Business Plan - Part II
3. How to Get Started
Crafting a credible business plan requires foresight,
research, and analysis. A successful business plan reflects the results of a properly executed business-planning process.
By writing a business plan, you''re testing the viability of your business idea. Every claim that you make in your business plan must be substantiated with the results of your research and analysis. In order to evaluate an idea’s chance of real success, and to develop an action plan for realizing it, you must first do the legwork to analyze and refine it.
Preparatory Steps
Evaluating and planning your business is critical preparation for writing a convincing business plan. That process includes:
Refining your business concept
Validating the market
Analyzing your competition
Assessing your market opportunity
Planning marketing
Modeling operations
Assessing and adjusting your model
Before writing a plan for your business idea, you must be sure that you understand and have considered each aspect of your business idea. If you need help with executing any step of the planning process, make sure you get the support and guidance you need before you start writing your plan.
4. The Essential Elements of a Plan
A Business plan consists on:
Executive Summary
Company and Product Overview
Market Analysis
Marketing and Sales Plan
Operations
Management Team
Financials
Funds Required
Before you get started writing your own business plan, you might want to locate and review several examples of plans for businesses in your particular field. Such a review gives you a good sense of the specific issues and concerns that you need to address and include in your own plan.
5. Overview
The Executive Summary is the first section of your business plan that a potential investor reviews, but the last you''ll write. The Executive Summary is the condensed version of the entire business plan, your overall idea and its possibility for success. Here, you must capture the trust and the imagination of your reader. You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but an investor is quite likely to judge a business plan by its Executive Summary. If there are errors or omissions in this section, the investor might not even read the rest of your plan.
An Executive Summary should be a brief (two to five page) introduction to the business plan that outlines the business opportunity and vision, the market for your product and service and trends and projections for the market, the competitive advantage offered by your product or service, the skills and experience of your company''s management team, and a summary of the offering and anticipated returns.
"If you don''t capture my attention in the first paragraph of your Executive Summary, it''s likely that I will not read the rest of your plan."
A Potential Investor Wants to Know What kind of company is this? (Is it a technology company, a manufacturing company, etc? What type of structure does it have: LLC, S-Corporation, etc?)
How many people will buy this product or service and what will they spend to get it?
Who is running this venture and do they have what it takes to pull it off?
How much money do they need, for what purpose, and when do they need it?
How much money will my investment return and when will I realize that return?
Don''t forget to see the other parts of this document here on SHVOONG for simple, easy to implement, rules for successful Business Planning!