| |
|
|
Tips On Writing A Business Plan
by Adriana Copaceanu
More Business Skills Articles
Published on this site: July 28th, 2007 - See
more articles from this month
When you're ready to start your own business - whether you plan
to start a home based business, retail store, service based
business, online shopping site or otherwise - the first step
often involves writing a business plan. Without a business plan,
you won't know how to get started, or how to grow and maintain
your new business.
A business plan is a simple roadmap. It's a plan which tells
you what you're going to do, when, and how. The business plan
also helps you clarify the type of business you intend to start,
who your customers will be, and what your products or services
will be too.
If you plan to try and get funding for your new business from
either a bank, standard lender, or investor, you will need to
create what's known as a formal business plan. Formal business
plans will provide a summary of your business and market, then
go into explicit details about your products, customers and
markets, suppliers, profitability estimates, analysis of the
competition and more. These formal business plans can often run
twenty pages in length and take months to complete.
Small business owners however, don't need formal business plans
to get thier business started. Often a small business will
create their first business plan in the form of brainsorming
notes, or outlines. And this is fine to get started with.
The important part though, is actually writing down some kind
of plan. Too often, very small businesses will try to get
started without any business plan, so their ideas are vague and
they often don't know which steps to take next. By writing
something down, even if it's just very informal brainstorming
notes, you'll have a much clearer picture of what kind of
business you want, and how it should grow over time.
Here are several things you should think about when writing
your business plan:
- What kind of company are you starting? Is it a retail store?
A professional service? An online website?
- What is the purpose of your new business? A business can be
started for fun, but if you want it to be profitable then you
need to know why you're starting it. Are you filling a need of
some kind? Creating something never seen before?
- How will your business make money? Will you sell products
and if so, which ones? Where will you get the products from? How
much will you pay for the products and how much will you sell
them for?
- Who will be your customers? Knowing who your customers will
be is a critical part of writing any business plan. If you know
your customers live on limited fixed incomes for instance, then
you automatically know you cannot sell them products or services
which cost thousands of dollars. Knowing who your customers will
be also helps you to know where to place your advertising and
marketing efforts.
- How will you get those customers? Whether you plan on
calling each one of them on the phone personally, or you'll be
hiring a top notch sales team, you need to know how you'll get
customers or your business may never get off the ground.
These are just the basic steps for writing a business plan of
course, but they are the most important ones.
Adriana Copaceanu: Please be sure to visit http://www.gbexchange.net/ for additional tips, information and
resources to help you start writing your own business plan
today.
|
|
