You may be a newbie in entrepreneurship or a seasoned businessman. No matter how experienced you are, be prepared because demands hit you quickly. You need to rush every day between meetings and to-do lists and will rarely have any time to plan for the future. So, every successful businessman always advises to make a business plan beforehand and follow it religiously. So, keep reading this piece since I have discussed here how you can make a full proof business plan by following these ten simple steps –

Create an executive summary

The first thing you need to do while making a business plan is creating an executive summary. An executive summary is the elevator pitch of the company but in written form. An executive summary should be short and crisp yet convey all the business’s important parts, including your mission and vision statement, a brief description of the services and products you offer, and the ownership structure. Basically, you need to give a complete overview of the business plan.

Write the company description

After the executive summary, you need to write the company description. In the company description, you need to add all the pertinent details of the company like –

• Company name
• The physical address of the concern
• Name of all the key members
• Key details about the history of the company

The company description gives the business owners an opportunity to explain what the business is about. You can describe the objective of the company, the audience you want to cater to, and the main challenges in your journey. You need to describe how your company promises to solve those issues and what makes your brand unique from all the other players.

Conduct a market analysis

This is a very critical part of any business. When you are stepping into a new business, market analysis helps the business to understand about what’s happening around them. Without any data, it will be like finding a needle in a haystack for you. You won’t understand your target market, the industry demands, and how you can distinguish yourself from your accounting assignment help.

To do comprehensive market research, you need to identify the market you are trying to enter. No matter what your business size is, you need to understand the opportunities and trends in the market. That will help you to create an effective marketing strategy to grow your brand.

Market research can include everything from analysing consumer behaviour to demographics. With substantial data, you will get a chance to know your competitors as well. Once you can understand their strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to figure out what changes they are making to grow. You can also understand where and how they are struggling, and you can exploit those areas to get a competitive advantage.

Create a business structure outline

You will create your business according to a solid business structure. This is the next step in making a business plan. You need to make a layout by creating organisational charts. This will help you get a visual overview of the company. As the business owner, you need to identify who will lead the company. Simultaneously, you need to identify the other key personnel who can help the leader to run and grow the business. It is very important to create a well-defined hierarchical model and document everything in the organisational chart.

Highlight your offerings

In this section, you will explain the products and services you are offering in detail. When you list your products, you need to include all the vital information about them. For example, if you are into manufacturing FMCG products, you need to include the manufacturing date, the expiry date, the ingredient list, etc. Many companies also include details about their production process, details about their funding, pricing, and other vital details.

Draft a Plan

You cannot just make products and expect them to get sold. You must also know how to sell your products. To ensure that potential customers also buy the products, you need to market your business. Even if you cannot formulate a full-fledged marketing strategy, you must try to answer whom you are targeting to sell and how you are planning to do so. While creating a marketing and sales plan, you need to decide the marketing strategies that will have the maximum effect on the customers. At the same time, you also need to ensure that you are not going overboard with the budget.

So, you must carefully scrutinise the marketing and sales plan before finalising anything. Double-check if the plan has enough detail about the sales process and if it aligns with your sales targets. The plan should be elaborate enough so that you face no trouble achieving your goals after starting the business. Every successful businessman should be a good thinker. As an entrepreneur, you must be able to visualise how you want your company to grow. Once you do that, you can implement plans to optimise your marketing and sales processes.

Arrange the business financials

A sound business plan should also contain detailed financial information about the company. You should gather detailed financial information on –

• Profit and loss statement
• Income statement
• Cash flow statement
• Business costs like production costs, labour, marketing, etc.
• Balance sheets

All of these can be easily made with MS Excel. But if you want to be thorough, you can easily use accounting software to organise the company’s financials.

Outline the financial projections

While you are outlining your company financials, you should mention the company’s past and current performance. You can create a roadmap that will show you the financial projections for the future. This will prepare you for your investor meets, and you can ask for investments confidently with substantial data.

Ideally, a good financial projection must include various charts and visuals which will reflect the company’s vision. Try to outline a financial projection for the next five years. That will give you clarity and a roadmap of where you want your business to be down the line. But it is important to set realistic goals. Setting unrealistic projections will be impossible to meet, and eventually, the team will be demotivated to work harder.

Write funding request

If you seek business funding, there must be an outline of how you want to seek fund. State the fund requirements according to the business needs so that the investor has no issue understanding why they are spending their funds. You should also state all the terms and conditions that you see fit while seeking funding for the business.

Create an Appendix

End the business plan with an appendix. You need to include any additional information and supporting documents that aren’t mentioned anywhere in the business in the appendix section. Here is a list of the documents that you can include in the appendix –

• Bank statements
• Contracts
• Business credit history
• Leases
• Legal documents
• Letters of reference
• Patents
• Licenses
• Permits
• Resumes
• Receipts

Refer to this list to keep your appendix organised.

Summing Up

When you are embarking on a new journey, you must have a clear idea about your destination. Similarly, when you are starting a new business, you must have a plan in place. Invest time in yourself to make a solid business plan to help you achieve your business goals. You should also annually review the homework writing service to check if the plan is still relevant, as business scenarios change quite often. And if you struggle to formulate a plan for your business, you can follow these ten tips and build a plan yourself.