Make an Excellent Business Plan

Make an Excellent Business Plan

 

Business plan is the backbone of every industry- micro, small, medium and large. To ensure success, every business plan has to be based on bare facts rather than imaginary projections and erroneous understanding of prevailing market conditions. An excellent business plan helps everyone- owner and employees as well as associates and customers.

 

Golden rule of a business plan

The golden rule while drawing an excellent business plan is procuring all required data. American academic and professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, William A. Sahlman says a great business plan is the one drawn by answering several pertinent questions.

Sahlman, explains, these questions are based on four vital elements of business: the people, the opportunity, context and possibilities of reward and risk.

Word from Harvard

“What’s wrong with most business plans? The answer is relatively straightforward. Most waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to the information that really matters to intelligent investors.

As every seasoned investor knows, financial projections for a new company – especially detailed, month-by-month projections that stretch out for more than a year – are an act of imagination.

An entrepreneurial venture faces far too many unknowns to predict revenues, let alone profits. Moreover, few if any entrepreneurs correctly anticipate how much capital and time will be required to accomplish their objectives.

Typically, they are wildly optimistic, padding their projections. Investors know about the padding effect and therefore discount the figures in business plans,”

William A. Shalman, in his widely acclaimed article titled ‘How to write a great business plan.’

Regardless of your geographic location, following these basics is essential for every business plan- traditional or start-up. The guidelines we provide are accepted worldwide for making an excellent business plan.

However, some variations may occur, depending upon your geographic location.

Guard Your Business Plan

As a general rule, business plans must be printed on business stationery. This lends it credence and accords it the status of an official document. A business plan is confidential document. Hence, you need to take extra precautions to ensure it is not accessed by unauthorized persons. A business plan or any of its components, if leaked inadvertently or deliberately, can have disastrous effects on your

 

Business Plan Formats

Broadly speaking, there are three main formats for drawing a business plan.

Traditional Business Plan.

Start-Up Business Plan.

Expansion & New Project Business Plan.

You can either select the traditional business plan, start-up business plan or Expansion and New Project Business Plan, according to requirements.

 

Traditional Business Plan

A traditional plan is best suited for existing businesses. Traditional business plans generally carry lots of details including vision and mission, history, past financial performance, product or service profiles, customer portfolio, details about staffing and future recruitment as well as projected growth in terms of clientele and revenue. It also takes into account prevailing market conditions. Projections are based on various considerations including political and economic scenarios as well as existing and anticipated competition.