Elements in your business plan:

 

1. Executive Summary - it describes an overview of the company and what you’re trying to accomplish. 

2. Market Analysis - provides a sense of the size of the market and the segment that you’re targeting. 

3. Organization & Management - an outline of your organizational structure and highlights you and your team. 

4. Products - what are going to sell? Are you manufacturing your own products in-house or purchasing them from somewhere else?

5. Marketing - a marketing strategy is essential for customer acquisition and overall growth. How will you create and promote your business brand? Consider what competitors are doing? How can their strategies be improved upon? Specify which marketing channels you will utilize and how you will utilize them. Social media, podcasts, email marketing, billboard advertising, or radio advertising are all to consider.

6. Growth - a growth plan gives investors an opportunity to realize the full potential of the business. Mention the additional market segments, products, or locations you may wish to target in the future.

7. Financial Projections - financial projections of your business are the backbone of a business plan. If the numbers don’t work out, then nothing else really matters.

8. Expenses - expenses are either startup or operating expenses. Start-up expenses are all of the costs incurred to get up and running. They include the purchase of starting inventory, procurement of a building, or installation of a new security system, and more. Operating expenses are the ongoing monthly costs incurred to keep the business running properly. Operating expenses are employee payroll, rent, utilities, and more.

9. Revenues - are often challenging to project. Come up with your best possible estimation along with an accompanying explanation of how you reached the numbers.

 

Once you match revenues with expenses, you’ll have a budget to work from. You’re able to gauge how much money is needed to launch the business and how to reach profitability. A best practice is to build in an additional 20-30% for contingent risk tolerance. Now you have a business plan.

 

Our thoughts:

We use a Business Plan Software to help create and follow the progress of our business. Many are available in the market. 

They are easy tools to use and offer many advantages over manual alternatives. A very small investment with large returns.
 

We recommend LivePlan. 

Why? It's a fast, simple, and more effective way to document your business idea. LivePlan lets you publish your pitch on the web and export to PowerPoint so you can share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even with old fashioned email.

Over 850K small businesses use LivePlan for business planning, forecasting and financial management. Grow 30% faster.

 

With the LivePlan Pitch, you get a quick, fill-in-the-blank process for outlining every important aspect of your business. All on a single page. It's the fastest way to show the potential of your business idea.

 

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