How to prepare a successful business plan for your company?
How to prepare a successful business plan for your company? While a lot of business ideas turn out to be pretty good, we need to be aware that also some of them are either very bad or just poorly executed. Therefore, there´s nothing more important than knowing how to make a business plan that’s guaranteed to be successful.
So, when you´re making your business plan, is important to have the company´s goals and ideas in mind. And on top of that, check if the plan can work from a logistical and functional point of view before putting it into practice.
Thus, if you want a winning method and you don´t know how to make it happen, the best you can do is find a marketing agency´s help so they can prepare a good project for you.
What is the Business Plan?
Before building a business strategy for your company is key to clarify that this will be the document that´ll include all your business-related info since the structure of a business plan should have the following:
- What you´ll sell
- How the is the structure going to be like
- Financial projections and permits
- What the market will be
- Renting quotas
- What the selling plan will be
- What the necessary financing will be
There might be other necessary documents when elaborating a business plan that can be effective for your company. When a commercial plan is created, is easier to determine if the business idea can be viable to be able to anticipate any problems in case they happen in the future.
What is the business plan structure like?
Through this post, we want to give you the best bits of advice to draft an optimal business plan for you, let´s get started:
- Make your business shine The first thing to deal with when you´re assembling your business plan of action is knowing what makes your company unique. That´s why, if you plan the launching of a womenswear business, ideally you need to stand out from other brands in the same niche. Just the same, you need to define which elements help you stick out from the competition and for which specific occasions are you selling your products. Hence, if you sell sports clothing you need to stipulate for what kind of sports it can be worn. We need to emphasize that you´re not only selling a product or a service, you´ll offer a mixture between products, value, and brand experience.
Make sure you put together a short business plan Nowadays, the briefer a business plan, the more successful it can be. Of course, it´s normal wanting to include all the related information of the products that will be for sale or describe how you want the web design to be. Then again, none of this data will be helpful for the making of a commercial plan. Somehow, knowing this data will be relevant in the future, but the more practical thing now is focusing on the elements that contribute to your plan.
- Make a format that´s easy to understand The ease to read must be one of the main features of a business plan. It will be great for the readers to have a quick general view of the document, so you need to find a format that suits them. In the same way, don´t forget to make use of headlines, bullets, using bolds, and highlighting the metrics that should be looked at by the reader. You can also attach tabs with different names to the text, regardless of the document is on paper or digital.
- Modify the document on the go When making your commercial plan, you must not forget that this should be dynamic. With this, we mean that you should be able to update it in case changes need to be done on your project.
How to make a business plan fast and easily?
Now, after explaining what a business plan is and the things you can´t leave out, we´ll add every one of the essential elements to make a successful business plan for your company:
Write an executive summary
You can offer the reader a clearer scene of the company and the market, without much detail, when an executive summary is made. To write an executive summary we recommend doing it after elaborating the rest of the business plan, that way it´ll be easier to extract the key points that should be included.
These are the key points that should shape a business plan summary, and for it to be a valid one is preferable that it only is a page long and that is explained as briefly as possible in 1 or 2 paragraphs:
- Summary: Explain what the company is about, its location, what it sells, and which is its target audience.
- Company outline: The structure of the business, including who are the owners and the previous skills it can offer should be in this item. This way you can specify what type of employees are going to be needed.
- Products or services: Making clear which are the products or services that the company will offer.
- Market: After doing market research you need to establish what your niche will be.
- Financial Study: Here it´s important to define how you´ll be financing the business and what financial projections are you reaching for.
Make a depiction of your company
This part is usually interesting in a commercial plan since it must describe your company concisely. This will be the opportunity you were looking for to show off an abstract of what your company does, what is your commercial structure, and its vision. In addition, you´ll also need to include the business owner’s information, and lastly, you need to mention the location of the business and the market needs it will satisfy.
This will be the precise moment to show your products or services can satisfy those needs, of the market as much as the consumer.
Make a market research
When you have the idea to start a business, there’s a lot of questions that need answering. But the main one should be focused on whether tour proposal has an opportunity in the current market. This can be one of the most important questions because the market will be the determinant to know if your business can be successful or not.
So, ask yourself what your target market is and why it can gain interest in acquiring your products or services.
Is important to make this question as specific as possible to then be able to elaborate an effective commercial plan. For instance, if it´s a carpet business, your target market can not be directly everyone that needs a carpet. First, we recommend you think in a small target audience, like middle-class families, and there should be where you´ll answer the following questions:
- What is the percentage of middle-class families in your country?
- What kind of carpets do they frequently use?
- Is the current market growing or it has remained static?
For this point to be able to develop more easily, you can include the research analysis that other people have done alongside your own. This said analysis can be done in many ways, from polls to interviews or other tools.
Offer details of your products and services
This section is ideal for the development of all details related to what you sell and how can that create benefits for your clients. Just like in the last item and every other that has relevance since if you can´t explain how people can benefit from your business, your idea is most likely not ideal to be included in a business plan.
In consequence, the first thing you need to do is write the problem you wish to discuss, and the next will be to bring solutions to the table and what role the product or service performs to get to that solution.
Finally, you must also determine what the competition scene is and which companies are already offering a solution to your determined problem, and what this solution is proposing to stand out from the rest.
Develop a management plan
This section is appropriate to the development of what it´ll be the organizational structure of your company will be, considering that the management can be modified or updated later. So, in this item you need to mention who the responsible will be and the number of tasks that will be assigned to each person or group.
It will also be of interest that it includes and short bio of each member of the team, to mention their credentials and work experience that has made them a part of your workforce.
If by now you haven´t hired an employee for every position, don´t worry, you just have to explain the function that every worker you have has.
Create a marketing plan
Marketing has come to stay and undoubtedly can´t be left out in any successful business plan to any company, including yours. Thus, for the development of your marketing strategy, you must include how you´ve planned to sell your products.
And before starting to work in a marketing plan you have to precise your people buyer and make market research.
Once you´ve included marketing in your commercial plan, is necessary you ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the plan to introduce your company to the market?
- What actions are you going to take so your company to grow?
- Which are the channels you will be focusing on?
About sales, you need to define your strategy, your sales team, and how you plan to grow in the long run. You also need to keep in mind the number of calls you will be made to close a sale and the average price for every sale for a full analysis of your prince strategy.
Make a Financial Plan
Detailing your financial plan cannot go unnoticed either, because you will need to contemplate the initial cost, the financial projections, and in the case of wanting to attract investors you will need to make an application to get financing.
The initial costs have to do with the resources you’ll need to get your business running. And to keep a record, you must add the estimated cost of every resource. Just the same, in the initial costs you´ll determine if you will rent an office space or if you’ll need a phone, a computer, or other work components.
So no detail scapes you, you can make a list with the needs and their costs. The best thing would be being honest once you make the list and avoiding unnecessary expenses, so you don´t go out of budget.
When you have the initial costs set, the next step will be to justify them through a report, where the financial projections must be expressed very clearly. This step will be huge, especially if everything is in the investment pursuit for your business. Therefore, you need to make sure your financial model is precise since it’s the only way to boost your opportunities and convince the investors that it´ll be a good idea to bet on your company.
Include an attachment
This would be the final step since if necessary, you can include an attachment where your CV can go and the co-founders´. After that, you can include some sort of permit or any other legal information that may be relevant.
Have you liked this post?
Keeping a business strategy is elemental, especially nowadays when you need to keep on top of your competition.
That’s why the importance of a business plan lays in this being the only way to keep your company´s goals clear and to also keep up with the demands of your target audience.
In BluCactus, we´re certified to help you create the plan your business needs to, according to your needs and projections.
Contact us! and we´ll be happy to do so.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!