There are different components that we should include inside our business plans.
Industry overview
It is a section that describes the viability of our business idea. It discusses about the growth, current size and projected size of the industry. When writing this component of business plan, we should use the funnel approach. It means that we should start with the overview of the industry in a country, followed by the region and finally, narrowed down to our cities and town. This is important if we want to propose to run our business in the industry. We should also discuss other factors, such as licenses, permits, pollution certificates and other things.
Marketing Strategy
It is clear that we should include retails related to marketing strategy: This is an important section of our business plan and we should make sure that we have the best product in the whole industry. We should have a plan on how to reach out to the customers. We need to properly describe the key value propositions, competitors, target market segment and other important things. We should also discuss about the promotion packages and overall pricing. We should know how these factors should appeal to the take customers. We should also include latest trends, such as the use of mobile devices and social networking platforms.
Operation Plan
It is important for us to have a highly effective management team that can drive our business forward from what it’s now. In this section, we should have a profile of our management team. We should also include overview of daily operations, production plans and manpower plans. It is important that the section is properly written, because people will likely to be on the jockey; instead of on the horse.
Financial Plan
Many business owners are actually fearful about writing this part and they may even try to avoid writing one. However, business plan is essential because investors and banks won’t invest on companies with non-viable financial conditions. The financial plan should include projections for at least five years.
Risk analysis and project appraisal
Many business plans don’t have this section and it is actually quite essential. There should be a special section in our business plan that explains about the key risks. These risks must be exposed and we need to know how to mitigate them. As an example, our business plan may project that 100 customers will come each day, but we should also consider the risk that only 80 people would come. In this case, we should make sure that we have enough profits to repay our loans.
Implementation
Without an implementation section, our business plan is far from complete, because investors and banks don’t know how our ideas will be implemented in real life. Readers should know about the first step and other subsequent steps that finally allow us to reach our goals. Key milestones should be mentioned in the implementation section and they are essentially small goals that can help us to reach the ultimate goal.
