Business Planning

Goals

There are generally three reasons to write a business plan: 

• to formulate a business strategy and implementation guide for your employees

• to obtain financing for your business from investors, or 

• to establish credibility for certain customers.

Outline

Depending on the goal, the business plan will stress different aspects of your business. The execution will also differ depending the goal and target audience. To improve the success of the business plan, it may help to ask the key target audience for samples of business plans they like. However, most business plans need to cover the topics of the General Business Plan although the dept and presentation may vary.

General Business Plan

Outlines for loan applications, VC funding, internal use , and customers & distributors

As we mentioned above, business plans vary slightly for different audiences and goals. Check out different types of outlines for specific outlines used for loan applications, VC funding, internal use, or customers and distributors.

Preparation

Once the goal of the business plan is determined and the outline is set, the appropriate data needs to be gathered and analyzed. The quality of the plan highly depends on the quality of this data and analysis since "garbage in - garbage out" also holds in business planning.

Writing

Writing the Business Plan is straight forward, although serious editing and strategic thinking is often required to keep the plan within a reasonable length (between 20 to 60 pages). Follow the hyperlinks on the outline to get specific guidelines for each topic.

Finishing Up

Once the report is written, it needs to be formatted for visual impact. Unless, the plan is used internally, it has to represent the corporate image to be most efficient.  

Get Help

If you have any questions about business planning, give us a call or send us an email. We will be happy to answer your questions.

Other Marketing strategies from Steiner Marketing

• Business planning

• Guiding company start-up

• Increasing revenues and protect revenue streams

• Creating or increasing brand value

• Improving or optimizing customer base 

• Evaluating marketing performance

• Product development: From  Discovery to Launch (Presentation)

• Defining web strategies

• Web site promotion and search engine positioning