A business plan is an absolute must when it comes to bringing your business idea to life. No matter what your business idea might be, you have to create a business plan to ensure that you know exactly what to do at every step of your growth and process. It serves as a road map and allows your organization to reach its full potential. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, a business plan lays out the steps you need to take to consistently put your strategy to work and reach your goals sequentially.
A business plan also helps you identify and overcome obstacles. You need to understand that each part of a traditional business plan will enable you to meet your goals, including sales, marketing, operations, employment, and financial aspects.
If you are on the lookout for business plan templates, you have come to the right place. To help provide you with a simple business template that will work for nearly all business owners, we have prepared this informative post. Don’t forget to pair your business plan with a solid mission statement. A mission statement will help you energize your business plan using your core values, so you’ll be able to take practical, concrete steps to achieve your mission, while remaining passionate and energized throughout. Let’s dive in.
What Is A Business Plan?
A business plan is an execution plan that outlines everything you expect your business to achieve. It is presented to stakeholders, such as potential investors and new employees, to convince them to get on board. If you want your business venture to succeed, you cannot overlook the importance of a business plan. It ensures that your company remains on track and grows with the market while continually innovating.
Why You Need A Business Plan?
Launching a new business venture is no easy task. It comes with its fair share of headaches. Therefore, it is in your best interests to be prepared. With a business plan, you’ll have a guide to use while you conduct market analysis, map out your marketing strategy, make financial projections, carve out the specifics of your business model and business structure, figure out your legal structure, write down your business objectives, consider any intellectual properties, discuss possible business partners and key employees, survey your potential market, map out cash-flow projections, understand your competitive advantage, design a production process, establish a well-managed financial model, understand market demand and market share, and create a complete business strategy.
When you write a solid business plan, it will help prepare you for the challenges that you are likely to face every day. Besides, it will allow you to understand what needs to be done to achieve your goals. Once you have created your plan, you can review it to ensure you’re on the right track. Let’s look at a few of the primary functions of your plan.
Establish Your Main Business Focus
A major reason why you need a business plan is that it allows you to establish a plan for the future, refine your objectives and push out anything that’s distracting. It will include milestones or goals as well as the steps that your company has to take to reach them.
Secure Funding
Another reason to create a business plan is that it will allow you to secure the funding you need to get your startup on its feet. There’s no better option for getting seed money. Since investors want to know everything about your venture, you must prepare a detailed business plan. It should cover everything, including revenue and expense projections, and related market data and analysis. It is best that you create a projected income statement and cash flow statement to ensure that investors have an idea about the costs involved.
Attract Executives
To keep your organization growing, you have to partner with the right executives. This is only possible when you create a business plan. It will allow you to attract the best talent and encourage them to stick around. With the right people by your side, there is nothing that you can’t achieve.
Now, you should keep in mind that when presenting your business plan to potential executives, it can be either a written document or a visual media presentation. Ultimately, you want to create both versions. The written version will provide more detail, while the visual presentation will help others visualize everything in a more dynamic way. These presentations will help others make clear decisions about linking up with you and your vision.
Types of Business Plans
When it comes to business plans, there are two options available. You can either create a simple or traditional plan. Generally, the decision for a traditional business plan means you’ll have a much longer and more detailed plan, covering a multitude of factors. It can have both short-term and long-term goals, whereas the simple business plan will cover a few key metrics in detail and some additional data, but not to the same degree or breadth as a traditional business plan.
Simple Business Plan
The simple business plan was developed back in 2010 and has become incredibly popular in recent years. It is a canvas that comprises nine sections. Each part contains high-value information, including metrics for attracting investors. The lean business plan comprises a single page of information. Here’s what it includes:
- A basic or “bare-bones” management strategy.
- A basic description of tactics that will enable you to accomplish this strategy, including things like financing, marketing, product development and more.
- A measurable plan for regular reviews or milestones, which includes specific tasks, deadlines, budgetary plans, and customer goals.
- Forecasts for spending, cash flow and sales.
Traditional Business Plan
Unlike a simple business plan, which is a single-page plan, a traditional business plan is comprised of lengthy documents, which can be dozens of pages in total. The thing about a traditional business plan is that it serves as a blueprint for the organization and details everything, from the launch to becoming an established business. Here’s what it would cover.
1. Executive Summary
The most important part of the business plan is the executive summary. It draws readers into your business plan and entices them to read on. However, if you fail to capture the attention of readers through your executive summary, they may not continue to stay engaged with it.
Although your executive summary is the first thing that would appear when people open the traditional business plan, it should be written last. When you make your attempt, you should focus on summarizing the problem faced by your market or potential customer and how your product or service can solve it. You will also have to mention key financial details and why people should invest in your business idea. The secret to getting it right is keeping it engaging.
2. Company Description
The next thing a traditional business plan covers is the company description. This will provide an overview of your organization and include details like the founding of your business, the type of entity that you are running (LLC, Corporation, other…)and a summary of its history. This part of the business plan will provide a solid understanding of your business.
3. Products or Services
As you move further, you’ll have to describe your offering. You need to focus on your customers’ perspective. By demonstrating the problem your product or service aims to overcome, you’ll be able to prove that you are targeting a bona fide market that will remain viable.
4. Market Analysis
For this section, you’ll have to define your target market. Your marketing plan should cover who your customers are, where your customers can be found, and how you plan to reach them. A deep analysis must be provided about your ideal customer and how you can market your offering to them.
You will also have to include detailed information on potential competitors and illustrate what makes your business unique when compared to theirs. Competitor data will help you leverage vital information to approach your market more confidently and effectively.
5. Management Team
To prove to potential investors that you have a management team that will deal with strategy and single process, you have to write a separate section. It will show how your business would be managed on a daily basis and how these management decisions contribute to your objectives.
You must list the founders, advisors, partners, members, and employees that are critical for your business. It is crucial that you provide a summary of each individual, what they bring to the table in terms of knowledge, experience, skills, and goals, and how each person will contribute to your organization.
6. Financial Plan
Next, you have to cover the financial plan, which will cover all your finances. The least that you can do is include a profit and loss and cash flow projection for the next 3 years. Make sure you incorporate historical financial data to get it right.
7. Operational Plan
As for your operational plan, it will detail the physical needs of your organization. You’ll need to detail every operational aspect of your business’s operational plan, including the location of your venture, equipment needed, additional facilities required, transit and shipping processes, inventory and supply requirements, production plans, and every other primary operations activity.
In Closing
Creating a professional, detailed business plan is necessary for growth and success. Business owners who move forward without a business plan or vision statement, set themselves up for failure. Don’t become another negative statistic. Plan ahead, write everything down, get specific, know your market, attract the right people, and move forward with confidence. For more information and some downloadable business plan templates, check out these links:
https://www.hubspot.com/business-templates/business-plans
https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/top-10-business-plan-templates-you-can-download-free.html
https://templates.office.com/en-us/business-plans
Sound Accounts helps small business owners increase productivity and grow their busines with top-notch bookkeeping support and years of financial knowledge. Contact us today to learn more about partnering with us.
To learn more about business plans, check out our frequently asked questions below.
FAQ
Do I really need a business plan?
Definitely; yes! There’s no way to ensure you’ll have consistent work, high standards, accurate bookkeeping, solid marketing plan and marketing efforts, a practical operations plan, great talent, time management, innovation and goal achievement without a clear business plan.
Do I need a business plan even if I’m working alone?
Again, the answer is definitely yes! Even if you’re the only one doing the work, you won’t achieve consistent results or long-term growth without a detailed business plan that includes every primary aspect of your vision, operations, goals, finances, marketing and projections.
What are some great resources for understanding business plans and ongoing business success?
A great place to begin is with this article. Aside from this, find a mentor or two who’ve been in business for a while, operate transparently and according to a clear plan, and have achieved considerable success in their field. Be willing to pay for their time if they don’t volunteer it for free. The investment will be well worth it.
Read books by respected executives and entrepreneurs. Read prominent business blogs. Check out magazines like INC., Fortune, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, and WIRED.
Surround yourself with a community of like-minded business owners and managers who want the same things you do. You can support one another with advice and counsel, toss around ideas, partner up on projects, and encourage each other during difficult times.
Who Can I Share My Business Plan With?
The business plan you create can be shared with potential investors, business partners, other managers, and employees. It is best that you are careful about who you share your business plan with as you do not want it to get into the wrong hands. .
