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Entrepreneurs Business Plan

Why a business plan for an entrepreneur? The reason is it defines your business, identifies your goals and serves as your firm’s resume. The business plan should include a current and pro forma balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow analysis. Additionally, it informs sales personnel, suppliers, and others about your operations and goals.

The Importance of a Comprehensive Business Plan is that much depends on it for outside funding, credit from suppliers, management of your operation and finances, promotion and marketing of your business and achievement of your goals and objectives.

Before writing your business plan ask yourself the following:-

  • What service or product does your business provide and what needs does it fullfill?
  • Who are the potential customers for your product or service and why they will purchase it from you?
  • How will you reach your potential customers?
  • Where will you get the financial resources to start your business?

Now that you have the answers you can start with your plan. Your plan should include a description of the business, a marketing plan, financial plan and management team.

A typical business plan should include the following:-

  • Executive Summary
  • Company Direction
  • Company Operations
  • Products/Services
  • Market Analysis
  • Marketing Plan
  • Financial Plan
  • Supporting Documents 

This is not the only format but generally most business plan will follow some sort of outline similar to this. Now let us take a look at each one of these one by one.

Executive Summary

An executive summary is the summary of the entire business plan it comes at the start of the business plan. This will summarize in 1 to 2 pages what the business plan is about. So this will give the reader a chance to see if he is excited enough to read the whole plan. For this very reason you must ensure it is written well. There are two schools of thought viz you can write the executive summary at the start or at the end of preparing your business plan. Some say if you do not know what you are going to write then how can you write the plan. So they suggest you do the summary first. Others say you can summarise in the end once you have completed the business plan. I feel that both have merit and demerit. So you should select whichever you are comfortable with.

Company Direction

The first chapter in the business plan is the company direction. This should cover in detail the present situation, vision, mission, goals and objectives.

In this you are telling the reader what you have done so far and the status of your project. You should also cover your vision in what you hope to achieve in the long term, the mission  is what you are going to do to achieve your vision, goals are long term achievement more then one year must be quantities and objective are short term and again must be quantities.

Company Operations

Here you should talk about the legal business description meaning which type of structure you have decided to use based on chapter 4. As explained there is two opponents for this. One the team members and second the legal status of your company. The team members fall into the following management team, board of directors and staffing.

All three have different functions. Therefore under here you should only speak about relevance to your business. The management team is the one which will manage the business on a day to day basis. The board of directors are the ones who set the company directions. The staff are the ones who actually carry out all the actions. Strategic alliances are outsiders whom you have made some arrangement to enhance your business. These can be vendors, support service and really anything that can help you achieve your vision.

Products/Services

Here you have descriptions for all your products/services. You must also address how you are positioning your products/services in the marketplace. It is important to have a competitive evaluation of products/services. All future products/services should also be discussed here but you must be cautious that you do not over do it then it will sound like you are only concentrating on new products and not making money.

Market Analysis

Market analysis is different from a marketing plan. First you need to carry out a market analysis and then write the plan. The marketing analysis should include the following market definition where you define what the market means to your business then your customer profile as to who will be the ones you have defined you will serve. Next who will be your competition for these customers and finally the risk in doing this business. Once you have addressed these you are now ready to write the plan.    

Marketing Plan

This is the plan as to how you are going to get your customer. A detail marketing plan was discussed in marketing chapter. This will include the following marketing strategy, sales tactics, advertising, promotions/incentives, publicity and trade shows.

Financial Plan

This will be cost and pricing of your service and product. Again this was covered in detail in the finance chapter. This will include assumptions, financial statements, Capital requirements, Use of funds, Exit/payback strategy and conclusion.

Supporting Documents 

This is section which will include details of anything which will support your business plan. In the earlier chapter on finance we just included very large figures, like an overview but here there should be detailed calculations and you must include resumes of key personnel.

Now how could you use your business plan.  There are 3 areas where you can use a business plan.  The first, almost every unit in a company should have a business plan where they use it to communicate with their colleagues and others can see what they are doing.

Second, for the management to know what your team is trying to do or achieve. Third, it is a very good planning tool which actually tells you things which you would not have known otherwise. The fact that you have actually written them down you would be able to find things otherwise you would have never come across. It is actually a survival plan.

Now how can you get help to identify these plans. There are plenty of books in the book shops which you can read and write them, write the business plan yourself.  There are actually business plan software tools that you can use to develop your own business  plan. Actually there are business plan websites which do business plan for you. And finally there are many big organizations who use professional business plan services. For a start you probably don’t have enough money. You probably have to do the business plan yourself. And I personally believe it is probably better to for you to do your own business plan because nobody knows what  you hope to achieve in your business over the next 12 months, 36 months and 60 months. As you are so involved with your own business it is better for you to come up with your own business plan.

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