When starting a business, it is essential that you write a business plan that is well thought out and covers everything it needs to so that you can have hope of getting funding either from a loan, or investors in the future. It is also important if you have any dream of growing your business in the future. Forgetting to write a business plan is a common rookie error, which they will quickly regret as having a plan is necessary for reaching any goal. Here are some tips for writing a great business plan:
- The first tip to keep the business plan as short as possible without sacrificing much needed information. In other ways, say what you have to say but in as little words as possible. It should communicate clearly and have evidence to back everything up. No one will want to read a business plan that consists of pages and pages of text. The business plan is for investors and potential to read, but if it’s too long it will be off-putting. Moreover, your business plan will inevitably need to be updated over time, and if it’s extremely long it will be harder to do this than if everything was concise, simple and clear.
- Remember who you are writing the business plan for. For example, if you explain your company using vocabulary that only people with a lot of experience in your industry will know, it will be hard for investors to understand exactly what your product is. If you really need to use certain specific terms, then you can put the definitions in an appendix at the end of your business plan for people to refer to when reading.
- Whilst writing your business plan, it can be a good time to test your business idea and do some market research. This can refine your business plan. It is best to do this before it is finished and final, so that you don’t have to make lots of changes to the plan afterwards. Hiring a business coach to mentor you through this stage would be highly useful, no matter how much experience you have in business. If you want the best possible business plan, they can help you achieve it. For a Gloucester Business Coach, I highly recommend Randall and Payne business coaching.
- As mentioned before, it is important to set goals and objectives for your business. A business coach can help you come up with one that is appropriate as well as give you strategies for achieving them as well as methods for keeping track of your progress towards achieving them. Create the goals at the start of making your business plan, so that your plan can be focused on how you are going to achieve them. Writing goals may seem easy but most goals are never achieved because not enough thought has gone into how they are written. Using the acronym, ‘SMART’, provides a good method for creating goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Timely means that you have specific deadlines for meeting the goal. Measurable means that you have a strategy for checking that you are on the right track towards achieving your goal.
