Writing a business plan

The length of a business plan and the time it takes to do a business plan varies widely from person to person and business to business. Every business advisor or consultant will have their own favourite business plan template they find successful. And each private or state funder may have a template they prefer.  What are common to all business plans are the questions they must answer and the information it must provide.  If a business plan is a guide both for yourself and/or investors you will need to describe the following.

• What is your main business?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you going to market your product/service to them?
• How are you going to distribute your product/service to them?
• How much are they willing to pay?
• Why do they want your product/service?
• What is the cost of delivering the service?
• How much will you profit?
• What are your milestones over a defined period? (usually 3 year period)
• Who is your competition?
• What advantage you have over your competition?
• What funding you require?

Business plan structure

Now you know what type of questions you need to answer you need to put a logical structure on it.  Here is the order of a typical business plan.

• Executive summary – summary of each of the main sections of the plan and always written last.
• The detail of your product/service what problem it solves for customers.
• Business model – how you make money
• Unique selling point and advantage over your competition
• Marketing plan
• Competitive analysis
• Team structure
• Financial plan

Yes, it takes time to work through a plan like this. Taking time to plan at this stage though, with or without professional help will save you a lot of heartache and money in the long-term.