“Do you use a process to write a Business Plan
…Or do you just send me a template and I fill in in?!”
One of the most popular questions we get when people phone up to enquire about one of our Business Plans is the process that we use for writing it. The good news is we do have a process, but there is something more important than that…It’s having the right kind of expertise to gather the information, do the research, pull the financials together, and then create a really good-looking document.
That expertise takes four types of people and skill:
- A financial skill, usually an Accountant, to do the all-important Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow section of your Business Plan
- Market research skills to do the equally important competitor research and market size
- Critical and analytical thinking skills and writing skills
- Typing, formatting, proofing, paragraphs, graphs, charts, and pictures.
My team and I have these four skills and we own our own steps/sections of the Plan, and collaborate. One role pulls everything together and write certain parts of each section, as well as making sure that each step and section is fully integrated to the overall executive summary at the start of the Plan.
So, what is the process for writing a Business Plan?
When you read a Business Plan you will see the first section is usually the Executive Summary. I’m going to come back to this step later in this blog because usually that is done towards the end as it is a summary.
The first real step is the Operational Overview of your Business. This is where we look at all of the procedures and policies that you have and need to deliver your product or service seamlessly and perfectly and consistently every time to your customers, clients, and stakeholders.
Then we pull together the different operational licences, certificates, and registrations your Plan will need. These come from different sources which include your local government, and federal authorities – if it’s going to be a national Business Plan.
This step also includes listing your business’ management and your staff if you have them and your service providers you have such as accountants, lawyers, and marketing agencies
Moving on now to the next step, this is the market research section.
This step and section of the Business Plan drives revenue forecasts and future growth targets. It also dictates how much you will need to spend on marketing because if the research shows that you have a lot of competitors, then to compete, you will need to market.
Market research falls into three areas which will need to be reviewed, gathered, and put into the Plan.
- All your competitors, even the ones you may not know you have
- All of the people or companies who will buy your product
- All of the overarching trends and drivers in the industries and market that your Business will be in and will serve.
This section will typically have a lot of numbers and around four to six tables, charts, and graphs from very reputable sources of data.
By the way, it’s during this step and section of the Plan you define your target market – I often give my Clients a bit of a hand with this step as it’s deceptively simple to do but important for targeting of marketing spend and effort that comes later in the Plan.
Speaking of which, the third step is the marketing strategy where we do indeed need to understand the target that we want to communicate with … and how you create demand of your products and service.
This marketing strategy step also includes:
- Brand image, brand positioning, imagery, messages, and emotions that you want your target market to see, read, feel, and most importantly of all, act on when they buy you products and services. You would have defined your target market in the previous step when you did the market research.
- Customer Relationship Management
- Website and search engine optimisation
- Digital advertising
- Electronic Direct Mail
- Public relations
- Business Development
- Sales channels, affiliates, and partnerships
- Telemarketing
Step four is the financials. This includes the three main reports that all readers need to see. Whether your Plan is for:
- A bank, or
- A lease
- A grant
- A private investor
- Yourself to pressure-test your idea and find out whether it is really a good one …
… everybody expects to see these three different reports.
So what are they?
- The Profit & Loss
- The Balance Sheet
- The Cash Flow
Just like going to the doctor for a full medical, these three reports give your reader and yourself a true sense of how healthy your business or your new idea is.
If you are thinking of doing some or all of the Business Plan yourself, this is the section that you would probably want to either get an accountant to do, or use a skilled advisor after you have had a crack at these three reports yourself.
By the way, a lot of Clients ask me where in the process they need to contribute information. If clients have little or no numbers, that’s absolutely not a problem. It’s my job to make sure we go away and find those numbers from the various sources of data that we have at our fingertips.
Before we start
As soon as a client buys a Plan from us and before we start work, we send the client a short 10-minute questionnaire to get basic information and then book in a 30-45-minute chat to talk about their business, why they need the Plan, and to double-check which information we will be gathering for them. Sometimes we will gather 90% of the information for the client, sometimes they have their own information …
Either of these situations is absolutely fine by us. We are more than ready, skilled, and able to collect all the data you need for your Business Plan.
Skilled team
The main section of your Plan is now done.
At this point, we will attach any and all other information that we gathered such as:
- Market research
- Organisation structure including job descriptions (if you have them)
- Policies and procedures that we have gathered or provided for you …
… as an appendix. Again, there is no need to worry if you don’t have this information, that’s one of the benefits of hiring a business planner – they don’t just write a Plan, they also gather all the information that you need to put in the Plan to make sure the Plan achieves what it’s set out to do, whether that’s raising money, getting you a lease, or just telling you you have a great idea.
So, you might remember at the beginning of this video, I talked about the Executive Summary.
Everything we have written is summarised in the Executive Summary. However, there are a couple of things that we put in our executive summary:
- The mission statement which explains why you will win, how you will compete, and what you’re going to be really good at
- The vision statement which explains where your Business will be in three, five, and 10 years
- Your values as a Business which is very helpful for managing staff, resolving conflict, and writing compelling website copy.
The rest of the executive summary has a couple of paragraphs on each of the main sections that I have mentioned in the Plan, market research, marketing strategy, operational overview, and the finances.
And that’s about it for the process, the skills, and the preparation that we do to create a Business Plan.
If you do decide to write your own Plan and you get a bit stuck and you want us to take over, that’s absolutely no problem at all. If you write your Plan and you’re really happy with it and you just want a second opinion …
… that’s absolutely no problem at all and we have a nice one-hour service to do just that for you.
I’d love to hear from you if you have some questions or you just want to have a chat before you buy. Please use the CONTACT US in the top menu of our web site home page.
If you’re ready to buy, it’s as easy as clicking on the BUY NOW button on the webpage for any of the business plans that we create.