How to Construct a Comprehensive Business Plan
There are many reasons to write a business plan: to seek investment, to fully understand the business and its potential, and to present to a board of advisors to ask for advice in the planning process. If you anticipate needing to present several of these plans to different groups of people, it will be more efficient to write a single, comprehensive business plan and then to extract different versions of it for each audience. The plan can range from half a dozen to many hundreds of pages.
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Instructions
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1
Outline the business plan. You will need to include sections about the business and its history, products and services, market opportunity, business and regulatory environment, marketing strategy, growth and exit strategy, financial history, and pro forma financial projections, as well as an executive summary.
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2
Write the business and business history section. Include a breakdown by divisions and an organization chart if necessary, any acquisitions the company has previously made, where it is headquartered and operating, and who the executive team is. Describe any particularly impressive members of the board of advisors. Also include your company mission statement, core values, competitive advantages, and strategy.
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3
Describe the company's products and services. If there are multiple product lines, give a detailed breakdown, including profit and loss for each product. If the company provides only one product or service, be specific about the manufacturing process in terms of raw material lists, machines, suppliers, and the labor hours necessary for product, or a flowchart of exactly how the service works. Include all distribution partners. This may include an operational plan subsection.
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4
Sell your audience on the market opportunity. Describe exactly what your market is, how fast it is growing, why its needs are not being met currently, and how you will meet them. This section is your sales pitch and may be the only section other than the executive summary that a potential investor ever reads.
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Describe your business and regulatory environments. In this section you describe your industry, its history and future, and your competitive landscape. Be specific about your major competitors, and analyze their market positions. Compare them against the uniquely compelling properties of your business. Also describe any laws or regulations that you or your industry are subject to.
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Include information on your marketing campaigns and strategy. Describe your marketing message, the channels through which you're advertising, and all the costs associated with with marketing. Calculate and include your cost of customer acquisition.
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Determine and describe your growth and exit strategy. If you intend to grow by acquisition, or through investing retained earnings in research and development, state that and how you will accomplish that objective. Then list at what stage of growth you intend to offer investors an exit strategy. Specify whether you intend to do this through IPO or sale.
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Include a financial history, or projections. Include financial statements from the past 3 to 5 years, and projections for the next 3 to 5 years. If the company is new, also include a break-even analysis and projected revenue growth based upon a product life cycle curve.
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Write your executive summary. This is not an outline or summary of your business plan. Rather, it is a one-page sales pitch that entices a reader to delve further into the business plan.
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10
Include appendices, charts, supporting documents, and an extensive bibliography citing all of your research.
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