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.