If only 10% of businesses succeed – you want to make sure you’re one of them. This business plan layout will help you do that.

Most businesses fail because they run out of cash. Even highly profitable businesses can run into cashflow problems if they try to expand too fast for their level funding.

Your business plan strategy has to match your level of ambition to the level of funding you can reasonably expect to invest. If you can’t acquire sufficient investment, you have to reduce your ambition.

So, one of the most important outcomes of the business planning process is to decide on your ambition and work out the level of investment required and how you intend to fund it.

If you’re requesting a loan, the lender will expect your business plan to clearly show how you intend to spend the loan capital and that the business can generate sufficient cash to service the debt in terms of both interest and capital repayments.

If you’re aiming to attract equity finance, the investor will expect your business plan to indicate the expected return-on-investment as well as the likely exit strategy and timescale. This will then be compared to other opportunities they may have under consideration.

For it be fit for purpose, you have to write a business plan according to who will read it. Lenders and investors are busy people, so you need to provide the answers they require within the first 1 or 2 pages of the plan. They can then decide whether they’re interested enough to read further. So, the business plan outline should begin as follows:

1. Executive Summary

Now, whatever your level of ambition, the market has to be large enough to satisfy it, especially when you take into account the extent of the competition you’ll encounter. So, the business plan has to show an analysis of the market opportunity and how you intend to exploit it with your products and services. It also needs to show how you plan to market your brand and attract customers. This leads us to define the next 3 sections of your business plan:

2. Market Analysis
3. Products and Services
4. Marketing Plan

OK, you’ve explained your market, what you intend to supply to that market and how you intend to market your products or services.
Now you need to explain the infrastructure you’ll need in order to deliver the products or services and how you arrived at your present position. If a potential lender or investor doesn’t think your business is equipped with the right capability and experience, they won’t be inclined to invest. This leads us to define the next 2 sections of your business plan:

5. Company Background
6. Company Structure

The section on Company Structure should include any resources, equipment or systems you have or will require in order to deliver your products or service. It is quite likely that you’ll be using some of the funding to create the Company Infrastructure.
There is one more essential section that any lender or investor will expect and that relates to risk. You need to show that you’ve considered areas of risk and how you might mitigate for them. I tend to refer to this section as:

7. Business Analysis

In this section you should include your S.W.O.T. Analysis (An assessment of Internal Strengths and Weaknesses and External Opportunities and Threats) and a Sensitivity Analysis (An assessment of how far certain parameters can move for the business to remain viable).
If they’re interested in evaluating the opportunity, they’ll need to take a closer look at the numbers.
So, they’ll expect to be able to view your projections for Profit and Loss, Cashflow, Balance Sheet and a Sources and Use of Funds Statement. This we’ll refer to as:

8. Business Financials

Finally, if you’ve referenced any material or wish to include any supporting information it’s better to avoid cluttering the main body of your document and add it all in a section at the end:

9. References and Appendices

And that’s it. For a lot more detail about why this 9-section structure works and exactly what to include in each section, you can read my book:

The Heart of Business Success – How to overcome the Catch-22s of growing your business

To obtain your copy, please visit: http://www.theheartofbusinesssuccess.com
Good luck!

Are you looking to learn more about how to write a small business plan. We may be able to assist you with a generic outline to create a small business plan.

When writing a small business plan it is important to consider the audience you are writing to. It could be other potential partners, investors or involve multiple parties. The first part of the plan must indicate what business venture you are planning on starting. It also must include a good review of management involved in the business and their roles and responsibilities.

The second part of the plan should include the market, the competitors and how you are going to distribute your product or service and the different scenarios you think or have encountered and how you are going to deal with them.

The next part would include the business concept and why this venture is going to work. Do you have some proprietary technology or are you providing a service/product that is not offered in your local area. What makes your business process unique.

Another important part is goals and objectives. How are you mapping out you monthly, yearly goals and targets. These should include strategic goals, site acquisition, resources acquisition goals and timelines.

The next and very essential part of you plan should include financials. What does your 1 year projected cash flow statement look like. What assets do you need to acquire to develop your business. What expenses will you incur, what for and how is that broken down in terms of a timeline.

For a generic outline on your business plan, see our website.

If you look hard enough, either online or through speaking with other entrepreneurs, you should be able to find examples of business plans to help guide your business planning process. However, there are dangers in taking any one example as your only model for your own plan. When using examples as a guide, it is best to reconcile multiple examples from different sources to create your own, unique plan.

The Quality Question

First of all, there will always be a definite question as to the quality of any example business plan you come across. High quality is determined not just by how well written the plan appears to be, but by whether the plan was successful in helping an entrepreneur raise funds to launch the business. A plan can be extremely well-written and still fail on this front if it does not present a clear, compelling picture of a business. While some assurances and a personal relationship with the example plan’s writer may make you feel more comfortable about whether it was a successful plan, you would do best to not use any one example as your primary guide.

Every Business Is Different

Furthermore, every business is different. Even if the example plan you are looking at is for the same sector as your business, you will be in a different competitive situation, have managers with different skills, and may choose different marketing and operational methods. Because of all of these differences, you should take care to use an example as a loose guide for how to structure, format, and write your plan, but should always check against other resources and examples. To be specific to your business, you may need to focus on different areas within your plan, and trying to adapt a given example sentence by sentence will not work.

When starting a business up or expanding a current business the most important thing to have is a business plan which can be a rather large undertaking in itself. With all that you will have to do in regards to setting up or expanding your new business, writing a business plan and then executing a marketing strategy for that business is probably the last thing on your mind. However, having a well written plan is vital in order to do anything financially such as secure loans or have vendors work with you.

A great solution to your dilemma may be for you to hire a business plan service. This will of course come with a cost and there will be a certain process that needs to be followed in order to ensure that the process of your plan being written and what happens afterward goes smoothly.

The overall cost of what you can expect to pay for such services will all depend on how much of the services you utilize. Many business plan services will offer a variety of services for you to choose from. You can choose to have them write your plan only, write our plan and come up with a marketing strategy, and more. Most services will offer a free consultation as well as a free quote so that you know exactly what you are getting into and what you can expect in return for you money.

The process for using a business plan service is typically the same, but can vary between companies. Here is the typical process of a service which usually starts with the actual creation of your plan:

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