A solid business plan helps you at every step of beginning and running your company. Your business plan will serve as a guide for how to set up, manage, and expand your new company. It helps you consider your company’s essential components.
Your company strategy may be able to attract new investors or business partners. Investors want to have faith that their money will be well spent. You’ll use your business plan as a tool to persuade individuals that working with you or investing in your business is a wise move.
Traditional business plans are more common, use a standard structure, and encourage you to go into detail in each section. They tend to require more work upfront and can be dozens of pages long.
Lean startup business plans are less common but still use a standard structure. They focus on summarizing only the most important points of the key elements of your plan. They can take as little as one hour to make and are typically only one page.
Formatting a traditional business plan
If you’re really detail-oriented, want a complete plan, or want to seek funding from conventional sources, you might prefer a standard business plan structure.
You do not have to follow the identical business plan outline when writing your plan. Use the areas that are most appropriate for your requirements and your business instead. These sections are combined in traditional business plans.
1. Executive summary
Give your reader a brief description of your business and explain why it will succeed. Include a brief description of your company’s objective, your product or service, and the leadership team, staff, and location of your business. If you intend to request funding, you should also provide financial details and high-level growth objectives.
2. Company description
Use your company description to give thorough details about your business. Give specifics on the issues your firm resolves. List the people, groups, or companies that your business plans to assist, and be precise.
Describe the competitive advantages that will ensure the success of your company. Do you have any experts on your team? Have you discovered the ideal site for your store? In your company description, highlight your advantages.
3. Market analysis
You’ll need to be well-versed in the prospects for your sector and target market. You can learn what other companies are doing and what their strengths are by conducting competitive research. Be on the lookout for patterns and themes in your market research. What do victorious rivals do? Why does it function? Can you make it better? You should respond to these queries right away.
4. Organization and management
Describe to the reader the structure and management of your business.
Describe your company’s legal structure. Indicate whether you are or plan to be a C or S corporation, general or limited partnership, single proprietor, or limited liability company for your firm (LLC).
Explain who is in charge of what in your company using an organizational chart. Explain how the individual experiences of each person will help your business venture succeed. Consider including the CVs and resumes of important team members.
5. Service or product line
Describe the products or services you provide. Describe the advantages to your consumers and the product’s lifetime. Tell us about your plans for intellectual property, such as copyright or patent applications. Give specific details if you are conducting research and development for your service or product.
6. Marketing and sales
A marketing strategy can be approached in a variety of ways. Your strategy should adapt to your specific requirements as you go along.
The purpose of this part is for you to explain how you plan to draw in and keep clients. You’ll also explain the steps involved in making a sale. When you generate financial estimates in the future, you’ll refer to this area, so be sure to fully define all of your marketing and sales tactics..
