To put things simply without a good business plan you’re technically not really in business. You need a business plan, it is your tool to attract funding or as a strategy document. It is what is used to gain interest within your business, without one no one, especially investors, will look at your business twice. 

Bringing your business plan together

Putting together your business plan makes you take a good hard look at every aspect of your business. It makes you look into the key aspects that keep your business together. These factors include the value your offer to customers, your competition and aspects that will affect your businesses financial performance in the long haul. 

Not only will producing such a plan be beneficial to anyone who is going to become involved in your business but it will also help you understand whether certain factors within your business will be worth pursuing. It is better to find out these things before hand as opposed to when you have spent money investing in these aspects. 

A good and flexible plan can help you manage your business throughout its lifetime. The reason that I say this is down to the fact that you don’t simply produce your plan before getting your business off the ground and leave it at that. You should be using your business plan throughout the lifetime of your business. You should be using it as a guide of how to operate your business and as a way of keeping your finances in check. 

There is technically no set way in which you have to write a business plan, however there is a certain formula that most of them follow. They typically include four elements, which are an executive summary, market analysis and a detailed description along with strategies, timelines and financials. 

Writing your business plan

When you are producing your business plan there are certain aspects that you should ensure, you need to make sure that you keep it realistic. In order to do this you need to make sure you can justify any assumptions or projections that you make as well as avoid being overly ambitious. By keeping your plan realistic you also need to ensure that you point out any difficulties that your business may have. This may be difficult to admit to but it is better admitting problems at this stage where they can be sorted out as opposed to lying and then having to deal with them at a later stage, especially if they involve financial difficulties. 

When you are producing this document it is vital that you include within it how you plan to put in place an effective cashflow management arrangement. If potential investors or people who want to become involved in your business can’t see this then chances are they will lose interest in your business. 

You need to ensure that you produce and write this document in a way that demonstrates how committed you are to making your business a success. To help you further you may want to consider giving your plan even more of a professional feel through using graphs etc; however when it comes to the text that you use within your plan keep it the same font and colour. 

Make sure that when you do come to write your business plan that you take your time and do the correct research as this could be the make or break of your business before you even get it off the ground. Also once you have finished writing it my advice to you is to have someone proof read it to check mainly on spelling and presentation errors that you may have missed and to just generally ensure it is presented accurately. Once this is done you are able to use it in whatever way you need to.