Local Business

Local Business  » How To Write A Quick & Relatively Painless Business Plan

How To Write A Quick & Relatively Painless Business Plan

If you've never written a business plan before, the idea alone

can be overwhelming.

It doesn't have to be the nightmare of your imagination.

Traditionally, a business plan is used to secure funding from a

lender or a potential investment partner. It serves as something

akin to your business's resume, outlining the purpose and scope

of your business, identifying the goals, marketing and

management, and establishing a basic balance sheet.

Now, even if you aren't going to seek additional funding, even

if you're going to grow your business by yourself from your

office at home, you'd be wise to put together a business plan.

Simply going through the process has value. It'll help you

develop a clearly defined vision of what you intend to do with

your business and how you intend to do it.

These are some of the questions you should already have asked

and answered before you sit down to write your business plan:

== What "want" does your business fill, and what service or

product will you be providing to fill that want?

== Who will be your potential customer (this should be an

established, niche market with die-hard buyers).

== Why will people purchase from you as opposed to the business

down the street (in other words ... what's your Unique Selling

Position)?

== How do you intend to reach your customers? A storefront? An

ad in the phone book? Direct mail? An Internet campaign? Selling

door-to-door? A combination of these?

== Will you need additional funding and if so, how much will you

need and how do you intend to secure it?

Okay, so let's take a look at what you'll want to include in

your business plan.

Most business plans are structured to examine four primary areas:

1. Executive Summary - a decription of the business 2. How you

intend to market the business 3. How the busines finances will

be arranged and handled 4. How the busines will be managed

Let's take a further look at these.

Executive Summary: what the business will do, its Unique Selling

Position, the business goals, its ownership and legal structure,

your skills and knowledge and how they will benefit the business.

Marketing The Business: describe your product or service,

identify your market niche, how big it is, and how you plan to

reach it. Define your customer, identify your competition,

detail your pricing plan, outline how you intend to attract and

convert customers.

Financing The Business: estimate your start-up costs, project

your monthly operating budget for the first year, outline your

ROI (return on investment) and cash flow for the first year,

Today's Popular Articles

• Target Your Business to an Age Group, Not to the World!

• Business Success Methods Effective for Weight Loss

project your income and expense balance sheet for the first two

years, explain how you're going to compensate yourself,

establish who will maintain the accounting records and how

they'll be maintained, and if you're in need of funding, explain

how much you need and how it'll be used by the business.

Managing The Business: how will the business be managed

day-to-day, what the hiring and personnel procedures will be,

how the products or services will be developed and how they'll

get into the hands of your customers. You'll also need to

account for equipment the business will need, and how insurance,

rental agreements, etc. will be handled.

That's it. In a nutshell.

If you'd like to see some free sample business plans to get a

better idea of how they're structured and how they read, here's

a good source for you:

http://www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm

About the author:

David Silva Business Starter Tools

http://businessstartertools.com

If you'd like to take the quickest, straight-as-an-arrow path to

Internet success, then learn from one of the most successful

Internet entrepreneurs ever, Mark Joyner:

http://businessstartertools.com/internetmanuscript