Archive for the ‘business plan’ Category

Writing a business plan – part 5

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Business plan key messages

Your business plan must get across the following key elements to potential investors:

  • Product/Service - You must outline the unique selling points of your product or service. It must be clear how this business will stand out from the crowd.
  • Financials – You must show sales, cost and profit projections for the next 3 years.
  • Management Team – You need to show you and your management team have the experience and skills to operate your business in your chosen market.
  • Return on Investment (ROI) – Clearly lay out for the investor how and when they will get return on their investment.

Remember although your business plan is a sales tool it is not a work of fiction and must be realistic.

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Writing a business plan – part 4

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

The business plan audience

What you must also consider is your audience, a bit like your CV where you have different versions for different job applications you must have different versions of your plan. We would advice you to start by writing a version of the plan for yourself as this is likely to be the most detailed. From this detailed plan you can extract parts to create plans for other audiences.

As a general rule if you are using a business plan to gain funding then it should be a maximum of 20 pages, anything more and it will not be read.

Who are the likely audiences for your business plan:

  • Banks
  • Government support organisations (business link etc)
  • Potential business partners
  • Potential business mentors
  • Grant providers
  • Business angels
  • Friends & Family investors

All will be looking for slightly different things from the plan so try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself if I was a bank manager what would I want to know.

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Writing a business plan – part 3

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

Business plan samples

Sometimes even with a template it can be difficult to get started so take a look at some of these sample plans to help you get a feel for the content of each section:

  • Bplans – a range of industry specific example plans
  • inbizvest – look at other entrepreneurs business profiles to get ideas, enhanced profiles have more details so start with them

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Writing a business plan – part 2

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Business plan templates

The first step is to find a business plan template to guide you through the process of writing the plan. Here is a list of templates we found on the web:

Using a template is a great guide but can allow entrepreneurs to fall into the “must follow the template” trap. The template should be a used as a set of possible headings for your plan not must haves, so if you don’t think a particular section should be included then don’t include it. You also don’t need to stick to the order of the template if you think for your business a section is more important and should be read before others then move them about.

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Writting a business plan – part 1

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Whether you are writing a business plan for your bank manager, business link, the BBC’s Dragons’ Den or for the internets Dragons’ Den at inbizvest.com there are key things that need to be included whatever the intended audience.

Now some entrepreneurs think they don’t need to write a business plan unless someone is asking for one, well you absolutely do need to write it. The process of writing your business plan is key to the success of your business and often brings reality to bear on your idea. Just having it in your head is not enough, in black and white is the only way to really understand how the business will work. The amazing thing is that in your head you have revenue figures and costs but when you put them into a spreadsheet you suddenly realise they are not as realistic as you thought. So if you only do one thing before you start your business write a plan.

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