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Although you may spend months developing your plan, the cold hard fact is that an investor or lender can dismiss it in less than five minutes. The most important aspects of your plan must jump out at even the most casual reader. Even if your plan is intended for internal use only, it will be more effective if presented in a compelling vivid form. Business plans developed by MyBusinessPlans.com are designed to make a positive impact with the reader, by highlighting specific facts, goals and conclusions, making the plan easier to review and more effective in obtaining the funding you require. Our business plans consist of the following components:
1. The Executive Summary
Without a doubt, the single most important portion of your business plan is the executive summary. Only a clear, concise, and compelling condensation of your business right up front will persuade readers to wade through the rest of your plan. No matter how beneficial your product, how lucrative your market, or how innovative your manufacturing techniques, it is your Executive Summary alone that persuades a reader to spend the time to find out about your product, market, and techniques.
2. Company Description
Before you can discuss the more complex aspects of your business and the meatier sections of your business plan, such as marketing strategy or new technology, you must first inform the reader of the basic details of your business. The object of this section is to convey information such as your legal status, ownership, products or services, company mission, and milestones achieved to date.
3. Industry Analysis and Trends
No company operates in a vacuum. Every business is part of a larger, over-all industry; the forces that affect your industry as a whole will inevitably affect your business as well. Evaluating your industry increases your own knowledge of the factors that contribute to your company’s success and shows potential investors/lenders that you understand external business conditions.
4. Target Markets
Essential to business success is a thorough understanding of your customers. After all, if you don’t know who your customers are, how will you be able to assess whether you are meeting their needs? Since success depends on your being able to meet customers’ needs and desires, you must know who your customers are, what they want, how they behave, and what they can afford.
5. Competition
Every business has competition. Those currently operating a business are all too aware of the many competitors for a customers’ dollar. But many people new to business excited about their concept and motivated by a perceived opening in the market, tend to underestimate the actual extent of competition and fail to properly assess the impact of that competition on their business.
6. Strategic Position & Risk Assessment
In today’s highly competitive and constantly changing business environment, it’s no longer enough just to know how to run a business; you also have to know what business you’re really running. While you must of course, attend to the basics of operating your business, you also have to see exactly where you stand in the marketplace, what makes you compelling to customers, and what advantages you have over the competition. You need a clearly defined strategic position.
7. Marketing Plan and Sales Strategy
You have to have customers to stay in business: it’s the most basic business truth. That’s why an effective marketing plan to communicate with, motivate, and secure customers is vital for your companies success. Since reaching customers costs money and money is always limited, your marketing strategy must be carefully and thoughtfully designed. If you are developing a business plan to seek outside funding, remember many investors /lenders read the marketing plan closely. They want to know you have a realistic and price conscious strategy to get your product or service into the hands of customers.
8. Operations
How are you actually going to run your business? The operations section of your business plan is where you begin to explain the day to day functions of your company. This is where you translate your theories into practice. Examining your basic operation is particularly important for internal planning. A capable manager does not take any activity in the business for granted. Each step is worthy of evaluation and improvement. A little bit of extra planning in operational areas can mean marked improvements in profit margin. Assessing and developing the underlying mechanisms of your business will certainly pay off.
9. Technology Plan
Every business needs technology. Even if your company makes old fashioned candies, you’ll rely on technology to handle many, if not most, routine business operations, from maintaining financial records, to processing orders, to staying in contact with suppliers and customers. Because technology is so central to running a business today, you need to plan what technology you will use and how you will use it.
10. Management and Organization
Many lenders and investors based their decisions almost entirely on the strength of the people involved in the enterprise. They know that the experience, skills, and personalities of the management team have a greater impact on the long term fortunes of a company than the product or service provided. For this reason, investors and lenders are likely to review the management portion of a business plan before they read many other sections. They look not only to see if the management team has the expertise necessary to run the business, but also if the internal structure makes maximum use of the talents of the team members.
11. Community Involvement and Social Responsibility
Being socially responsible is part of the overall health of your company. First, it establishes your company’s values and fosters your corporate culture. Businesses that act with integrity and honesty are more likely to have their employees act with integrity and honesty towards the company and their fellow workers. Being a good corporate citizen makes it less likely that your company will get in trouble with regulatory agencies, tax authorities, or face law suites or fines.
12. Development Milestones and Exit Plan
If a business plan serves as a road map for your company, then to use it properly you need a sense of your ultimate destination. What do you want your business to look like in three, five, or seven years? You can't hope to just stumble across success; you have to figure out how to get there. One of the most important aspects of the business planning process, therefore, is the examination of your long term goals.
13. The Financials
Every business decision leads to a number, and taken together, these numbers form the basis of your financial forms. But numbers themselves are not decisions. You cannot pull a number out of thin air because the financial forms you are completing call for a specific figure on a specific line. Rather, your numbers should always be the result of careful planning.
14. The Plans Appendix
One of the frustrations of developing a business plan is that you are limited in how much information you can include. You may be excited about your products new packaging, a contract from a large customer, or positive market research result, but you should not go into great detail about these items in the business plan itself. Such detail makes the document too long. Instead the plan’s appendix is the proper place to provide information that supports, confirms, and reinforces conclusions you reach in the plan.
Please contact us, we will be happy to walk you through our business planning process and the components of our business plans in more detail. | 
