HOW TO WRITE A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PLAN



WHY YOU NEED A BUSINESS PLAN:

Your business plan is the main guiding source of information about your business not only to the lenders and investors but also to the customers. It lays the foundation of your business and all its working in the future.

HOW BUSINESS PLAN HELP YOU TO RUN YOUR BUSINESS

If you have good business plan in your hand then it helps and guides you in each stage of your business. It works as a roadmap for you as to how to structure and grow your new business.

It also helps you get funding or making partnership in your business to manage the finance issues. Your business plan depicts a true image of your business so you can convince the people to work with you or invest in your company.

WHAT BUSINESS PLAN WILL WORK BETTER FOR YOU

There is no straight forward rule for adapting a business plan. The main principle to keep in mind while writing your business plan is that is must meet your needs.

You while putting your business plan to work must be adaptive to incorporate the things as per your needs and business demands.

WHAT ARE THE TWO MAIN CATEGORIES OF BUSINESS PLANS?

In prevailing practice, there are two main categories of business plans namely as Traditional and Lean startup.

WHAT IS TRADITIONAL BUSINESS PLAN

These type of business plans are more common and it uses a standard structure to follow.

It encourages you to go into detail in each section thus sometimes require more work and can consume a number of pages to be written on.

LEAN STARTUP BUSINESS PLAN

This type of startup business plan keeps things simple and short. It mainly focuses on summarizing the most important key elements of your plan while ignoring the least ones. Comparatively it takes much shorter time to make and typically it takes just one page.

 

Traditional business plan

Now let’s explain what traditional business plan include. It is much detailed and covers every bit of your plan to make it more comprehensive thus making it easier for lenders and investors to know about the business details.

If you want a comprehensive plan, you want that your investor knows everything about your business in a go and you are detail-oriented then you will go with traditional business plan.

Traditional Business Plan Format:

Now a format of traditional business plan is discussed in detail to portray what it actually includes.

A traditional business plan includes following components;

1.       Executive Summary

2.       Company description

3.       Market Analysis

4.       Organization and Management

5.       Marketing and Sales

6.       Product and Service Line

7.       Funding Request

8.       Financial Projections

9.       Appendix

Lean startup plan

After having a clear idea about This type of plan is high-level focus, fast to write, and contains key elements only. Some lenders and investors may ask for more information.

Lean startup format

This type of business plan is preferred when you want t to explain your business quickly. It is relatively simple and easy to understand. It offers you a chance to regularly change your business plan as per the changing requirements and demands.

Lean startup formats are charts that use only a handful of elements to describe your company’s value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. They’re useful for visualizing tradeoffs and fundamental facts about your company.

The key elements of Lean Startup Business plan are as;

1.       Key partnerships

2.       Key activities

3.       Main Resources of your business

4.       Value Preposition

5.       Customer relationship

6.       Customer Niche

7.       Prioritize-Reducing Cost or Maximizing Value

8.       Revenue Inflow