RENDR

Here is a basic guide­line to struc­tur­ing your busi­ness plan; it’s really not hard at all with a solid struc­ture. I remem­ber how long I searched and searched for a good guide­line to fol­low, so here you are! Enjoy!

Sec­tion I. Exec­u­tive Summary

Elab­o­rate one the over­all busi­ness con­cept, and what you have in store for the reader to dig deeper on later in the plan. Even though this is the first sec­tion in your busi­ness plan, it is usu­ally writ­ten at the end. This sum­mary is the open­ing to the rest of the plan. If you get it right, your tar­get read­ers will not go fur­ther than the exec­u­tive sum­mary. Here is a list of what your exec­u­tive sum­mary should include:

• Busi­ness Name
• Busi­ness Location
• Prod­uct or ser­vice sold
• Pur­pose of the plan

You should pro­vide impor­tant points such as pro­jected sales, prof­its, sales, prof­itabil­ity and the keys to your busi­ness’ suc­cess. You can always include a high­light chart, sales chart, gross mar­gin, and prof­its before inter­est and taxes for the fol­low­ing three years. Always be sure to cite and explain the charts and num­bers in the text.

One huge mis­take a lot of writ­ers have is not being hon­est with their read­ers. What is the goal of this plan? If the goal is to receive an invest­ment, say so. If the goal is to get a loan, say so!

Another big no is repeat­ing your­self, be straight for­ward and con­cise. Always know where you are and where you have been in your writ­ings. There is no rea­son to repeat your­self when it comes to the loca­tion, product/service, or any other details for that matter.

How long should your busi­ness plan be you ask? I say, asses who you are writ­ing to and go from there. Angel investors prob­a­bly want to see a page, maybe two. Cor­po­rate big wigs, maybe they would like to see ten pages. But that’s up to you, assess the sit­u­a­tion and attack it with what you have. Remem­ber, you’re the boss. Be con­fi­dent in all your deci­sions and back them up with your com­mon knowledge.

Sec­tion II. Com­pany Description

This sec­tion is where you get to the nitty gritty details of your pro­posed busi­ness. Describe your busi­ness con­cept and back­ground. Give some infor­ma­tion on the following:

• Busi­ness Name
• Orga­ni­za­tion type – Sole Pro­pri­etor, Part­ner­ship, etc.
• Own­er­ship – Include full names
• Loca­tion – pro­posed head­quar­ters, offices, branches, etc.
• Product/Services – with­out too much detail, you’ll get more on this later
• His­tory – either the com­pany or where the idea of the com­pany was formed
• Goals – Up to five years
• Plans – Growth? Expan­sion? Remem­ber to keep it realistic

These will all need a lit­tle detail as well. Remem­ber you never want to repeat your­self, so if you feel a sec­tion such as ‘plans’ will be bet­ter cov­ered in a later sec­tion than leave it out. Let your busi­ness plan flow. Be sure to pre­pare some infor­ma­tion on the pro­posed loca­tion, why you chose that loca­tion and maybe some risks of that loca­tion. Know what you’re talk­ing about and back up your ideas with facts. This sec­tion should be easy, and should be fun. You really get to put pen on paper and explain what it is that you pro­pose to do.

Sec­tion III. Prod­uct or Service

This is a chance to describe in fur­ther what product/service you are pro­vid­ing. Include what equip­ment will be needed as well. The fol­low­ing sec­tion should look a lit­tle like this:

• Pro­posed Product/Service – explain in some detail what you are selling/providing
• Start-up Equip­ment

Put focus on the cus­tomer ben­e­fits. Pro­vide sta­tis­tics you can find on your tar­get mar­ket. If you are sell­ing a prod­uct, your reader will want to know what it is, what it does, and its fea­tures and ben­e­fits. Pro­vide pho­tos; help your reader under­stand your prod­uct as best they can from read­ing this sec­tion. Pro­vide its shape, size, cost, design, qual­ity, capa­bil­i­ties, tech­no­log­i­cal lifes­pan, etc. You may even chose to include how it’s made, mate­ri­als needed, and type of labor needed as well.

On the other hand if you are pro­vid­ing a ser­vice explain what ser­vice, how they work, and what they need to con­front the mar­ket­place. Where will you oper­ate from? What makes your ser­vice stand out? What Equip­ment do you need? What days and hours will the busi­ness oper­ate? Go so far as to explain the steps in your ser­vice process and the extra ben­e­fits you offer to your clients. There is a large ‘but’ in this sec­tion. You should do all of this BUT do not bore your reader with tiny details.

Sec­tion IV. Mar­ket Analysis

This sec­tion takes a lot of time and research­ing. Ana­lyze the busi­ness’ sit­u­a­tion, such as the following:

• Trad­ing Area Analy­sis – under­stand you tar­get mar­ket, cus­tomer behav­ior and new opportunities
  • Geo­graphic and Demo­graphic Information
  • Mar­ket Seg­ment Analy­sis of Tar­get Market
  • Con­sumer Buy­ing Behav­ior Related to Pro­posed Busi­ness, Prod­uct, and/or Service
  • Analy­sis of Poten­tial Location
• Com­peti­tors
  • Com­peti­tors Strengths and Weaknesses
  • Com­peti­tors Advan­tages and Disadvantages

For some of the tasks pro­vided, give the reader some charts to look at. Charts and graphs are eas­ier and able to be ana­lyzed faster than words in a para­graph. Do not clut­ter your papers with too many, though. That may look lazy and unpro­fes­sional. Be hon­est, if you aren’t hon­est in this how do you expect to suc­ceed if you do receive the fund­ing? Keep in mind this infor­ma­tion needs to be right. For your own sake, really dig deep in the research and edu­cate your­self on your mar­ket, loca­tion, etc. This will ben­e­fit you in the long run.

Sec­tion V. Strat­egy and Implementation

This sec­tion should include your man­age­ment and sales strate­gies. How will your busi­ness be run? What will make the con­sumer come to your product/service before they go some­where else? How can you hook them? Pro­vide your:

• Man­age­ment Responsibilities
• Dates and Budgets
• Pric­ing Policy
• Pro­mo­tion
• Dis­tri­b­u­tion
• Mar­ket­ing Programs
• Sales Strat­egy
• Sales Fore­cast

Get into detail about each one of these items. Pro­vide a thor­ough and thought out cal­en­dar of events for each strat­egy such as pro­mo­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­grams, etc. Put together a fore­cast that describes punc­tu­ally the steps you have planned to meet your pro­jected sales. Any sort of mar­ket­ing strate­gies you have, explain them. Let the reader know you know busi­ness, espe­cially your own. Your sales strat­egy is the most impor­tant part of this sec­tion. It mea­sures your busi­ness’ suc­cess. Keep in mind you are not sell­ing a product/service as much as you are sell­ing a con­cept and/or image. Remem­ber when work­ing on this sec­tion that the major­ity of peo­ple do not believe some­one can be con­vinced to buy some­thing. Know your audi­ence as well as you know your customer.

Sec­tion VI. Man­age­ment Team

Describe the orga­ni­za­tion and the key man­age­ment team mem­bers. Build a flow chart that depicts how your busi­ness will be ran from the top to the bot­tom. Include every­one, even prospec­tive investors. Describe duties and oblig­a­tions along with priv­i­leges. The foun­da­tion of your team is drawn out in this section.

Setion VII. Planned Financ­ing

This is where the area of account­ing can come in handy. You get this wrong, and you will not fool any­body. This needs to be the one golden egg you have in your bas­ket. Dou­ble, Triple and Quadru­ple check this bad boy. You need to pro­vide the following:

• Pro­jected Income and Expenses
  • Start-up Cost/One Time Expenses for First Month
  • Pro­jected Income State­ment by Month for First Year Operations
  • Pro­jected Cash Flow for First Year Operations
  • Pro­jected Bal­ance Sheet, End of First Year Operations
  • Pro­jected Three-Year Profit/Loss Statement
• Brief Nar­ra­tive of Planned Growth

When talk­ing finan­cials, be real­is­tic. Keep it mod­est, but enough to be an invest­ment worth mak­ing. Eval­u­ate the risk thor­oughly and keep every­thing orga­nized. A real­is­tic fig­ure is one of the keys to the suc­cess of a small start-up look­ing for investors. Be sure when you are dis­cussing the growth that you are real­is­tic as well. No one wants to see out­landish ‘in your dreams’ num­bers. As they may be pos­si­ble, for the sake of look­ing pro­fes­sional, keep it realistic.

Sec­tion VIII. Bib­li­og­ra­phy

Pro­vide the name and loca­tion of where you received all your infor­ma­tion for research. Was it a viable source? Prove it to the reader, let them have con­fi­dence in what your busi­ness plan has for content.

I really hope this helps with your busi­ness plan, if you need any more infor­ma­tion or help shoot us an email. Stephen@madebyrendr.com

Cheers,

Stephen Jones