Business Plan

Your business, products and services

With this post we are going to focus on your business and what is going to make you unique and stand out from the sea of competitors offering similar products and services.

You have written your Vision Statement using the previous information. We will now use this and expand upon it to build a clear picture of what your business will be, your target customers and what you will be offering them. This is all information that others are going to want if they are to provide funds or investments.

Now for this section you want to start out by giving an overview of your business, focus on:

The date you started trading or proposed start date.
Any investment or projected investments to date.
The type of business and the sector that it is in.
History of the company, including if applicable, previous owners, franchise information, previous successes
The legal status (e.g. sole trader, partnership, LLP, LTD) here is a good link for information about these
Your vision for the future.

With all of this you will have given investors, banks, partners, angels the information they need to look further at your plan.

Following on from this you are going to discuss your products and or services. An important point to keep in mind is that the person reading your plan may not know anything about the industry, market or products you are offering, so it is vital to keep jargon and acronyms down to a minimum.

You need to consider and write about the following:

Describe your products and services as simply and clearly as possible.
What makes it different from similar products.
What benefits does this have for both your customer and your business.
Why will customers buy from you rather than competitors.
the key features and success factors in the industry you will be operating within.
How you plan to develop you products and services to ensure you are current
Any patents or trademarks you currently have

In order to do this accurately you are going to have to have started looking at your competitors and there products, customer bases, look into the size of the current market and what market shares the main companies have. This will help you with this and the next section.

You know your products and customers and so you can read this and fully understand it, to ensure that a person with no industry knowledge can understand it, give it to a friend or family member to read over and ensure that they understand the information within.

Information within here will help give your business shape and ensure that you know who you are targeting and what you have to offer them that makes you stand out from the rest.

Next time we will look at the markets and competitors section of your plan.

Your vision, Your Plan

In the last post we briefly spoke about writing down what you want your business to be, the main services or products, who your main customers are and finally some short, medium and long term goals.

If you did as the last post suggested and wrote a little about your business ideas, customers and goals then you can skip the below template. If you didn't use this little template and fill in the blanks.

Within the next ___years grow (company name) ___________ into a business with £ ______ worth of annual sales.
We will primarily operate in ______________
providing (describe products/services)_____________________________________
to (describe target customer and ideal client)_________________________ In the next year I aim to be

within the next three years I aim to be

Using this simple but powerful statements gives you a clear and concise vision with which to start your business plan. You can keep looking back and referring to it as you build the plan, allowing you to keep focused on what you want your business to achieve. It will help keep your plan lean and targeted.

If you have multiple markets and or products you may want to write something similar for each niche.

Believe it or not by writing the above you have already wrote your vision statement as it focuses on the what's of your business, it describes your idealized perception of what your business will look like under ideal conditions, the key components are:

Name of planned business venture
The products/services you plan to provide
The target markets you intend to serve
Top level Goals

This doesn't tell you how you are going to get to your goals, but it does set the direction of your business planning so it is important to get it right.

Leave a comment with any questions and i'll get back to you.

In the next post you may expect me to discuss the executive summary, as that comes at the front of your business plan, but it needs to be reflective of the overall plan so we will tackle that last. We will look at the your business, it's products and services.

Starting a business - The Business Plan

Over the coming months, I'm going to be writing about the importance of business plans, how to go about creating business plans and finally how to take that step from business plan to running the business.

General overview

A Business plan is arguably the most important part of any new start up business, or for that matter any business at all. Why? I hear you ask! It gives your ideas substance and a logical framework with which to build your dream into a reality. Not only this but anyone wanting to invest will want to see it. It is the guide to your business.

There is a very famous saying:

Failing to Plan, is planning to Fail

This was said by Ben Franklin, Churchill and many others in some form or another. It really does apply to business plans. Did you know that 95% of businesses without a business plan fail... yes I know 87.567% of statistics are made up but feel free to go and verify this one. Without direction a new venture is likely to not succeed. Why start if you don't plan to succeed so get planning.

Now you know why you need one, what exactly is it? A business plan is a working document (by that I mean you don't just write it once put it in that file and dust it off once every three years to show the bank when you want an overdraft or loan) It should be flexible, it should grow and change with the ever changing face of your business, it should reflect your business goals and finally but most importantly it should be current and up to date.

I won't go into detail over how to write one here as that is for future posts. I'll just leave you with this If you want your business to succeed you have to plan for success, you need targets and plans these can't be in your head they need to be recorded, so please start by just jotting down your business ideas, what is the general concept, who are your potential customers, what are your short, medium and long term goals.

I want to start a touring theatre company, which will supply theatre workshops to support the national curriculum. I want to deal with schools, local councils and government and social groups. I want to start in my local area probably with one troupe and once this is financially successful I'd like to branch out to other areas in the UK and eventually be the leading provider of TIE (Theatre in Education) for the UK.

This is all your start needs to be it states what you want to be, it's main market and niche and some short and longer term goals. It is very basic and a top level overview of what you want to achieve, but it is a great starting point.

In the next blog we will build on the above and start talking about how we turn our vision into a business plan with substance.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you like by leaving a comment.

and check out businesslink.gov.uk which is a very useful site with lot's of information about starting a business including writing your business plans.