Once you know if your business will work and have looked at the market, it's time to make a business plan.
What is a plan for a business? It's a thorough look at your business, including its goals and finances. It shows what the company's purpose and vision are and how its goals will be reached. It also shows how much money the company will need and how much it is expected to make.
Use it as a reference guide that you can look back at often to make sure you're on the right track. But don't take it as gospel. Business needs change over time, so the business plan will change too. If you keep an eye on this and make changes to your plan as needed, it will help your business keep going in the right direction.
The business plan is mostly used for two things. The first is to help you sell your business idea to lenders, investors, and possible business partners. The second is for your own internal use as a way to measure how your company is growing and getting closer to its goals.
So, your business plan needs to be a strong piece of writing that will convince people of your skills and the success of your business. To make it seem real, you'll need to back it up with thorough research and accurate financial forecasts. Don't make it boring and lifeless though. Don't just give the facts and numbers; make them into a business case that makes sense and is interesting. A word of caution, though: always keep your feet on the ground and make sure your analysis is honest and based on facts. If you say too much, investors and lenders will see right through it. Also, it's not in anyone's best interest to give the wrong impression. On the other hand, don't try to get too little. Goals and financial forecasts that seem too easy and safe won't impress anyone and won't give you a reason to push yourself or your company to reach its full potential.
You have to make sure that your report is fair. Don't hide either your strengths or your weaknesses. But put a positive spin on your weaknesses by showing what you'll do to fix them.
Only if you write the business plan yourself will it show how excited and sure you are about the business. It will also help you learn more about your business and what you want to accomplish with it. There's no harm in asking for help from experts with some of the more complicated parts, like the financial projections. After you're done, it's also a good idea to have someone read it over for you to make sure it flows, makes sense, and makes sense as a whole.
A good business plan has the following basic parts:
Summary is a short summary of your business and the plan. This could be the only part of your report that a possible investor or lender reads. They get a lot of similar reports and documents, so they can quickly decide if something is worth looking into further based on these two pages. Make sure you always write the summary after you're done with your plan so you don't forget anything. Make it sound confident and interesting.
Information about the company: Give some background by explaining what your company is all about. Include information about the organization's structure, its history, the industry, a customer analysis, and a description of the products or services it offers. You'll need to give all the facts to help the reader understand what your company does, but you'll also need to give more than that. Don't just talk about what your company does; also talk about what makes it stand out and what makes it a good buy.
The team: Give a brief summary of each member of your senior team's resume. Include the services of any outside consultants you hire. Make sure they know what they can do for the company. Then, describe how the rest of your company is set up. You could use an organisational chart to do this. If it's important, show the different departments and explain what kinds of jobs will be in each one. Give a plan for how you will find workers, train them, and manage them.
Here is where you should put all of the market research you did for promotion and sales. Show that you know your customers and your competitors inside and out. Describe how you will deal with other businesses in the market. Tell us how you plan to get the word out about your business and your products and services.
How is your business going to work? Give details about where your business will be located, whether it will own or rent its space, what materials and equipment you will need, what IT and other systems you will use, and who your suppliers will be.
Financial analysis: Summarize the numbers at the start of the section to give an overview of the main points. Numbers and graphs aren't always easy to understand. Include costs for every part of your business and make a detailed forecast of the company's financial future for the next year as well as a rough sketch of its likely financial future over the next five years. You should include things like cash flow, sales projections, and profit and loss statements. Also explain how you came up with these numbers. The reader will want to know that you didn't just pick them out of thin air. Also, since you'll probably need to borrow money to start your business, your financial analysis should include information about how much money you need, how you plan to use it, and where you plan to get the money. Think of your business plan as an application for loans or investors. Anyone who might help you will want to see it.
Goals: Be clear about where you want your business to go and what you hope to achieve by setting clear goals. Always, goals should be SMART, which means they should be clear, measurable, attainable, relevant, and have a deadline. The goals will make it clear how you plan to get your business to where you want it to be. To wrap up your plan, you could also include a more general vision for the future of your business. This would give lenders or investors an idea of how your business will grow and what kind of money they might make from it.
