A business plan is a well-written document that clearly shows the road map to the success of a business. This document is strategic, showing future’s plan of a business, how the business should be run and help the business remains focused among other benefits.

I would be showing you below how to write a business plan that would enable your business to succeed and keep you focused. It would be in the form of sections and each section represents a unique information. Each section may also be divided into subsections.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This is the summary of your business plan including your business profile and goals. Make sure it is catchy to draw the interest of your investors to read further. This section would include:

Vision statement: This is the vision you have for your business. Example: To be the best rice farmer in Nigeria

Mission statement: This explains the mission of your business. Example: To provide healthy rice for Nigerians at an affordable price and also export to other West African countries.

Business profile: This includes information on the business profile like when the business started, Founder(s) and their profiles, profiles of key employees and their roles and number of employees.

Your products/services: This should explain the product you sell or services you render.

Growth highlights: This section should highlight the information on your business growth if it had already started or make future projections. Using graphs and chart would be helpful here.

Financial information: Your current bank information and investors information should be in this section. You could also include your need for investors here if you need one.

Future plans: This explains the future plans for your business.

Note that The executive summary should be the last section to be written though it is the first to be seen in a plan. This is because it is the summary of your business plan and you can only write it after writing the other sections

If you are just starting, you wouldn’t have much information so in this part, concentrate on your expertise and strengths to lure your investors – that if you are writing it because you need loan or investment.

BUSINESS DESCRIPTION

This section is the section you describe your business. This is the section that gives you the opportunity to lure potential investors and anyone that comes in contact with your plan. It should be clear enough to show your business goal and what set it apart from it competitors. Things to include here would be discussed below.

Describe the structure of your business whether it is a manufacturing firm, wholesale, retail outlets or service based. It is also important to include the type of ownership and then point out the key shareholders and what they had brought into the business.

After the above, then move straight to describing the market need and how your product would satisfy such need. Next is to describe the competitive advantage your product has over the other products. This isn’t all, you should then point out the key market of your product.

A key element here is also how you would profit from this product or service rendered or to be rendered as the case may be. You need your capitalist instinct to be able to come up with this part. What factor(s) would lead to the profitability of the business? Is it the location, technology used, raw materials or labour? Write them down and how they would bring about the profit.

MARKET ANALYSIS

This section is meant for the analysis of your market. It usually starts from the general description of the industry, it size, trend, culture and any other information you could provide about the industry.

You then narrow down to your market and also analyse since the industry would be too big for you to satisfy. You point out the need of the market and whether if they are been met or not. You then go straight to discussing the market share and what share of the market you control or want to control and how you would do that.

The next subsection should carry information on the pricing strategy, gross margin levels, and any discount that you plan to use based on the market status. This would only be decided after you had done your market research and it should be backed up by figures from your research.

After the above subsection comes the subsection on competitive analysis which take care of information about competition in the market.

It is also important to point out government regulations that affect the business directly or indirectly.

OPERATION AND MANAGEMENT PLAN

This section should explain how the day to day operation of the business should be carried out and also state out clearly the organisational structure of your business.

PRODUCT/SERVICE DEVELOPMENT PLAN

This section should explain in detail how you intend to manufacture your product. This would include all the assets both fixed and the capital assets. It also includes the labour type whether it is capital intensive or not and also the raw materials and the production process itself.

This is very important as it would be one of the things that set you aside from your competitors.

MARKETING AND SALES

After you had decided on how the production should be, the next thing is to plan your marketing strategy and sales strategy.

Marketing is the process of creating customers, and customers are the lifeblood of your business. The first thing you want to do is define your marketing strategy. There is no single way to approach a marketing strategy; your own strategy should be part of an ongoing business evaluation process and unique to your business.

After defining your marketing strategy, the next thing is to design your sales strategy, this would point how you would sell your product/service. It should include both a sale force strategy and a sales activities strategy.

FINANCIAL COMPONENT OF THE PLAN

This normally comes as the last component of the business plan. It deals with several financial related information and business minded individuals see this part as the indicators of success or failure.

Always be conscious of the information here and monitor closely the changes that occur to know how to tweak the other plans to meet the targeted financial goal. The three most important information would be briefly discussed below.

Income statement: The income statement is a simple and straightforward report on the proposed business’s income. It’s a score card on the financial performance of your business that reflects when sales are made and when expenses are incurred too.

Cash-flow statement: It shows how much cash will be needed to meet obligations, when it is going to be required, and what would be it source.

Balance sheet: this is generated annually to give the financial records and stands of the business financially.

After writing the financial components of the plan, you had successfully created a business plan. I would advise you to read extensively about a business plan to gain more knowledge before writing this because a bad plan would produce nothing but failure.

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source http://www.nigeriaguardian.com/write-business-plan/

Learning how to write a business plan step by step is your sure way to defending your idea in the presence of an investor.

babytejiri:
Learning how to write a business plan step by step is your sure way to defending your idea in the presence of an investor.

is business Plan nuh different from business proposal??

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