Write a business plan: 5 keys for your success During the last decade,
I have helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to write their busines
Write a business plan: 5 keys for your success
During the last decade, I have helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to write their business plans, either through the model of my business plan or with our consulting services on business plans.
However, if you expect to write your business plan, keep these five points in mind:
- Put your audience first
Most business plans are written for a hearing. The most common public consists of investors and lenders. Another audience could be your employees.
Be sure to write the plan with your key audience in mind. For example, if you are writing for venture capitalists (VC), be sure to meet their needs. For example, VCs are very limited over time. Therefore, make sure that the first paragraph of your plan clearly indicates what you do and what interests you. Likewise, VCs generally finance only companies that have the ability to scale up to $ 100 million over five years. As such, your business plan should show how your business can achieve such a business.
- Keep your business plan short
Your business plan can never and never should answer all the questions your reader might have. Such a plan would be too long and nobody would like to read it.
Rather, your business plan should cover the main points of your business, interest the reader and show that you have fully thought about the opportunity. One of the key objectives of your business plan is to create sufficient investor interest to plan a meeting with you. During that meeting, they will ask you all the specific questions they have, some of which will not be dealt with in your plan (which is fine). - Sell, but do not sell too much
If used as a tool to attract the interest of investors and lenders, the business plan is essentially a sales or marketing document. As such, it should excite the investor, just like a brochure for a new car means that the right consumer wants to learn more and / or buy it.
Now, while your plan should excite the reader, be careful not to overdo it and, in particular, not to overburden your business plan with superlatives. For example, by saying that we have the best technology, a world-class management team, incredible employees, etc., We can often take away the credibility of your plan. Unless, of course, it is not possible to provide concrete data that supports each of these statements. - Do not downplay the competition
When entrepreneurs launch new businesses, they often claim they do not have competition. Since they think that what they are doing is completely unique.
However, most investors think that if they do not have competition, they may not have a market. In particular, if customers are not currently purchasing a product or service like yours, there may not be a request.
In most cases, at least you have indirect competition or other companies that meet the customer's needs with a different solution than yours. And in many cases, you have a direct competition.
In any case, indicate who these competitors are in the business plan. And do not dismiss your competitors for being poor or unworthy. Because if they are still in business, they should at least do something right. Furthermore, the end of the competition could damage your credibility.
Therefore, be sure to indicate what your competitors are doing and then highlight the reasons why you think your organization can overcome them. - View the long-term plan but in the short term
Your business plan should indicate your long-term vision for your business, which typically is five or more years in the future. But since it is impossible to plan so far, it is necessary to create more concrete plans to achieve your goals for the next year.
In particular, determine what you should do next year to put your organization on the right track to achieve its five-year goals. Then, in the business plan, divide the goals for the current year into smaller parts. For example, show your main goals for each quarter of this year. If you have several overlapping goals over time, use a Gantt chart to show them better.
The right business plan often means the difference between raising funds and not raising funds. And often it's the difference between achieving and failing to achieve your business goals. Therefore, be sure to keep these tips in mind when writing the business plan so you can achieve success in these two areas.