IDEAS FOR WRITING A GOOD BUSINESS PLAN
A good business plan should have the ingredients to warrant attention for financial support. Below are some ideas to help interested parties to develop a good business plan.
Know who your audience is. A business plan for the purpose of securing a loan from the bank will dwell more on how you intend to minimize risk and make returns to be able to pay back the loan when it’s approved. Writing a business plan for investors will dwell more on facts and figures about the market and how reasonable returns can be made to repay dividends to the investors.
Once you have determined your audience, the next activity to undertake is to outline your business plan. Several outlines exist for difference audience. Internet resources can assist you to get a suitable outline for the audience you select.
You need to research and collect information. Collect relevant data about your intended business via the internet, library, newspapers etc. Your research should include profile of customers, growth of the market, perspectives of the industry, level of competition, suppliers and customers. Mention can also be made of the industry experts.
Analyse the data collected and write the business plan to follow the structure or format of a good business proposal. Build a competitive profile; show how you can mitigate risk through your risk analysis. You should have a profit and loss account, balance sheet and do some financial ratios analyses to show the economic health of the proposed business. Valuable resources exist on the internet on financial ratios analyses.
Develop an executive summary as the last activity. As the phrase suggests, the executive summary, usually one pager, provides a precise and concise brief of the several pages of a business plan. The executive summary forms the introductory part of the business plan.
Ensure that the business plan is proof-read several times to minimize language errors and technical errors. You can consult some colleagues to proof-read your business plan for you and make contributions but be circumspect about which input to include in the final business plan.