Читать книгу Business Plans For Dummies - Paul Tiffany - Страница 40

Whether you write your business plan on your own or do it by committee, always keep in mind who reads the written document. A business plan is meant to communicate your vision and strategy — what you plan to do and how you intend to do it. The best way to convey your message is to consider your audience. You don’t speak French to someone who only speaks Italian, right? (Well, maybe the French do.) For the same reason, you don’t want to fill your business plan with all kinds of techno-jargon if your audience is made up of people who don’t know the first thing about the cool new technology you work with.

What if your whole business idea is based on something brand-new? Don’t you need to describe it in detail? Sure you do. But you can address different audiences within the same document. For example, your plan may include an overview of the new technology that anyone who reads it can understand, and if necessary the techno-speak can go into an appendix. Before you can really think about how to address different audiences, however, you have to know your readers.

For the sake of simplicity, we lump them all together and call them your stakeholders — as in everyone who has a possible stake in what your company does or how it operates. Some of these people may have direct stakes: They rely on you for their income, for example, or they own a piece of your business. Others may have less tangible interests: government watchdogs who occasionally survey you to ensure that you’re complying with legal standards or civic organizations who want to make sure that you remain a good corporate citizen.

Whatever the interest group, your business plan is one of the most important tools you have to communicate with them. But there is a catch: Each of these groups is likely to look at your plan in a different light. So take a closer look at two very important types of stakeholders: investors and lenders.