Contents
What Is a Business Plan?
What to Do Before You Write
How to Get Started
How to Write the Executive Summary
How to Write the Company Overview
How to Write the Market Analysis
How to Write the Competitive Analysis
How to Write the Sales and Marketing Plan
How to Write the Operations Plan
How to Write the Management Overview
How to Write the Financial Overview
What to Include in the Appendix
How to Use and Present Your Business Plan
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How to Get Started
You’ve set some goals for the plan, identified likely readers, anticipated their reactions, and made an outline. Now it’s time to marshal all of the persuasive evidence you’ve gathered into a cohesive document—your business plan.
Don’t worry about adding literary flourishes or eloquent turns of phrase. The plan will be judged primarily on the content of its ideas, not the stylishness of their presentation. That doesn’t mean that you can simply ignore grammar and punctuation—the quality of your writing does affect people’s perception of your competence and professionalism. But there’s plenty of time to polish later.
Writing Your Plan
Tackle the plan section by section, keeping the following in mind:
Write to Be Read
Consciously write for the reader(s) whom you identified in What to Do Before You Write. Ask yourself what questions they would ask, and then answer them. Assume nothing, and explain everything.
Break Up Long Blocks of Text
Use paragraph breaks, bulleted and numbered lists, headlines, and other techniques to interrupt long blocks of text. Doing so also gives busy readers visual clues as to which sections they can skim over without missing key information.
Format |
Purpose |
Example |
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Headings |
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Board of Directors
Ashley Bell Cooper has been chairman of the board since . . .
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Bullets |
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Our customers will pay a premium for:
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Numbering |
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How we will promote our brand:
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Illustrate Your Ideas
Include tables, graphs, charts, diagrams, and illustrations to enhance the points you make in the narrative. Useful types of visual aids include the following:
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Pie chart: A circular graph that
displays portions of a whole. Use when comparing parts that make up a whole, such as the share of sales produced by competing companies.
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Flow chart: A diagram that depicts a sequence or flow of activity. Use when illustrating steps in a process or a chain of command.
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Bar chart: Columns positioned side by side representing items being measured against a shared scale. Use when comparing two or more items, such as attendance on different days of the week.
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Line or fever chart: A line formed by plotting amounts against time and connecting the dots. Use when measuring changes over time, such as sales over the course of a year.
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Timeline: A plot of points in time. Use when showing chronology, such as an initiative from development to full commercial release.
Editing Your Plan
Once you’ve completed drafts of the various sections of your business plan, or the entire document, reread the text to evaluate its clarity and depth. Ask yourself:
- Did I write in an engaging and informative style that will capture the attention of my desired audience?
- Is my business concept clear and compelling?
- Have I supported all of the claims and assumptions made in the plan?
- Have I avoided exaggeration and the use of over-the-top adjectives such as “great,” “awesome,” “mind-boggling,” “best,” and “stellar”?
- Are all of the plan’s numbers credible?
- Have I eliminated all jargon, slang, shorthand, and technical terms that aren’t widely understood?
After you’re satisfied that you’ve expressed yourself clearly and professionally, share the plan with a trusted colleague, friend, or professional editor to ensure that the grammar, punctuation, and word choice reflect you and your ideas well. A second, third, or even fourth set of eyes never hurts.
| Acknowledgments & Disclaimer |
