How to Write a Business Plan for Your Business

If you are trying to start your own business you need to have a business plan. This is a guide that can help you stay focused on your goals and serve as a tool to attract investors and lenders to finance your business. You need to prepare a solid business plan to accomplish all of this. To create an effective business plan, several steps need to be completed to ensure that the plan includes the necessary elements.

Executive Summary

You should always start your business plan with an executive summary. The executive summary gives an overview of the plan and serves as lure for potential lenders and investors. You should provide information about your company, the products or service you offer, key personnel, and how much money you will need needed and what the money will be used for.

Description of Your Company

Provide information about your company including where it’s located and the ownership of your company. If you have an already existing company, and your company has had any impressive achievements you can put it here. You can also give an overview of past profits and financial information. Also provide information about new and exciting projects you plan to implement once funding becomes available.

Product or Service Offered

This is where you talk about the product or service you offer. Be sure you make it simple and easy to understand what you are talking about. Investors and lenders are usually intelligent, but your product or service may not be something they are thoroughly familiar with, and so avoid using vocabulary that is full of acronyms and jargon that they may not understand.

Marketing

This section is where you can impress your target audience. Provide an analysis of the market, including distribution channels, available market data and applicable laws. Strongly presented information in this segment of the business plan demonstrates to your potential lenders and investors that you have thorough knowledge of your prospective market, and that your business is worth investing in. After providing the analysis of the current market explain in details
the strategies you plan to use to exploit the market.

Financial

In this section, you should include startup costs if it is a new business, projected sales, a profit-loss analysis, and any other relevant numbers you have available. This is the section most investors will ask questions about, should you have a meeting with them. Be sure to answer their questions honestly.

Management

This is the last crucial section of your business plan, and it’s where you present your team of managers. If you have an MBA from Harvard, talk about it. If you have built a highly successful online company don’t hesitate to talk about it. If you have no credentials yourself, try to find someone who does and list the person as an advisor.

==> Click here to learn how to write great business plan!

Now that you’re done writing your business plan, take the time to go through it. Read it many times and make any necessary changes to the copy. If you need help there are many excellent resources available online that can help you create your business plan.

Peter