inbizvest blog

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.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

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.