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Overview:

What’s a Business Plan?

Your business plan is a powerful document telling the story of your company. It presents your current position, your vision for the future, and your plans for realizing that vision.

A business plan answers the following questions:

 What is your business idea or what is your existing business?

 Who are your existing and/or potential customers and what motivates them to buy from you?

 How will you let your customers know about your business?

 Who are your competitors and how are you different from them?

 How will you carry out the basic functions of your business?

 Is your management team capable of guiding your business to success?

 What is the long-range future of your business?

 What is your company’s financial picture? How much money will it cost to run your business and how much money will you make?

Anatomy of a Business Plan

The basic parts of a complete business plan are:

 Executive Summary: Highlights the most important aspects of your business, summarizing key points of your business plan.

 Company Description: Features the basic, factual details about your business.

 Target Market Description: Identifies the types of people or businesses most likely to be your customers, and explains their needs and wants.

 Competitive Analysis: Evaluates other companies offering a similar product or service or filling a similar market need.

 Marketing and Sales Plan: Outlines how you will reach your customers and secure orders or make sales.

 Operations Plan: Explains how you run your business and the operational factors that may give you an edge over your competition.

 Management Team: Describes the key people running your business.

 Development Plan and Milestones: Shows where your business will be in several years’ time, how you will get there, and the milestones you plan to reach along the way.

 Financials: A set of financial statements showing the current financial status and future financial goals of your company.

Although the Executive Summary appears first in your plan, prepare it last. You’ll find it much easier to put together when you can draw from the highlights of each previously completed section.

Business Plan In A Day guides you quickly and efficiently through the process of developing a business plan. It’s a roadmap to your success.

Time-Saving Tools

You probably already have a number of documents that will enable you to complete your plan faster. These include:

 Industry information, statistics, and data

 Surveys and other research about your target customers

 Information about your competition, including research from their websites

 Marketing brochures and other marketing materials

 Any past internal company planning papers

 Past tax returns (for existing companies)

 Organizational charts

 Charts depicting operational procedures

 Product data sheets

At the beginning of each step in this book, you’ll find checklists showing the kinds of documents and other materials likely to provide helpful information for each section.