A good business plan is short, simple, and to the point. It covers five parts: a summary, what you offer, how you will put the plan into practice, who is on your team, and a financial forecast.
For an aspiring entrepreneur, writing a sound business plan is a major milestone. A business plan is the roadmap for your new business: it sets out your goals and the steps that lead to them. Without a proper plan, you are throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.
3 tips for writing your plan
There is more than one way to write a business plan, but a few pointers help you write one quickly.
Keep it short
Keep your business plan short and easy to read. Ideally, your first version is short enough to read in one sitting, and some founders start with a single page. This matters even more if you want other people to read it. Most people sigh when someone hands them an 80-page business plan. It is tiring just to look at it.
As your business grows, you can review the plan and revise it. That is not only allowed, it is normal. If you end up with a 40-page business plan ten years from now, so be it. For now, start simple.
Keep it simple
Say you are working on a startup that plans to build a smarter, more robust, and more scalable cloud solution than anyone has seen before. Avoid technical jargon anyway. Your readers may not be technical people, and a plan full of jargon looks like gibberish to them.
It is better to state what your solution saves in time and money. Everyone understands those two.
Write what matters
You do not have to put everything into your business plan. These 5 parts need to be in it:
- Summary: an overview of what your business is. A paragraph or two is enough.
- What you offer: explain the product or service your company plans to make. Who is your target market, and who are your competitors?
- Implementation: the step-by-step plan for running and marketing the business. Write down the milestones you want to reach.
- Your team: you are not planning a one-person show, are you? List everyone on your team and how their skills fit the plan.
- Financial forecast: how much capital do you need, and how do you plan to spend it? Include a cash flow statement, an expense budget, and, most important of all, a sales forecast.
Good figures support your plan far better than words. Like it or not, banks and investors care more about the bottom line than about your hopes and dreams. Use graphics in your business plan so that readers grasp the numbers at a glance.
Check it before you send it
Before you send your business plan to potential investors, make sure it is free of spelling errors. You may think of them as minor issues, but investors can read them as a sign that you do not pay attention to detail. To them, that kind of carelessness can be a red flag, and that does not help your plan to raise capital.
Do your best to weed out every spelling and grammar error, so that your business plan reads as well as it should. The Spell Checker points out spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes in your text, and a proofreading checklist helps you catch the rest.