HOW TO WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN

What is business plan? We need first to know what business plan so we can be able to
write a business plan. A business plan is a formal document used for the long-range
planning of a company’s operation. It typically includes background information, financial
information, and a summary of the business. A business plan is likely to describe the
business and industry, market strategies, sales potential, and competitive analysis, as
well as the company’s long-term goals and objectives. A business plan usually projects
financial data over a three-year period and is typically required by banks or other investors
to secure funding. The business plan is a roadmap for the company to follow over multiple
years.

Most business plans have several distinct sections. The business plan can range from a
few pages to twenty-five pages or more, depending on the purpose and the intended
markets. For our discussion, we’ll describe main sections of business plans and these
are the following:

1. Overview – is the first page of the business plan, its going to give a basic
understanding on what your company does and the structure of your company.
Here you need to include business name, your company structure, the location
where you do business and also a brief description of exactly what your company
actually does.

2. Message – it’s the driving force behind your business plan. It’s what all your plans
are focused towards achieving. If you don’t have a mission it’s like trying to make
plans to reach a goal without having a goal.

3. Marketing – in marketing we need to find our target market by demographic and

psychographics. Demographics pertains to attribute such us their age, their
income, where they live. Psychographics has to do with their interests, their
 desires, and their fears. In psychographics you can also include an estimated size
of your target market and most important is where you have identified that you can
find groups of target customers. You can find those groups of customers via offline
or online

4. Product – this could be a physical product or digital product or a service. It is

important that you must choose only one product as your business’s primary
product. This means that what you sell is really the result of the product creates
not the product itself.

5. Production and Delivery – means result of the product and impact on the
customers.

6. Goals - is the section that focused in sales projections or projection on new

customers acquisition, market sales projections. If you just started your business
its really difficult to do projections due to no data yet to use. So, if that is the case
just simply set goals which you can achieve depending on the number of years to
set.

It’s really important to write business plan because it will give you long term impact on
your business. If you don’t have business plan, your business will continue to disorganize
and not strategic as it could be.