If you are new to the business world and yet have a strong ambition to succeed with your business concept, take a few steps back and invest some quality time into writing a startup business plan. Without it, the chances for success are equal to zero. Simply put, you can’t start in any industry if first, you don’t do deep analyses of the niches, the competition, and the market altogether. If you do start without it, you will be crushed. There is no easier way to say this, as it is the utter truth. If you are interested a little bit more in the reasons why this is absolutely the rule, read on to find out.
Parts of the Startup Business Plan
First and foremost, here are the parts of every business plan:
- Executive summary: mission/vision/goals
- Marketing and sales strategy
- Competition
- The management team and personnel
- Operations
- Finances
All of these give an in-depth look at every segment of the business. Determining your mission, vision and goals is the stepping stone for every business endeavour. Secondly, making a strategy about the sales and marketing will bring you closer to the ideal clientele, the market trends and tactics which include pricing, distribution and promotion.
Thirdly, it is extremely important to put in writing who your management team will be, the personnel and all their duties and obligations so that you specifically know who is responsible for what.
Next, the extensive analysis of the competition will give you the advantage of knowing your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses and use them to place yourself ahead in the game
The operation segment, on the other hand, will discuss your premises, production facilities and your management information systems as well as the IT technology you will use.
Finally, the finances will reveal the details of the cash flow, the forecasted profit, losses and balance sheets.
These are the essential parts that your startup business plan should include. But, what can you do with all of this information? The point is that each and every segment should propose a problem and several ideas for a solution accordingly. After all, the startup business plan is not only a layout of your business but valid and reliable documentation that can serve as a guide through hard times. Therefore, the business plan is also as follows.
A Solution Holder
The startup business plan offers solutions to forecasted problems. Be it with the competition, the marketing strategy, the operational activities or the gains and losses, the startup business plan will have all the important information at any time that will be the basis of every future decision. So, should a problem appear, the solution should be sought among those pages.
A Step-by-step Guide
The business plan is your step-by-step guide through every process of the business endeavours. This imposes the need for you to prepare the startup business plan as a multistep guidebook which will remind you whether every area of business is covered with alternatives and solutions.
Strategic Focus
The business plan will give you a strategic focus on the things that are relevant and will show you how to distribute roles and responsibilities. For example, have you chosen the right audience for your products/services? Who will make sure that your customers are happy and satisfied?… And so on.
Set Priorities
Finally, the business plan will help you prioritise the mess of starting a business. It is always overwhelming to begin a concept especially if it is in a competitive niche. And even if the nice is not competitive, you still need to prioritise things because you can’t do everything at the same time. This way, with the plan, you will be able to keep track of the important things and make sure that you allocate your time accordingly to the importance of the tasks.
