BUSINESS PLAN
Create a great Business Plan with our Tips & Business Plan Template
A good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure.
A business plan is a “must” when launching a new business or changing an existing business. It is a tool that helps decide whether or not to invest money, resources and time to reach a set of goals.
A business plan is a formal document which describes a set of achievable objectives and how to reach them.
The audience of a business plan can be internal (CEO, C-suite, executive managers, etc.) or external (investors, donors, customers, etc.).
An effective business plan needs to answer the following top 10 questions:
A good business plan has to be:
- Well structured
- Simple
- Concise
- Visually attractive
1.Well structured:
Before starting to write down your business plan, you need to identify the key sections and subsections you need to provide…or just copy paste the overall structure that our team of management consultants recommend in the following slides.
2.Simple:
Your business plan should be understood by a 15 year old kid. If it’s not the case it means that either your business idea is not clear enough in your head, or that the sentences and words you use are too complex.
If your idea is not clear enough in your head, you need to keep brainstorming until you find the perfect sequence of words that will be easily understood by anyone.
Don’t try to prove to your audience that you are smart by using complex sentences and words. This is business, not literature! If one third of the population needs to read your sentence twice, you failed to communicate efficiently!
3.Concise:
Don’t provide a 100+ page business plan to your audience. The CEO, executive managers or investment bankers don’t have time to read so many pages and they will not rate your business idea according to the number of pages you have written. You need to demonstrate your ability to synthesize. You can write a long version for yourself but for your audience you need to be straight to the point
Use diagrams and charts as they are “worth a thousand words”.
4.Visually attractive:
The form of your business plan is as important as the content. By inserting beautiful diagrams, charts and pictures in your business plan, you will provide a good first impression to your audience. Don't forget to send your business plan in PDF to avoid the format change that may appear if your audience has a different version of PowerPoint or Keynote.
