How to Put Together a New Product Business Plan

If you are creating a new product and need financing from investors, you need to put together a business plan. A business plan thoroughly describes the new product and the market the new product is in and provides projections for how that new product will succeed.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Marketing research
• Marketing strategy
• Management team information
• Financial data

1. Develop a concise and persuasive executive summary. The executive summary should include a brief history of the company and the company's products or services, a description of the market, a description of the new product and why it should succeed, projections for how the new product will grow, information about the management team and what type of funding is required.

2. Put together a section of the business plan to describe the new product and its competitive advantage over other products in the market. You should also discuss barriers to entry in the market that your product might face and the current status of the new product in the product development process.

3. Create a marketing research section that describes the target market in detail. You should have information on who the customers are for the new product, what type of purchasing habits the customers have, who the competitors are, what the competitors are doing, what niche you are targeting and any other relevant marketing research data.

4. Include a marketing strategy section that outlines how you plan to advertise and promote your new product effectively. This section is very important to most investors, because it goes to the heart of how they will recoup their investment.

5. Describe how you will manufacture your new product in an operations section of your business plan. This will include all of the resources necessary to bring the product to market.

6. Craft a section that presents the experience and qualifications of the management team. Most investors know that the quality of the management team is as important to the success of a business as the quality of the products.

7. Include financial data and projections for the new product. Financial forecasts are a crucial part of getting investors, because they show investors how much they can expect as a return on their investment.

Tips & Warnings

• Include any necessary supporting documents in your business plan, but don't overwhelm potential investors with dozens of appendices.
• Avoid using overly technical jargon to describe your new product. Business plans are primarily put together for laymen, and technical jargon can turn off potential investors.

[hotpepperchick]

on 7/20/2009 Very useful article with excellent info simply stated. You might also be interested in my article on How To Develop a Product From a Service.

Cheers, Penelope