A well crafted Business Plan is crucial for starting a new business. This article depicts tips for writing an effective Business Plan for small businesses.
A good business plan is really important when you are either planning to start a new business or even if you already have a small business. It is often wrongly conceptualized that a business plan is necessary only when you are starting a new business or looking for investors or applying for a loan.
Of course these are the vitalities of a plan but it serves a bigger picture too. A business plan is a logical and well organized way to evaluate the important aspects and at the progress of a business.
This article depicts the key features that you need to keep in mind while you are formulating a business plan for your company especially when you own a small scale business. So here we go:
The first thing is that you should categorize your business plan and should make it very clear what purpose is that your business plan going to serve. Some of the common reasons for formulating a business plan are enlisted below:
- Enlist and consolidate objectives and goals that are supposed to be accomplished by the company. The plan also contains the strategies and programs that are to be undertaken in order to accomplish those goals.
- For course corrections and business reviews.
- When you are planning a new business, you need a business plan as your initial step.
- You also need a business plan when you are applying for a loan sanction.
- You need a business plan in order to have agreements with your partners.
- A business plan is very crucial when you are selling your business or someone takes over it.
- A business plan is also of vitality when you are planning to introduce a new product of the same niche or are willing to further expand your product line and venture into more vivid niches.
A business plan is in itself a process rather than just a plan. Though it seems complicated but it is actually true. A plan is valued by its contents. A plan is itself a part and parcel of the results as if no one follows that plan, it is completely a waste. The following figure depicts the key features of an ideal plan:
- A business plan must be simple enough for the followers to understand and even simpler to implement.
- Your business plan must be very specific with its objectives being completely measurable and concrete. You should clearly mention the specific activities and actions along with the anticipated date of their completion, exact budgets and the human resources to be assigned to those activities.
- The goals and anticipated achievements in your plan must be realistic. You cannot motivate your staff with unrealistic and unachievable result anticipations. That would on the contrary further pressurize and demotivate them.
- Your plan should be complete and at least cover the bare bases of your business activities. It should contain all the relevant info and courses of action so that it can be worked upon almost immediately.
Dos of a Business Plan
- You can always utilize a business plan to assign goals and responsibilities to the human resources available to you. Sometimes it can also be used to depict deadlines for various tasks.
- It is very easy to assign various departments to the staff with your business plan such that every person understands his tasks and duties clearly and specifically.
- An ideal plan should include 10 parts of implementation for every part of the strategy.
- A business plan should be regularly reviewed and corrected as a part of its implementation.
- The most important thing is that your plan should be practical and feasible.
Don’ts of a Plan
- Never use a plan to flaunt off that you know much about your business, ever.
- Do not make hefty plans as no one is either interested or have ample time to ponder over it forever.
Just follow the above steps and you will be able to formulate the best business plan for your business for sure.
