Tag: How to create a business plan

How to use a sample business plan to write your own plan

If you’ve never created a business plan before. In fact, you may have never even seen a formal business plan document then here are some sample business plans for you to inspire from.

If you’re like most small business owners, you’ve never had to create a business plan before. In fact, you may have never even seen a formal business plan document let alone had to put one together.

This is why we gathered this collection of sample plans for you here on Bplans. Our business plans can give you a great sense of what a finished plan looks like, what should be included, and how a plan should be structured – whether you’re building a plan for investment or just to develop a better strategy for your business.

But, building your own plan isn’t as simple as just cutting and pasting from someone else’s plan. In fact, if you do that, you will be doing yourself (and your business!) a huge disservice. Here are a few tips to get the most out of our sample business plans and build the plan your business needs to succeed.

1. Find a plan from a similar industry to your business, but don’t worry about finding an exact match. In fact, you won’t find an exact match for your business. That’s because every business is as unique as its owners and managers. Every business has a different location, different team, and different marketing tactics that will work for them. Instead of looking for an exact match, look for a business plan that’s for a business that operates similarly to how your business will work. For example, a business plan for a steak restaurant will actually be useful for someone starting a vegetarian restaurant because the general concepts for planning and starting a restaurant are the same regardless of what type of food you serve.

2. Use the sample plans for inspiration and ideas. Staring at a blank page can be the worst part of writing a business plan. In fact, that’s probably the reason that’s preventing you from getting started right now. Instead, take advantage of our sample plans to avoid writer’s block. Feel free to copy words, phrasing, and the general structure of a plan to start your own. Also, as you read through several plans, you might find ideas for your business that you hadn’t considered. Use our plans for inspiration and ideas, borrow phrasing when it makes sense, and just get going!

3. Write a business plan that’s right for your business. As tempting as it is, don’t just cut and paste from a sample plan. Any banker or investor will be able to tell from miles away that you copied someone else’s plan. Not only will you be less likely to get funding if you copy a business plan, you’ll be greatly reducing your chances of success because you didn’t write a plan that’s right for your specific business, its specific location, target market, and your unique product or service. Thinking through how you are going to launch your business is a critical step in starting a business that you shouldn’t let go.



4. The value of business planning is in the process, not the final document. By creating your own business plan, you are going to have to think about how you are going to build your own business. What marketing tactics are you going to use? What kind of management team do you need to be successful? How is your business going to set itself apart from the competition?

The process of writing a business plan guides you through answering these questions so that you end up with a strategy that works for your business. You will also end up with a plan that you can share with business partners, investors, and friends and family. Sharing your vision and your strategy is the best way to get everyone on the same page and pushing forward to build a successful business.

5. Use your plan as a management tool and build a better business. When you’re done with your plan and your business is up and running, your plan shouldn’t just end up in a drawer. That would be a huge waste of all the time and effort you put into your strategy, budgets, and forecast. Instead, using your plan as a tool to grow your business can be one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business. In fact, businesses that use their plan as a management tool to help run their business grow 30% faster than those businesses that don’t.

To use your business plan to grow 30% faster than the competition, you need to track your actual results – the sales that you get and the expenses that you incur – against the goals that you set out for yourself in your plan. If things aren’t going according to plan, perhaps you need to adjust your budgets or your sales forecast. If things are going well, your plan will help you think about how you can re-invest in your business. Either way, tracking your progress compared to your plan is one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business.

This article was originally published in bplans.com

Image Credit: www.ndoi.com



8 Common business plan mistakes

What are the most common mistakes when writing a business plan? Here is a list of the ones to make sure you avoid.

What are the most common mistakes when writing a business plan? Here is a list of the ones to make sure you avoid. While including the necessary items in a business plan is important, you also want to make sure you don’t commit any of the following common business plan mistakes:

1. Putting it off

Too many businesses make business plans only when they have no choice in the matter. Unless the bank or the investors want a plan, there is no plan.

Don’t wait to write your plan until you think you’ll have enough time. “I can’t plan. I’m too busy getting things done,” business people say. The busier you are, the more you need to plan. If you are always putting out fires, you should build firebreaks or a sprinkler system. You can lose the whole forest for paying too much attention to the individual burning trees.

2. Cash flow casualness

Most people think in terms of profits instead of cash. When you imagine a new business, you think of what it would cost to make the product, what you could sell it for, and what the profits per unit might be. We are trained to think of business as sales minus costs and expenses, which equal profits. Unfortunately, we don’t spend the profits in a business. We spend cash. So understanding cash flow is critical. If you have only one table in your business plan, make it the cash flow table.

3. Idea inflation

Don’t overestimate the importance of the idea. You don’t need a great idea to start a business; you need time, money, perseverance, and common sense. Few successful businesses are based entirely on new ideas. A new idea is harder to sell than an existing one, because people don’t understand a new idea and they are often unsure if it will work.
You don’t need a great idea to start a business; you need time, money, perseverance, and common sense.

Plans don’t sell new business ideas to investors. People do. Investors invest in people, not ideas. The plan, though necessary, is only a way to present information. So make sure you’re ready to wow your prospective investors with your knowledge and leadership skills, and don’t expect your business idea—or the business plan you explain it in—to do the work for you.



4. Fear and dread

Doing a business plan isn’t as hard as you might think. You don’t have to write a doctoral thesis or a novel. There are good books to help, many advisors among the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), business schools, and there is software available to help you (such as LivePlan, and others).

5. Spongy, vague goals

Leave out the vague and the meaningless babble of business phrases (such as “being the best”) because they are simply hype. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, and for results, you need tracking and follow up. You need specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and milestones. Then you can follow up. No matter how well thought out or brilliantly presented, it means nothing unless it produces results.

6. One size fits all

Tailor your plan to its real business purpose. Business plans can be different things: they are often just sales documents to sell an idea for a new business. They can also be detailed action plans, financial plans, marketing plans, and even personnel plans. They can be used to start a business, or just run a business better.

7. Diluted priorities

Remember, strategy is focus. A priority list with 3-4 items is focus. A priority list with 20 items is certainly not strategic, and rarely if ever effective. The more items on the list, the less the importance of each.

8. “Hockey stick” shaped growth projections

Sales grow slowly at first, but then shoot up boldly with huge growth rates, as soon as “something” happens. Have projections that are conservative so you can defend them. When in doubt, be less optimistic.

Which business planning mistakes have you made while writing your business plan?

This article was originally published in bplans.com

Image credit: innerconfidence.com