Click
Here
for more articles.
|
|
|
How To Write A
Quick & Relatively Painless Business Plan |
by:
David
Silva |
If you've never
written a business plan before, the idea alone can be overwhelming.
It doesn't have to be the nightmare of your imagination.
Traditionally, a business plan is used to secure funding from
a lender or a potential investment partner. It serves as something
akin to your business's resume, outlining the purpose and scope
of your business, identifying the goals, marketing and management,
and establishing a basic balance sheet.
Now, even if you aren't going to seek additional funding, even
if you're going to grow your business by yourself from your office
at home, you'd be wise to put together a business plan. Simply
going through the process has value. It'll help you develop a
clearly defined vision of what you intend to do with your business
and how you intend to do it.
These are some of the questions you should already have asked
and answered before you sit down to write your business plan:
== What "want" does your business fill, and what service or product
will you be providing to fill that want?
== Who will be your potential customer (this should be an established,
niche market with die-hard buyers).
== Why will people purchase from you as opposed to the business
down the street (in other words ... what's your Unique Selling
Position)?
== How do you intend to reach your customers? A storefront? An
ad in the phone book? Direct mail? An Internet campaign? Selling
door-to-door? A combination of these?
== Will you need additional funding and if so, how much will you
need and how do you intend to secure it?
Okay, so let's take a look at what you'll want to include in your
business plan.
Most business plans are structured to examine four primary areas:
1. Executive Summary - a decription of the business
2. How you intend to market the business
3. How the busines finances will be arranged and handled
4. How the busines will be managed
Let's take a further look at these.
Executive Summary: what the business will do, its Unique Selling
Position, the business goals, its ownership and legal structure,
your skills and knowledge and how they will benefit the business.
Marketing The Business: describe your product or service, identify
your market niche, how big it is, and how you plan to reach it.
Define your customer, identify your competition, detail your pricing
plan, outline how you intend to attract and convert customers.
Financing The Business: estimate your start-up costs, project
your monthly operating budget for the first year, outline your
ROI (return on investment) and cash flow for the first year, project
your income and expense balance sheet for the first two years,
explain how you're going to compensate yourself, establish who
will maintain the accounting records and how they'll be maintained,
and if you're in need of funding, explain how much you need and
how it'll be used by the business.
Managing The Business: how will the business be managed day-to-day,
what the hiring and personnel procedures will be, how the products
or services will be developed and how they'll get into the hands
of your customers. You'll also need to account for equipment the
business will need, and how insurance, rental agreements, etc.
will be handled.
That's it. In a nutshell.
If you'd like to see some free sample business plans to get a
better idea of how they're structured and how they read, here's
a good source for you: http://www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm
About the author:
David Silva
Business Starter Tools http://businessstartertools.com
If you'd like to take the quickest, straight-as-an-arrow path
to Internet success, then learn from one of the most successful
Internet entrepreneurs ever, Mark Joyner:
http://businessstartertools.com/internetmanuscript
Circulated by Article
Emporium
|
|
|
