You may want to start your own online business or turn your traditional business into an online one. However, in both cases, you need a business plan. A program that defines your goals and helps you achieve them in continuous steps. In this article, we discuss the concept of the business plan and how to implement it.
What Is a Business Plan?
In simpler terms, a business plan is a document in which they describe a business. For example, services, products, how to earn money, manage members, and team credit are described in this document.
To have a practical business plan, you need to do the following:
Market Analysis
If you want to design a great business plan, you must first assess your job market and start with the data obtained. For example, you should know:
- Does your product already have consumers?
- Who is your customer or consumer?
- What age group are your consumers?
- Who are your potential customers?
- Can everyone in the community buy your product?
Finally, you need to know where your customers live.
After doing this research, we can say that you have found a measured attitude towards your job market, and you are ready to design your business plan.
Specify the Size of Your Product
If you want to prevent losses, you need to specify your product and market as much as possible. For example, suppose your product is toothpaste. This product is ultimately practical because most people in the community use it. So, should you produce toothpaste for everyone in the community? No, absolutely not.
You should try to make your target community smaller so that you can reach your goal sooner. For example, make toothpaste for children under seven that tastes sweeter and encourages them to brush. This way, you can target a more specific community and have a more accessible market analysis.
Perform an Initial Needs Assessment
Every business needs a cost estimate at the beginning of converting a traditional business to online. So to do this, you need to list the materials needed to get started and plan your business according to them.
You should also know that all the basic needs of any business do not end with physical objects such as devices, shelves, computer systems, etc., but there are needs that are not tangible and are very necessary. These needs include time spent on market analysis and product design.
Build a Sample of Your Product
You must have seen small portfolios of under construction projects in most engineering and civil engineering offices. You also need to create a simulated version of your product to use it to attract investors. As you know, people trust what they see more than what they hear!
List Your Business Costs
To estimate your costs, you need to write down and list every single item required to raise your business. Avoid incurring extra expenses and unnecessary things, and prioritize the most important ones as much as possible. You can also look for alternatives to items at unreasonable costs as there is a better alternative to anything.
Another point is that you should not look for the best in the beginning! You can avoid extra expenses of decorations and focus on essential items you can afford.
Identify Your Investors
You need to know no investor will give you money just for the sake of God! Whether a bank, a private company or a venture capitalist.
Learn more: Venture Capital History From Venice and Maritime to the Us and the 2008 Crisis
They finance your startup by reviewing your business plan, the idea behind it and following the guidelines for estimating profits and losses. Investors usually consider the terms of your collateral, capital, type of business, etc., before giving you money. So it is better to cover all these cases before going to them.
LEarn more: Raise capital
Define Your Business
You have to propose your business because investors need to make sure that you have a good market and that your product will be helpful to consumers.
Your product must be new and functional to persuade investors to invest in your business. So it is essential to present a detailed business plan of your business and the role of your product in people’s lives. You should ask yourself:
- Is the product necessary in people’s daily lives?
- If you were a customer, would you buy it?
And questions like this.
Make Your Product Unique
Being unique does not mean being founded on a fantastic idea. Sometimes:
- A more beautiful packaging
- Lower prices compared to competitors
- Fast product delivery
- So on
Can make your product unique. A unique product helps you find an investor easier and progress more quickly.
Bring Experts Together
A professional staff can quickly lead your business to success. Furthermore, the biography of your team members is very important to investors.
So try to choose skilled and specialized people. Although you have to pay them more, they can help you in all stages of the business to get the projects right.
Define a Specific Marketing Plan
One of the common mistakes of most entrepreneurs’ business plans is the lack of a specific way of introducing the product. Consequently, they can not justify the partners and investors for cooperating with them. So you should create a connection between your business and others.
You may have heard that marketing is the way to save most businesses, so investors pay special attention to the startup marketing methods. You should think of a valuable and practical marketing method for your startup plan before going to investors.
How to Write a Good Business Plan?
Writing a business plan is not a difficult task. If you have all of the above in mind, you need Just implement them on paper. Here are the business plan writing steps:
- Complete the title page and table of contents
- Define your goal
- Write a general description of your company or business
- Mention your product and service
- What marketing ideas do you have? Express it
- Specify the daily business plan
- Describe the startup structure and management of your company
- And last but not least, the budget and financial discussion of the business
What Businesses Need a Business Plan?
For companies that only desire to increase their profits, a business plan is not required. However, to start a costly business that needs extra resources and time, a business plan is a must.
In general, if you want to make more profit and find good investors for your startup, you need a business plan.
Types of Business Plans
To design a great business plan, you should get familiar with its different types to choose the most appropriate one at each stage of your startup. Here are three of the most prevalent business plans:
- Internal business plan
- External business plan
- One-page business plan
Internal Business Plan
This plan introduces the startup and includes the strengths and weak points, criteria, budgets, predictions, etc. Internal business plans can be reviewed and revised on a monthly basis. An internal business plan collects the startup and team history details to use for planning.
This kind of plan is considered as a type of management tool used to grow and run businesses. To have a successful business, you must design an internal business plan to achieve your goals and grow day by day.
External Business Plan
An external business is more formal than the previous one as you show it to people outside the company.The primary purpose of writing an external business plan is to attract investment for the startup. So, as mentioned above, you have to develop a plan to convince the investor to finance your startup.
However, this type of plan can also pursue recruitment, training, or user attraction. Consequently, the external business plan should cover more general issues. It presents an overview of a program that can show the startup’s progress at a specific time.
No investor is willing to partner with you or provide you with capital without seeing the product sample. So one part of the external plan should fully describe the marketing strategy.
A good business plan can lead a team forward and grow a business. Some investors invest in people instead of in the project. So you need to provide your team biography to investors to trust you more easily.
One Page Business Plan
As the name implies, a one-page business plan is a detailed summary of a startup in one page. However, you may think that the font size should be small or the paper may consist of little information, but this is not the case. The plan is described in detail and by simple language on a sheet.
The one-page business plan helps you achieve two goals:
Introducing startups to investors: It is recommended to prepare a one-page business plan for your initial meeting with investors. A complex and formal business plan is not attractive in the beginning, and may lead to more confusion.
Defining a brief and comprehensive business plan: Many essential data may get lost in an extended plan. But by specifying all items briefly in a one-page business plan, you can get a comprehensive overview of the project.
The one-page business plan is suitable for people who have just founded a startup and need to explain their business plan to others in simple language.
However, writing a one-page business plan is also helpful for older companies. As the business grows, the founder can look back and find the past drawbacks. Implementing a plan on a piece of paper or file may generate other ideas and accelerate progress.
If you are planning to start a business, you must prepare a great business plan. Get started now and write your business plan according to what is mentioned in this article. Using it, you can find good sponsors and raise money for your startup.
