How to Make a Business Plan and Stick to It
Introduction: There are a variety of ways that companies can write a business plan. Many people advocate including a number of sections, but numerous sections can lead to clunky and long business plans. Your business plan should allow a potential investor to understand what your company is about, how it will be run, and how it will be financed. These are the main things that you will need in order to develop a concise business plan. Summarize: The first section of your business plan should be an executive summary, which will summarize your whole business plan. This summary should describe all of the goals of your business, and primarily that. By the time that a reader is done reading your executive summary, they should know exactly why your business is operating. Describe: This section is where you go into detail about all of the intricacies of your business and the industry that it operates in. You should go into further detail about the companies that you will competing with and working with, and how your business will measure up to those already existing companies. You do not need to propose any strategies to improving the industry, in this section, you just need to mention how your company will fit into the industry and what innovations your plan to bring.
Strategize: In this section you will want to expand on how your business will offer services and products that are different from what is already on the market. You should analyze your competitors, in this section, and describe how you can improve upon what they offer. Here, you should also mention possible weaknesses that your company has and how these weaknesses can be remedied. Finance: Your investors, or anyone reading your business plan, will want to know how your operations will be funded. Anything financial should be included in this section, including the costs of your products and services, and any debt that you will initially be taking on. Sticking to the Plan: Business plans can be tough to stick to, but you should develop your business plan with failures and obstacles in mind. By including setbacks, you will have a document to reference when things do not go according to plan. As soon as you find your business straying from the original plan, assess why and make adjustments to get back on plan. Conclusion: Your business plan does not need to be elaborate and extremely detailed; in fact, this may place your business off track. You should aim to develop a short business plan that can quickly describe what your business is about and the way that the company will be run. There will be instances where your business will not be running according to plan, but you should create room for these instances in your business plan. A properly written business plan will be precise enough to give your company direction, but short enough that you can quickly skim it to understand the objectives.
Edward Schinik has been with the Investment Manager since 2009 and has been with one Affiliated Investment Manager since 2005.