A business plan is vital for your success, especially if it’s directed at investors. It helps them understand the premise upon which your business is built and it shows them if it can succeed on the market.
Most businesses know the general structure of a business plan:
- Executive summary
- Company description
- Market analysis
- Organization and management
- Service or product
- Marketing and sales
- Funding request
- Financial projections
- Appendix
But a lot of small business owners just starting out are often not sure what goes into making of an excellent business plan that will attract investors.
Here are some tips:
1.Do the research
Before you start writing your business plan, you need to first focus on doing research and analyze your product, market and your expertise. You should spend at least half the time evaluating and analyzing everything related to your business. Don’t let the love of the idea cloud your judgement.
Here are some things you need to think about:
- Is there a market for your small business?
- How big is your target market? Big enough for you to be successful?
- How many competitors do you have? Who are they?
- How successful are your competitors?
- Which problems am I solving with my small business?
- What makes my small business stand out?
Start with these questions and dive deep into them. You’ll probably find more questions but that’s the purpose of your research – to find out if your small business can actually succeed.
2. Figure out the purpose of the plan
Once you do enough research, you have to figure out what the purpose of your plan is. Of course, it’s there to describe different elements of your business and that’s its main purpose but it can essentially serve you for different things.
A business plan prepared for investors will be:
- Concise
- Shorter
- Focused on the budget
- Focused on the outcomes (revenue, growth, predicted success rates etc.)
- Will include potential risks and ways you plan on dealing with them
A business plan prepared for internal use will be:
- Longer
- Detail-oriented
- Focused on strategies that will get your small business to success
- Will include elaborate plans for handling risks
Once you understand these differences, you can understand what your business plan needs to include.
Sections investors are most interested in:
- Market analysis
- Funding request
- Financial projections
- Risk projections
These help them understand if your business is worth investing in or not, so make sure that these sections are well-written and honest.
3. Market analysis
This section of your business plan is dedicated to all aspects of your future market. As such, it’s extremely important to investors because without a market, your product or service might not exist at all.
They will want to know:
- Who is your target audience?
- How capable is your audience of buying your product/service?
- How often will they need it?
- Is there a need for your product/service on the market?
- How successful are your competitors?
All of this needs to be based on real research. This means that you will have to find participants that fit into your target market and make conclusions based on their answers, previous examples of similar businesses, and expert predictions for your future. None of this is arbitrary. If it was, your investors wouldn’t consider it legit information.
4. Financial projections
“The second most important part of your business plan to the investors are your financial projections. If they are investing in your business, they need to know just how successful that business will be and for them, the success means money”, – comments Matthew Johnson, a Communication manager at Write My X. While you may be satisfied with a certain annual revenue, your investors will fund you only if your business returns a substantial amount within a year.
They will be interested to know:
- The sales forecast
- The budget
- Cash-flow statement
- Income projections
- Break Even point analysis
- Business financial history (if applicable)
Again, none of this is arbitrary or a result of your personal opinions. You need to use real data and real information – base it on competitor’s, findings from your own research and so on. Be prepared to back anything you write and be prepared for a lot more questions.
5. Executive summary
The executive summary, while seemingly unimportant is something most investors jump to, especially if they receive a lot of funding requests. Spend a bit of extra time in order to make this section compelling.
“It should contain all of the information the rest of your business plan has but it needs to be concise and say all of that in a lot less sentences. It also needs to be compelling in order to grab and keep their attention. If they like what they see in this section, they will move on to the other sections as well”, – explains a Financial writer at Academic Brits and 1 Day 2 Write.
Write An Amazing Small Business Plan
You should start everything in your life with a plan. This is a surefire way to succeed and not get too stressed during the process. Even though all the research and the complexity of writing a business plan for your small business may scare you at first, you will soon be thanking yourself that you have created something so useful
Bio:
Adelina Benson is a marketing writer and editor at Origin writings. She develops marketing strategies, edits and proofreads company emails. In her free time, she loves exploring new ways to connect with people and share knowledge both in the real world and online.
