If you have a business project in mind, discover in this post how to create a business plan. It is important to dedicate time to it since it is your letter of introduction when it comes to finding investors and the roadmap to follow in the early stages of your project.
Although it’s not easy to make the perfect business plan, here are seven tips that anyone who has to tackle your ideation should know. If you have identified a business opportunity, and you need business plan writing help read on these tips that will ensure the survival of your SME!
The key to starting up a business is the correct preparation of a business plan that will help you attract investors to your project. A business plan (also called a business project or business plan) is a document that describes both the nature of the business we want to develop and the objectives and strategies we are going to carry out.)
But Why Do I Have To Waste Time Writing A Business Plan?
This task is anything but a waste of time. The business plan will be your guide during the start-up of your company and, in addition, it will be the document that your potential investors will review. Although there is no fixed structure on the basis of which to write it, we can highlight some fundamental points that will help you to shape the document.
Define the characteristics of your product or service
No one better than yourself to detail clearly and concisely the basis of your business: What do you offer, what added value does it offer compared to the competition? Ask yourself these and other questions to know all the details of what your future company will offer. At the end of the day, your product or service will initially be your letter of introduction to the business community.
Make a realistic strategic analysis of your sales
Once we know what we are going to sell, we have to ask ourselves how we are going to do it, who will buy it, who will buy it? We must define our potential customers and the size of our market to determine what our sales volume can be. Depending on this ideal customer, it would also be advisable to detail our target audience.
Your business plan should answer several key questions, including:
- What solution do you bring to the market?
- What is your value proposition?
- Who and how are your customers?
- What are the channels through which you will sell your product?
- How will you make your products known?
- How do you generate money in your business?
- How much money do you need and how will you spend it?
Decide on your legal form
Have you chosen to create your own company as a freelancer? Or, on the other hand, do you prefer to incorporate as a company? In that case, you will also have to decide which corporate form to adopt: limited, labor, public limited company…
Know your competition
Prepare a market study and define the current situation of the market in which your product or service will be offered. Knowing who you will be competing against is the key to detecting and enhancing the added value of your product.
Know your initial needs
To start up your company you will probably need an office. You will also have to detail the technological and IT infrastructures, the technical needs and decide who will make up the human team. Again, it is necessary to be realistic at this point.
Complete each argument with data
The result of a good business plan is directly proportional to the effort and effort put into its preparation. It is not enough just to write, you must make an effort to argue solidly.
For this, it is convenient to look for information and data to back up each statement, so you will have to dedicate your time to the search of studies and pages of interest.
Mix the economic data with the text
Many business plans separate the most explanatory part of the business from the economic part and numerical calculations. A good trick to making a good business plan is to make text and numbers coexist, mixing the explanations of the different aspects of the business with different numerical calculations.
As an example, you can talk about customer segmentation, your target audience and then develop and explain the calculations of sales estimates, where each segment of the target audience is related to the number of people who buy and the amounts invoiced by each group.
Check your financial data
Knowing your economic starting point and the goal you want to reach is necessary, but it is also necessary to detail how we will reach that goal. What resources do we have available? Will we need aid for new freelancers and entrepreneurs? Remember that any company in general, and start-ups in particular, have negative financial results at the beginning.
Review your business plan
At this point, you will have defined and compiled a lot of information. Review it to detect errors and correct them, and try to synthesize everything in an executive summary. Additionally, it is crucial to support the financial data in your business plan with relevant documents such as financial statements, projections, and check stubs for your initial team members. This not only enhances the transparency of your financial planning but also reinforces your commitment to fair compensation, thereby strengthening the overall credibility of your business proposal. Put your creativity to work in this new document, since it will be the one your potential investors will consult. Remember to capture attention in the first paragraphs to avoid it ending up stored with other business proposals in a drawer.
The structure of the document is essential:
- It should be coherent
- It should have a common thread from the beginning to the end.
- It should breathe common sense
Your plan could present a structure in which the presentation of the company, the executive summary of the project and the team of promoters should stand out. It should also include explanatory sections on the idea, services/products, evolution of the business sector, competitors, location, customer analysis, marketing, human and technical resources and economic and financial analysis.
As you have seen, a business plan is, in short, a map indicating where we want to get to with our company and where we are starting from, as well as the path we will take to get there. It is also the gateway to investment. Therefore, it is worth dedicating time and effort to it. If you need help or advice in defining your business project, ask for help. There, they will help you take the necessary steps to become an entrepreneur and create your own company.
