Reviewing a Standard Business Plan – Important for the Investors
Every business should have a business plan. Unfortunately the vast majority of the business plans are not worth. Following errors are encountered while taking an outline of a bad business plan: Poorly written: Spelling, punctuation, grammar and style are important when it is done on paper. The investors are not supposed to invest in companies that have committed English mistakes. They are looking for clues about the underlying business and the leaders while following a plan. After seeing the spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes, they will think about the negative aspects of the company. Careless presentation: Once your writing is proper, the presentation has to match. It is irritating for the investors to view inconsistent margins, charts without labels or improper units, missing page numbers, tables without heading, and technical terminology with missing contents in table. Incomplete plan: A complete plan should involve a discussion about the industry, specifically the industry trends like, if the market is developing or decreasing. Your plan should include detailed financial reports like, monthly cash flow, income statements and annual balance sheet. These are important facts for reviewing a standard business plan. Blurred plan: Business plan is not a novel, a poem or a code. If an individual with high school education can’t guess your plan, then you will require rewrite the plan. If you are trying to give blurred information due to confidentiality of your business, you should show summary to the people. If they show more interest to know about the business, then have then non complete sign and nondisclosure agreements before showing the complete plan.
Too detailed plan: Keep the technical details to a minimum in the main plan. If you want to include them, then add this in appendix. You may break your plans into three parts. Two to three page executive summary, ten to twenty page business plan and appendix if required to mention what you want to say. Unrealistic assumptions:
The worst business plans hide assumptions throughout the plan so nobody can say where the assumptions will end and the facts will start. Assumptions are there in market size, customer buying behavior, acceptable pricing, and time for commercialization. Insufficient research: You should learn everything about your business, industry, competitor position, size, market share, and overall market trends. You may not want to provide too many facts about your business, but you should include some numbers, charts and statistics to support the assumptions and projections. Business plan is no plan: A good business plan is actually an overview of the business and it also outlines all the major steps that you require to reach every milestone. Taking a snapshot of your business plan will be effective for the people who want to get much about your business.