Business Plans

• Successful Micro Entrepreneurship: Applying the Rules of Business
• Planning for Success: A Business Plan Workbook for Start-Ups
• Starting Your Own Business: A Workbook
• TENBizPlan: Dynamic Business Planning for Start-ups

But first ...

WHY A WRITTEN PLAN?

• Thinking through all the elements involved in your process
• Fund-raising
• Communicating – internally and externally
• Measuring progress
• Steering your business.

Thinking it through
This is perhaps the most important role of the business plan. Writing down your thoughts exposes their clarity (or lack of it). It’s difficult to fudge just how your business is going to operate when you have to write it down.

The business plan should cover as many eventualities as possible: What happens if you can’t get enough raw materials? At the right price? Delivered at the right time? What happens if …?

Whichever approach to business planning you use, make sure that you give yourself sufficient time to think before writing – about 50% thinking, 20% writing and 30% rewriting/polishing is one common suggestion.

Fund-raising
Unless you are exceptionally lucky, you are likely to have to raise funds for your business – either to start it or to develop it. You will find it next to impossible to raise money without a business plan.

Investors and lenders will not know you personally, they will be faced with many alternative investments and (quite reasonably) will be unwilling to take unnecessary risks. They will want to know why they should invest in or lend to your business, what you plan to do, how and why you believe you will succeed, your track record (if any), the foreseeable risks involved and what you have done to overcome them, and what return they can expect.

They will want to find all this information clearly set out in the business plan. If you are invited to give an oral presentation, it is for additional information, not to supply the basics.

Communicating – internally and externally
Sharing your business plan with potential investors or lenders is a good example of external communication.

But you may also want to share it – or parts of it, at least – with your key staff. If they don’t know what you are trying to achieve, how can they help you achieve it?

If your plan is to communicate, it must be written to do so. That means avoiding both jargon and personal shorthand – spell out what you mean. Be objective – you do yourself no favours by not facing up to potential problems. Justify what you plan to do, by reference to market practice, for example, and explain any departures or new procedures that you plan to introduce.

And be concise. Your readers won’t wait all day for you to get to the point.

Measuring progress
It’s easy to be a winner when no one’s keeping score. Your business plan helps you to keep score – have you met the targets you set? If not, why not? And what are you doing about it? And, where you have met targets, it’s easy to show.

Steering your business
At the start-up stage, the business plan is used for setting out what you plan to do, fund-raising and communicating.

Move the clock on six months or a year and, as time passes and your business develops, it is very easy to become embroiled in the day-to-day and forget your original targets and aims. A business plan can help keep you on track by reminding you of what you set out to do.

It’s often helpful where you face unexpected choices – you planned to make light bulbs but a major potential customer wants light-shades too. Your business plan will help you decide whether you offer the extra service – and whether you do so yourself or through a sub-contracted specialist.

Approaches to business planning
Now, let's look at those approaches to business planning in more detail.

• Successful Micro Entrepreneurship: Applying the Rules of Business
• Planning for Success: A Business Plan Workbook for Start-Ups
• Starting Your Own Business: A Workbook
• TENBizPlan: Dynamic Business Planning for Start-ups