Writing ideas down is a proven methodology for success; it organizes your thoughts, gives each idea the priority it deserves on your schedule, and gives you an overall picture of what you’re trying to do. Imagine how important it is when it comes to business and you need some KPI records, financial reports, and feedback to create budgets and know your upcoming steps!
This is the reason for writing a business plan. A business plan can be written for a startup company or for a big corporation that needs to sell its products in new markets, add a new product line, or expand the scale of its target audience.
What is a business plan?
A business plan is a document that defines in detail a company's objectives and how it plans to achieve them. A business plan lays out a written road map for the firm from marketing, financial, and operational standpoints. Both startups and established companies use business plans.
"We had a marketing background but not much experience in the other functions needed to run a fashion e-commerce business, like operations, finance, production, and tech. Laying out a business plan helped us identify the ‘unknowns’ and made it easier to spot the gaps where we’d need help or, at the very least, to skill up ourselves". Jordan Barnett, Kapow Meggings
Writing a business plan entails organizing your goals, steps, and ideas.But how do you create a business plan? To write a successful business plan, you may follow the below steps:
- Company overview Who you are? And what do you do?
We’re a financial consultant agency that helps families to create balance between their income and their expenses.
We’re a human resources startup that offers essential professions needed most in the market.
For you, it might look obvious and not required at all to identify your business and what it does, but if you heard stories of companies that lost their goal on the way as they couldn’t resist the waves of market and audience requirements, you’ll know why exactly you should write down a company overview.
- Why are you on business?
- What makes you different?
And if you can go beyond that:
- What are your mission, vision, and values?
Try to take it easy and write down what you're able to describe, but also know that describing the values, mission, and vision of your business can help you determine the tracks you wish to walk and the directions you’re heading in.
For example, if your company's values tend to be environmentally friendly, you wouldn’t use plastic packaging for your products.
- Products
Selling a product is different from selling a service, and selling a tangible product is different from selling an intangible product like video games.
Usually, services take more time and effort to reach their target audience and target sales, while intangible products take less time and effort, and tangible products are the fastest of them to reach their target as long as they meet good success standards like quality and functionality. Each type would need a different methodology for planning, marketing, and selling techniques.
- Audience
Select up to three segments of your target audience, choose ones that are related, and observe their tone of voice, accent, interests, and, most importantly, purchasing behavior.You’ll need to know their interests when you create an ad campaign, you’ll need to know their tone of voice and accent when you create content for them; and, of course, you’ll need to know their buying behavior to know how they can get your products and services, and the available payment channels commonly used.
- Competitors
Knowing your competitors is more about knowing yourself and the unique selling points of your own products and services. Competitor research necessitates a keen sense of observation, as well as some learning and listening abilities.
Each competitor has a "Unique Selling Point" of his own, such as fast delivery, competitive prices, or excellent quality. You don’t have to horn in on your competitors' uniqueness, find your own USP. You don't have to avoid a unique selling point to avoid encroaching on your competitor's; simply have your own fingerprint and learn what each competitor's USP is.
- Target Markets
When we say markets here, we don’t only mean to say I'll sell my products to city A and country B; this is not a target. Selling a tangible product in some states and countries requires specific documents and certifications. Entering a new market requires enough research about what products and services that market is really missing, and the required procedures and certifications for each product.
A clear distribution channel must be outlined, along with advertising and marketing campaign plans and the types of media those campaigns will use to shape the marketing strategy.
Financial planning: New businesses will include targets and estimates for the first few years, plus a description of potential investors. When established companies add their financial planning and projections, financial statements, balance sheets, and other financial information may be included for established businesses. In addition to the budget, there are costs related to staffing, development, manufacturing, marketing, and any other expenses related to the business.
4 tips to make it a winning business plan
1. Be too flexible
Knowing how to write a business plan is like an academic study, you can never ignore it when you’re launching your business or your new product, but you also have to realize that experience will change a lot of its aspects. So, be flexible enough to adapt to the changes you’ll experience, in your point of view, in the markets you’ve targeted, in your audience, and maybe even in your products.
2. Don’t be too realistic
A little imagination helps you reach new horizons when you’re creating a business plan. Being too realistic can shock you and limit the possibilities you can touch. After all, you can only see 30% of the total image and the facts surrounding you. Learn from success stories that seemed totally unrealistic but ended up becoming too realistic and a complete fact.
3. What you see is what you get
Dream big and imagine big, but don’t spend too much time and effort waiting for the current rules to change. Adaptation can walk alongside your attempts to change, adapting at times and attempting to change at others; each carries benefits for your business to remain in balance.
4. Take reports seriously, but don’t ignore your sense.
KPIs and numbers show you the directions, but no matter how smart the artificial intelligence is, it can never beat your human senses. Watching the reactions of your audience; monitoring the upgrades your products need; looking forward to new markets; or adding a new service. Numbers and human sense can also walk side by side if they don’t contradict.