basics of a good business plan, and if you follow them, you will have a
document that is both useful and effective and could get you anything you
require to make your business a success
