Do you plan to invest in signage, physical or digital advertising, email newsletters, search engine optimization, social media outreach, TV or radio commercials? Have you developed a logo and branding? Choose the activities you think are right for your business, and make sure the related expenses are included in your forecast.
If you plan on advertising, talk about your messaging. What is the unique value proposition or selling point your pitch that you expect to resonate with potential customers? Talk about how that pitch positions you relative to your competitors. Are you the no-frills, low-cost option for budget-conscious shoppers? Or a premium product that is superior to the others in a key way? Or are you differentiating yourself in another way being faster, more convenient, better for the environment, locally sourced? Make sure this is aligned with the competitive advantages that you described in the Competition section.
Describe your distribution and pricing plans. How will your customers buy your products or services? Will they pay you directly, either in your store or out in the field? Will they buy what they want on your website? Or through other retailers, distributors, or resellers? Are your customers the people actually using your products or services, or are you selling to other companies who are incorporating your solution into their own? What will your customers pay, and will those payments be one-time purchases or an ongoing arrangement?
As you can see, there is a lot to talk about here. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you may want add additional topics to this section. Then you can just hit the high points here and refer to the other topics for more detail. For many small businesses, though, you can cover the major points well enough here.
Sales Plan
Explain how you plan to sell your products or services. You do not need to cover marketing activities here that is, how you are going to attract potential customers. Focus instead on how you will turn those prospects who express interest the people who visit your store, who sign up for your newsletter, who ask for an estimate into paying customers. For a simple business, such as a food truck, that is pretty simple. You might want to talk about the payment methods you accept and any order tracking tools you are using.
For a sales-heavy business like insurance or enterprise software, talk about the nuts of bolts of the sales process. How will you nurture leads to get them ready to close? What kind of staffing do you need? Do you have a commission structure? Sales territories? Quotas? Also, describe any key sales activities that you will use to build and maintain your sales pipeline, such as prospecting calls and emails, networking events, trade associations, existing customer followup, thought leadership, referrals, and so on.
Operations
Locations & Facilities
Describe your companys physical locations. This might be your office, store locations, manufacturing plants, storage facilities whatever is relevant to your business. How much space do you have available, and how well will it meet your current and future needs?
If location is important in your market, as with a restaurant or an art gallery, explain the benefits of where you are located. Do you get a lot of vehicle or foot traffic passing by? Is your target customer type heavily represented in your neighborhood’s demographics? Are you close to other key resources, such as a key suppliers office or shipping ports or freeways?
If you are working from a home office, talk about how well that is working for you. Are you planning to move to an outside office later? If so, when and why?
EXAMPLE: Food Truck
Technology
Describe any important software, hardware, or other information technology that you use now or plan to use later to operate your business. That might include a point-of-sale system to take payments, an e-commerce engine for your website, a CRM solution for managing your pipeline, marketing tools for generating leads, and so on. For an industrial company, be sure to cover any industry-specific technologies that you have developed or purchased to power or manage your operations.
Equipment & Tools
List any specialty equipment that you have or plan to acquire to do your work. This is an important component of the business plan for many industrial companies. A steel fabrication plant, for example, needs CNC lines, welding machines, drill presses, and other metalworking tools. Likewise, with a photography studio business, having the right sort of cameras, lighting rigs, editing tools, and so on is going to be key.
If your forecast includes plans to make major capital expenditures investing in another fermenting tank for your microbrewery, for instance be sure to discuss the cost, benefits, and timing of those purchases here.
Milestones & Metrics
Milestones TableKey metrics
Explain which performance metrics are most important for understanding how your business is doing. What does success mean for you, and how will you know it when you see it? Is it critical to contain your direct costs in a low-margin industry? To generate a certain number of leads to keep your sales pipeline full? To get a certain level of traffic on your website or convert a certain percentage of those visitors into customers? To keep a certain amount of cash in the bank?
The goal here is to keep your plan alive by tracking your actual results, identifying poor assumptions or weak performance as early as possible, and correcting course right away to keep your business on track. The first step is to get clear on which metrics are going to be the most important to watch closely.
EXAMPLE: Food Truck
4-Company
Overview
Ownership & Structure
Use this area to specify who owns your company. If there are multiple owners, describe each of them and how much of an ownership stake they have. Also, identify your companys legal structure. Is it a sole proprietorship that is, just you working for yourself? Or a partnership, such as a limited-liability corporation (LLC) or partnership (LLP), where the profits pass through to the partners involved? Or a nonprofit organization? Or a proper S- or C-type corporation with its own tax obligations and the rest?
If you are just getting started on your business and are not familiar with these options, searching online for “business structures” should provide plenty of background reading on the pros and cons of the various options.
EXAMPLE: Food Truck
Company history
Tell the story of your company so far. If its a newer business, what have you done so far, and what kind of traction have you gotten in the marketplace? If its a longtime business, who started it, when and where, and what was the original product or service? What has changed since then? Talk about good years, bad years, new services, new locations, new partners. Highlight an important date or event that had an impact on the business. Show the reader where the company started and how it got to where it is now.
If your company is still in the idea stage or is just getting started, you can just remove this topic from your plan for now. You can always add it back later when you have some history to talk about.
Team
Management team
List the members of the management team, including yourself. Describe each persons skills and experience and what they will be doing for the company. How do they make your team stronger? Do they have specific expertise in your industry or subject matter? Do they have experience starting or managing other small businesses? Use this space to really emphasize the strengths of yourself and your team. Assuming you have identified a great market opportunity, why are you the right ones to capitalize on it?
If you are a sole proprietor or otherwise working by yourself, just focus on your own skills, experience, and past successes. You may want to rename this section to avoid the “team” language.
Advisors
Describe any mentors, investors, former professors, industry or subject-matter experts, knowledgeable friends or family members, small-business counselors, or others who can help you as a business owner. If you have an important question or a new business challenge, who will you turn to for advice? What makes them a good resource for you and your company?
5-Financial Plan
Forecast
Key assumptions
Describe how you came up with the values in your financial forecast. Did you project your revenue based on past results, market research, your best guess at how many people who visit your store and what percentage of them might buy, or some other method? What kind of growth are you assuming? What are your key hires and notable expenses? What level of profit do you expect to generate?
Your readers can see the full forecast detail in your plan. Use this space to craft the story behind the numbers. How do your financial projections reinforce your sense that this is a strong business opportunity and one worthy of your time and investment?
Revenue by MonthExpenses by MonthNet Profit (or Loss) by YearFinancing
Use of funds
f your forecast includes loans, investments, or other financing, use this space to explain what you plan do with that money. Will it help to cover operating costs as your new business scales up? Will it finance capital expenditures, such as the purchase of expensive equipment? Will it enable you to add personnel or expand your marketing to increase revenue? Give your reader a clear picture of why these funds are needed and how they will pay off.
If you are not seeking financing, you can just remove this topic from your plan.
Sources of Funds
Describe your financing plans. Are you investing your own money in the business? Do you have a credit card or line of credit? What other types of funds personal or business loans, equity investments from others, etc. do you expect to receive and when? If you do not have the full detail of future financing worked out yet, that is understandable. Just explain what you do know and when you expect to sort out the details.
If you are not seeking financing, you can use this space to explain your plan to bootstrap your company, funding its growth from its own profits. Or you can just remove this topic from your plan.
Statements
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