How to Make a Business Plan

How to Make a Business Plan

How to Make a Business PlanHow many times in your life have you had an idea that you thought would make for a great business? It happens a lot. Maybe you recognize a consumer need that is going unfulfilled, or you think there’s a niche within an industry that hasn’t been fully developed. This is how every great business has started out: as an idea. The difference is that most people are hesitant to explore their business ideas further.

The process of turning an idea into a business is daunting and off-putting. Most people have no idea where to get started and that tends to deter them from taking the first steps. A lot of good businesses never come to fruition or launch because people think it’s too hard to do. That’s where a good business plan can come into play.

2 | How to Make a Business Plan


People tend to think that a business plan is about getting other people to support your idea, and while that’s certainly true, it’s much more than that. A business plan is your roadmap for turning your idea into a reality, a tool for monitoring your business’s progress and a means of holding yourself accountable. The process of researching and writing a business plan is all about fleshing out your idea and giving a vivid picture of something that doesn’t exist yet and how you’re going to go about making it a reality. It’s a tool to help you as much as to entice others.

That’s why composing a strong, well researched and detailed business plan is essential to any business undertaking, and it’s not as intimidating a process as you might think. It just takes effort and the will to go for it.

How To Make a Business Plan


At its most basic level, a business plan is a description of your proposed business or of changes to your current business. It details the what, the why and the how of your business: what it is, why it should exist and how you’re going to go about making it a reality.

Your business plan should make the case for how you intend to create a new market or establish yourself in an existing market. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, but the iPhone established smartphones as a common consumer item. Is that what you’re aiming to do with your business, create a new need? Or do you see market inefficiencies in an already robust industry? That’s what recent successes Warby Parker and Caspar accomplished. These companies are famous for eliminating the middleman in the glasses and mattress industries. Their business plans required their founders to show how they could change industries that outwardly appeared entirely dominated and unchangeable. The strength of their business plans is what allowed them to succeed.

What is a Business Plan?


Sometimes the most difficult part of a business plan, is taking the first steps. So start small by brainstorming your idea and then begin to answer the difficult questions about whether or not your concept is viable.

The first thing you want to do is simply jotting down your business concept and the ideas you have. Don’t self-edit at this stage. You just want to get everything down on paper. This will help you as you start to formulate the details of your plan.

Many entrepreneurs fail to ask themselves the tough questions about their business early on; they only realize the shortcomings of their idea when it’s already far along in development.

How to Start


Avoid this from the start by thinking about the feasibility of your idea and assessing whether or not there is a market for what you intend to offer. Are there other businesses doing what you are proposing to do? If there are, do you see a space for your business to succeed and thrive? Who is the target audience for your business? How do you intend to reach them? Just try brainstorming and asking yourself the hard questions that are important to think about.

From here, go ahead and begin to formulate your plan. A business plan is a living, breathing document: you should constantly be revising it. So go ahead and start to flesh out your plan and continue to add to it and revise it as you do more research and progress through the stages of development.

How to Start


Every strong business plan should have a few basic sections, the first of which should be an executive summary

An executive summary gives a snapshot of your entire business plan and briefly outlines your goals. This is where you can include a mission statement explaining what your business is about and give basic information on the state of your business’s development. You can also include what your financial position is and give a brief statement about your future plans. In other words, the executive statement summarizes what you’ll be providing in more detail in the rest of the business plan.

Since you’re most likely just starting your business, you can use this section to focus on your own experience and background and why you are pursuing this particular endeavor.

Section 1: The Executive Summary


The business description is the “what” section. It’s here that you provide a description of the different elements of your business and what you envision it to be. This is the section where you want your passion for your business to come through. It’s where you pitch your idea and where you want to attempt to inspire others with your vision.

This section should contain a very basic description of the market that you are targeting and what needs your business will satisfy. You should list who you’ll be serving with your business and detail what you view to be your business’s competitive advantage (i.e. cost savings, location etc.).

Section 2: The Business Description


This section is where you provide analysis of your industry, your market and your competition. This is the “why” section in which you lay out the rationale for your business and detail how you will succeed based on the conditions of your industry. Use research, data and statistics to provide a compelling case about your target market and your competition.

You want to establish the size of your target market, detail what its characteristics are and analyze the competition. Some of the most important questions to answer in this

section are: what are the needs of your market and why aren’t they being met? How reliable a market is it? Will it fluctuate based on different conditions or circumstances? How much market share will you be able to gain? What is the state of your competition and how will they impact you?

Remain focused and making a convincing case for the viability of your business. Any information that is only semi-relevant or that distracts from your focus can be put at the end in appendices.

Section 3: Market Analysis


This is the “how” section of your plan where you outline the organization and management of your company, the nature and appeal of your products or services and your approach to marketing and sales.

Provide an organizational chart and description that gives a concrete, step-by-step outline of how your business will be structured and who will be doing what. This will appeal to investors, for whom efficiency is naturally quite important, and it will also benefit you as you go about hiring and delegating responsibilities.

Also include a breakdown of the ownership structure in this section and the profiles and qualifications of anyone already on your management team. You should stress how the skills of those already on board compliment your own and vice versa.

Section 4:

Action Plan


In describing your product or service, make sure and include how it benefits consumers and any competitive advantages your offering has over that of your competitors. Include details on your plan for production and pricing.

You don’t necessarily have to show how your business will have immediate financial success; rather, make a convincing case for your business’s long-term viability. It’s here that you can show your outside-of-the-box thinking. Remember, Facebook intentionally waited years before monetizing their platform because they recognized that they could convert cultural capital into economic capital once they had come to dominate the social networking industry.

Lastly, outline how you intend to make your business known. You should detail your strategy for penetrating your market, a growth strategy and a marketing strategy.

Section 4: Action Plan


One of the main uses of a business plan is for getting funding for your venture. It’s a document you can hand to potential investors or that you can submit with business loan applications. Your request should include how much funding you have and your current funding requirement.

A funding request needs to be precise. Investors want to know exactly how their money will be used. So break it down for them. What is the funding request for? How much working capital do you need? How much funding do you currently require? How much will you need in the future and what

Section 5:

Funding Request and Financial Projections


length of time will be covered by the current request? These are some of the basic questions you want to answer.

In your financial projections, you want to present what your prospective costs and earnings will be for the next five years. You want to forecast all your financial data as best you can based on market analysis and research. You want to give your projected income statements, balance sheets, projected expenditures and cash flow statements. It will appear sloppy to investors if you are requesting more or less funding than what your financial projections show to be your need, so make sure your request lines up exactly with your financial projections.

Section 5: Funding Request and Financial Projections


Your business plan is not a doctoral thesis, nor a novel. Keep your prose simple and easy to read. You don’t want to get bogged down in adjectives and long, complicated sentences. Many of those you give your plan to will end up merely skimming it, so it’s important that the salient points do not become lost in convoluted language. Avoid acronyms and trendy terms and don’t add additional clauses when a single word will suffice.

Lists with well-articulated bullet points can be a good way to present important information in an easily digestible manner. Lists also break up your text so that it’s presented in more manageable chunks for your reader.

Style Points for Your Plan


Use charts to back up the numbers that you list in your text. They are another effective way to communicate important statistics and facts in a clear and easy-to-find manner. While 3D graphs look snazzy, simple bar charts and pie charts are often the best option.

A good business plan takes time and work. The key is to constantly revise, rework and improve your plan so that every time you submit it to investors or creditors, it gets better and better. This will not only make your plan stronger and more impressive, it will help you continually refine your business roadmap, ensuring that your business will succeed and thrive.

Style Points for Your Plan

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