BUSINESS PLAN

HOW TO WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN?

There are 3 types of people who may need a good business plan:

• Young entrepreneurs who plan to deal with startups
• Established companies seeking help
• BBA/MBA students

No matter whether you are getting the funding to support your business from friends and family members, you need a business plan. It can be narrow or broad, short or long. The point is that just like you need an essay outline when you do your homework, the same way you need a business plan to avoid getting stuck in the middle of the process. Our expert writing service can help with part of your writing if you fill out the order form specifying which type of help you need.GET ONLINE HELP

Why should students who study business administration learn how to handle this type of academic assignment? If you do not plan to launch a business, it may still be useful. Life is all about planning; knowing how to write a business plan will let you solve any types of problems easily.

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What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a written description of the future of your business. This document shows what a potential business owner plans to do and the ways to achieve their goals. The investment-seeking entrepreneurs need this document written at the highest level. The integral elements of this document are:

• Business concept: the industry, structure, product/service, vision & mission
• Marketplace choice: Target audience, competitors
• Financial section: income + cash flow statements, balance sheet
• Other financial ratios

For the last point, it might be better to hire an experienced accountant, business essay writer, or expert in finance to get the exact numbers. The plan should be realistic!
A business plan has as many chapters as a PhD dissertation. Most of those chapters have many subheadings, and it may take a while to complete the
business plan alone. Its implementation will take even longer, so do not bother! What you need to take care of as a potential entrepreneur are your business and marketing plans along with the initial investments.

The Role of Business Plan in Your Career

It is impossible to accomplish your major goals without a business plan. It is a powerful fundraising tool. It serves to hire people, operating the business, projecting expenses and revenues, and other things that are integral components of any successful business. A business plan will help to raise all the money you need.

Investors want to see an organized, long-term plan that can be implemented in real life. What they DON’T want to see is a hot-headed young entrepreneur talking about dreams without having specific statistics on hands. The prospects need to see exact calculations. No matter how well you talk and describe the business of your dream, no-one will risk dealing with a young entrepreneur who does not even have a plan. You may think that your expenses will be covered in the next year while the experts could see the pitfalls that will not let it work in 3 or more years. You should combine a personal plan with what experts recommend.

Once again, it is essential to have a robust business plan along with a presentation and speech to attract investors. Saying, “We want 100 clients by the end of year 1” is ridiculous. A good strategy includes all of the following:

• Value proposition
• Marketing assumptions
• Operations plan
• Finances
• Personnel

That is the overall picture.

A potential business owner has to know the objectives before launching a company. A good plan will help predict the future. It will determine whether the chosen field of an industry will be in high demand over time and give hints of what will be trendy.

3 Main Rules of Writing a Business Plan

The most successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have invented the formula for the working business plan. Stick to these simple rules to succeed.

It should be brief
Many people try to make a business plan made of 100 or more pages. In reality, 100 pages is the limit. For best impact, make a simple 40-page document. The potential investors will be bored to sleep by reading a 100 page plan.
Remember that an extended business plan is a big hassle to cope with, and it will be removed in the dust for ages if it does not make any sense.

When choosing a good or service to sell, think about the problems it solves. Will it be useful for the community? If you develop something that only you and a narrow group of people might use, you risk failing from the start.

Target the audience
You may be a graduate of an MBA program or expert in business terminology, but do not think that all potential investors will understand the ambiguous terms. It is better to avoid slang and foreign words as well. Make your language simple as you never know who will receive and read your business or marketing plan. If you plan to launch a business in a narrow field where you cannot avoid special terms (like nursing or computer science), dedicate some time to explaining the terms you use. Accommodate your investors. Use simple language and vivid examples to explain professional terms, idioms and foreign words.

Never be intimidated in your plan
Most entrepreneurs are not business experts. Only a small part of these people have corresponding degrees or certificates from business administration programs. If you know a lot about the target business, it is okay to share your skills. Talk about some successful examples to inspire the potential investors. If you know nothing or little about the selected field of study or industry, do not lie to the reader because they will refuse to invest in your project.

Working on a Business Plan Outline

One more critical question is length. Most people believe a business plan should be as long as a dissertation, but it is wrong. Just like college or university professors do not want to spend their time reading endless term papers or coursework projects, the potential investors will not read your plan unless it is something around 20 pages. They may pay attention to the idea, but they will not make it to the end. This way, they risk missing the important points, and it will be hard to prove your truth if something goes wrong. In rare situations, a document can be more than 100 pages - it depends on the complexity of idea.

The goal of the plan defines its length. If you wish to introduce an original idea from the marketing aspect, you may remove the financial section or postpone the work on it to the last minute. If a business plan is part of your accounting class, you should attach an Excel file with all necessary calculations. Interpret the numbers in the last section of a project. People who are not good at finances will not understand the complex formulas & figures.

The young entrepreneurs who plan to deal with startups may be confused without having the explanations of each financial statement or complex terms, so that is what we are talking about. Add a glossary of terms along with the explained numbers.

The outline is different from other types of academic assignments. It is not an essay where it is enough to include an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and bibliography to get an A. The structure is more complicated. The format is free. Here is how a business plan outline should look:

• Executive summary
• Detailed product/service description
• Marketing strategies
• Competitive analysis
• Design + Research & Development (R&D) plan
• Operational and management plan
• Finances

If you do not plan to go into details and provide numbers and financial forecasts, develop a mini plan to introduce the general idea. A working plan requires all of the sections mentioned above. Be ready to have a plan in Word, PDF, and Excel. Except for the main content and calculations, it is a good idea to prepare a presentation with a powerful speech to impress the potential investors. That would be the presentation plan where you mention the most critical points. The last type of plan is the electronic one for those who plan to present their ideas remotely.

7 Major Components of Your Project

This chapter describes each of the essential business plan sections in details. The examples are attached in this post to let you understand the concept better.

I Executive Summary
It is a brief overview of the service or product one plans to sell, and the main goal of this section is to grab audience’s attention. Experts recommend writing this chapter after writing the rest of the project. It contains these elements:

• Business name/title & location
• Products and/or services offered
• Mission (what you are doing now) + vision statements (what you plan to achieve in the future)
• The specific objective (to secure investors, offer implementation, share forecasts, etc.)

II Company Description
The point is to describe who you are. Include the operational process and objectives. This chapter must have:

• The legal structure like corporation, limited liability company, or else
• A background information like history + the demands you want to supply
• A review of of products/services, clients, and suppliers
• Potential company growth with financial/market highlights
• A summary of short- and long-term purposes

III Products and Services
It is important to explain what and why you offer. Which net revenue do you hope to receive? Images and other visual elements will help to discuss:

• The way customers will benefit from using what you offer
• The market role of your product/service
• Advantages over competitors
• Life cycle
• Copyright and other secret information
• R&D activities

IV Market analysis
Demonstrate that you are well-aware of the chosen market. Conduct in-depth marketing research. Here are the components to include in this section:

• Customer segments (target audience)
• An industry description (facts + statistics)
• An assessment of rivals (based on the SWOT analysis - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)

V Strategy and Implementation:
Include a sales & marketing strategy. Explain how you are going to implement them. Make sure you have these features in this part:

• Promotion strategies
• Costs, pricing, promotions, & distribution
• The operations cycle step-by-step
• Human resource details
• Working facilities

VI Organization and Management
Share an organizational structure. Who’s the boss? Check if you added:

• An organizational chart (departments, duties, personnel hierarchy)
• Information about owners and shareholders
• List of the management team members
• List of your business advisors

VII Financial plan
We do not recommend working on this part alone. Unless you are an accountant, it is better to hire an expert. Together, you should come up with:

• Historical financial data
• Predicted financial information: income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, & capital expenditure budgets for something around 5 years
• End up with a ratio and trend analysis for all statements

The Hottest Topics for Your Business Plan

It seems evident that a business plan topic is predetermined by your chosen type of business. To stay original, avoid titling your plan the same way the industry is called. Do not name it after the product. Example: A title like “A New Restaurant,” “Chocolate Production,” “Furniture,” “Writing Service,” “Tourism” will not grab an eye of the potential partners. Come up with an original heading that would catch an eye of the reader - potential investor. We divided this section into two parts: the one offering specific ideas to discuss in any plan and another suggesting the original titles for your work. We should start with the first one.

• Explain the current/future market trends & challenges that consumers face
• Problems your product/service will solve, its capabilities and value derived by finding a solution to every issue
• Gap analysis to define the differences between where the organization is now and where it could potentially be
• Describe the current & potential competitors
• Identify the addressable market opportunity (market size, customer profiles, and solution buying patterns).
• Describe the sales model for your business
• Determine the timelines for your solution & market growth
• Interpret the financial summary made of revenue evaluation, EBITDA, free cash flow, and net present value (NPV)

Make sure to include these topics. You may come up with an original title for each chapter. If you do not want to waste time on that, provide the business plan with the original main heading like one of these:

• Bed & Breakfast Hotel to Satisfy Both Needs
• Spa Health Club a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
• Hair & Beauty Salon: For Creative ideas and New Life
• Night Club Crazy Marilyn to Make You Feel Like Marilyn Manson
• Equipment Rental Sales New England - Feel like in London No Matter Where You Are
• Home Interior WOW! Let Any Crazy Idea Come True
• Wedding Consultant That Used to Work with Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie
• Child Care Powerpuff Girls: We Help to Raise Your Little Superheroes
• Sailor Moon Reading Club - Let It Feel like 100% Anime Style
• Feel the Power in Your Hands with New Credit Union Club

The main idea is to be in trend. Search for the brilliant ideas on the web. Relate your business to some movie, celebrities, piece of art, or another currently discussed topic.

9 Major Financial Formulas

Business Plan Template and Example

We have prepared a surprise! The best way to learn how to create something is to have an example in front of your eyes. We researched our database of papers to find a business plan template and example for you. Hopefully, they will help