Читать книгу Business Plans For Dummies - Paul Tiffany - Страница 22

When you first set out to create a business plan, the task seems overwhelming. Right off the bat, you need to answer fundamental and sometimes difficult questions about your company and what you see for the future. You have to decide what targets to aim for as you look ahead and set specific business goals and objectives. To succeed, you have to take the time to know your

 Industry

 Customers

 Competitors

 Company resources

 Company’s unique qualities

 Company’s advantages

 Basic financial condition

 Financial forecast and a budget

You also have to prepare for changes you will make to this list down the road. That means thinking through other options and alternatives and being on the lookout for new ways to make your company prosper. Few business plans ever pan out according to the first cut, so the more you can build flexibility into it, the better.

You don’t want to scare people — yourself included — with a giant written plan. The longer your plan is, in fact, the less likely people are to read it. Ideally, your written plan should be 15 or 20 pages maximum. You might even consider putting the whole thing into a PowerPoint format, knowing you can support the main bullet points with all the exhibits, appendixes, and references that you think it needs, along with a brief written summary if desired. If you want to glance at a sample business plan, check out the Appendix.

Some of your colleagues might want a hard-copy print version of the plan (and why are we thinking of the age-challenged here?), but you will likely choose to commit it to a soft format version. That way, you can add or delete pages and swap entire sections in or out as your business plan changes — and it will change. Fortunately, however, the table of contents you use — all the major sections of a business plan — stays the same. If you do choose the soft-copy route, and it’s up and available on your internal website, be sure you have all the required security walls in place beforehand. Breaking into your business plan might not be equal to cracking the corporate safe, but it can still result in serious damage; the last thing you want is to find that the plan is for sale on the Dark Web. So be prepared; the hackers out there — may their pitiful little souls burn in you-know-where — are dangerous.

To avoid becoming overwhelmed, and to keep the business-planning process in perspective, break up the plan into the basic sections that every good business plan needs to include. This should apply to both a written plan as well as a PowerPoint presentation. Take a moment to review the sections of a business plan.