Archive for August, 2011
The Long & Winding Road (to a Comprehensive Business Plan)
If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there and, come to think of it, how are you going to know you’re there if you arrive?
The business plan. Okay, okay. I can hear your sighs and groans already. But a business plan needn’t be boring and dry. Gaining insights into your target market, learning about your competition and projecting income can be kind of exciting. Yes, I’m a bit of an “information freak” but you, too, can find many interesting details when researching for your plan.
Many of us just plain don’t know where to start. It’s no surprise – they sure didn’t teach it to us in high school, which was a real disservice, if you ask me. Did you know that 99% of all businesses in Canada are small businesses (companies comprised of fewer than 100 employees)? It’s beyond me why we don’t better educate our young students in entrepreneurial activities, but then, I digress. Let’s get back to your business plan.
A traditional business plan is made of up a number of topics such as, the executive summary, company fact sheet, company overview, market overview, target market, competitive research, a marketing plan, financial projections, break-even analysis, S.W.O.T. analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and worst-case-scenario. Think of it as the roadmap guiding your business toward the goals you have defined in your plan.
How, exactly, does one go about preparing a business plan? Well, the best place to begin just may be your local library or your computer, to use the vast array of resources on the Internet. Research your target market and competitors. Utilize resources available through banks and trust companies to predict your income and expenses. Be creative!
I know it sounds a little daunting, but if you take it in bite-sized pieces, it can be accomplished in a few weeks. “A few weeks?!” you moan. Well Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it? A pretty important piece of real estate – and your company is just as important to you. You don’t really want to rush through the planning of something as critical as your business, your livelihood, your dream, do you? I didn’t think so. So take the time, do your homework and celebrate your business’ success!
Simple Business Plan Templates For Entrepreneurs
A business plan template is an important tool, especially for an entrepreneur learning business plan format for the first time. These are some of the benefits of buying and using a template to create your business plan.
Shortcut For Outlining
A template will present you with a workable outline for your plan, giving you all of the major sections and subsections of the business plan in the order you should present them. All of the section headings and a table of contents will be prepared for you, saving you the time of creating this. With a template, you are more or less ready to jump into writing the text after you buy a business plan template.
Example Text
Some templates will come with text for a sample business within each section of the plan. This serves as a placeholder and, if well-written, a good example of the type of writing you must create. This should show you what a professionally written plan will look like and what questions must be answered in your own writing. Read the sample text carefully before starting your own writing so you are better prepared.
Some templates include lists of questions for you to answer within each section rather than sample text. This can be just as useful, as the questions funders will want to see answered will be similar for most types of businesses.
Financial Statement Preparation
A business plan template should include an Excel financial model which facilitates the creation of financial statements, charts, and summaries for your plan and appendices. Using a template for this should save a great deal of preparation time as the basic outline for all of the statements should be prepared with formulas to automatically update the statements based on your changes to financial assumptions of revenues and costs. The time and skill required to set up a financial model like this is considerable. With it you can try out different types of projections and immediately see how this impacts your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.