A business plan represents the crucial foundation of your company. Regardless of how big or small this company is going to be, you need to put together some sort of plan for your future.
In the end, you want to create a roadmap that will accomplish two things:
1. It’s going to be specific enough to help you define what needs to be done over the next year, two years, or even 3-5 years.
2. It’s going to be open-ended enough to help you make adjustments no one could have accounted for earlier on.
Establishing a plan which incorporates both of these things is not impossible, or even that difficult. Nonetheless, it is still something that needs to happen, before you can move on to other aspects of establishing and launching your business.
Creating A Viable Business Plan Outline
Understand at this point, you’re simply crafting an outline. It needs to have some measure of detail, but it doesn’t have to account for every single little thing. You want to have something that will make it easy to define the next few steps.
A good business plan outline is going to offer the following:
Step 1: Create An Executive summary:
This element is going to summarize the plan as a whole. Don’t worry about going into too much detail here since you’ll get into that later. Just give a nice overall summary of your company so that whoever is reading it will know what to expect.
Step 2: Company Description:
With this, you’re going to not only focus on what your company is going to do but how your company is different from similar entities. You get to brag a bit here! Share what makes your business unique and how your products/services/mission is going to make a difference.
Step 3: Branding & Mission Statement
Include all you branding elements (logos, mood boards, fonts, colors, ect.) as well as your target audience/idea client. Who is your business for? Who are you trying to reach? This section is also a good place to include your mission statement. What does your company stand for? What are your values?
Step 4: Market analysis:
Research your industry. This should include your marketing and your competitors. Share where your company fits it and how you have analyzed the market to make as much as an impact as possible.
Step 5: Organization/management:
This is going to come down to discovering the optimal organization and management structures for your company. If you’re planning on having employees or freelancers, you will break down those positions in this section. Explain what each position does and how they contribute to the business.
Step 6: Service/product line:
This is going to describe your product or products. What are they? What are the benefits? For product based business, describe how you will create your products. Include the materials needed, your process of creation as well as how much it will cost to make each product.
Step 7: Marketing/sales:
Sales strategies and marketing plans are going to be discussed at this point. Lay out the marketing platforms you want to utilize and WHY. Explain your marketing plan for each platform and the goal you have for each. (S.M.A.R.T .goals are perfect for this).
Step 8: Funding:
How much are you going to need? How is the money going to be spent? Transparency is key in this arena. Be realistic about how much money you are going to need and if that’s actually feasible.
Step 9: Financial projections:
If you do need funding, projections are going to be important. What are your financial goals? Take a look at your products and services as well as what you are charging for them. Decide your pricing based on your financial goals and when you wan to reach them.
Step 10: Appendix:
Resumes, permits, and leases are just a few things one would include in an appendix if this needs to be part of your business plan.
Different businesses are going to utilize the above facets differently. Some businesses will be able to disregard some of those facets entirely. This is something you will discover for yourself, over the course of putting together a plan for your business.
