What is Business Plan? How to Prepare ?

What is Business Plan? How to Prepare ?.

(Step 2 of Our How to Set-up New Business Guide)

Overview:

Having only a great Idea is not enough for starting any type of business. You need to have a road map i.e. business plan for your idea to convert it into a successful business.

Once you have completed your market research as we discussed in our last video, now second step is to write a business plan based upon your market research for setting up a new business.

What is Business Plan?

A business plan is a roadmap and live written document of your business’s future which outlines a plan for your short term goals and long term goal.
It outlines the step by step procedure while developing your business.

Purpose of Business Plan:

A Good business plan answers the questions about your business set-up

• Why you want to do it?
• What you want to do in it?
• How you want to do it?

Character sticks of Business Plan:

A Business Plan should be Short, simple , Understandable and Updated. These three qualities should have in any business plan.
➔Keep it Short You don’t need to make it lenghty. You can write it in 4-5 pages or as per requirement initially and make it big later
➔Simple and Understandable A good business plan is simple and easy to understandable by yourself, your team and your investors
➔Regularly updated
Business is a learning process and business plan is a live document that must be updated regularly as you know more about customers, sales and marketing tactic those are useful and those are not.

How to prepare Business Plan?

A business plan should answer the questions about your business set-up, why, what and how?
Business plan varies industry to industry, even varies company to company in same industry. Every business has different resources and requirements, hence required a unique business .A business plan that works for one, is not necessary to work for others. So you need to prepare business plan at based upon your needs and requirements.

A business plan could have following parts:

• Business Summary in single line
• Mission and vision statements
• Opportunities available in market
• Nature of business i.e. manufacturing, marketing, retail, distribution etc
• Registration and licenses required
• Proposed Customer Base
• Marketing strategy to be implemented
• Products to be launched
• Territory covered in starting and gradually expansion
• Sales Team
• Proposed investment required
• Sources of investment
• Financial planning
• Distribution channel to be adopted
• Competitors
• What you will provide better from your competitor to encourage customer to buy your products etc
• How to execute plan practically
• Assumptions and Risks

➔Business Summary

Summary is the highlights of your business plan. In summary section, you can summaries your business plan in few lines so that readers get complete idea about your business plan.

➔Vision and Mission Statement

Vision describes as the position at which you want to see your business in near future.
Mission describes as the general statement of how you will achieve your vision.

➔Opportunities available

In this section, write down the opportunities by through you can easily penetrate into market. These opportunities may be any problem solving product/service, unique product, any unique strength or marketing strategy to beat competition.

➔Business’s Nature

In this section, write down the nature of your business i.e. you want to start manufacturing or marketing or e-commerce or retailing or franchising or distributing etc.
You need to define your primary business nature to prepare your business plan accordingly. Marketing company will require different business plan as compare to manufacturing company.

➔Registration and Licenses:

For starting a business, there may be requirement of certain registration or licenses. You have to complete these to conduct any type of business.
For example, GST number is required above 40 lakh annual turnover for conducting any type of business in India. Likewise You may need any manufacturing or distribution or retail license depend at your industry or business nature.

➔Proposed Customer:

You may be involve in B2B or B2C or B2I2C or Franchising or any type business. Depend upon your distribution type and nature of business, your customer type may be vary.
You are required to identify your proposed customers and write down about their requirements, needs and other specifications.

➔Marketing Strategy:

Depend at your proposed customers, your marketing strategy may vary. If you are indulge in B2B then you require different marketing strategy as compare if you are doing B2C.
Write down potential marketing and promotional techniques and there method of implementations that would be best to reach to your proposed customers.

➔Products/Services:

This section covers product/services details. Complete product detail along with Brand Name, Ingredients, cost, net rate, MRP, trade rate and selling rates etc. Also highlights molecule/s and/or composition/s that are unique in market. Products that could provide immediate results and products that can be milestone in long run. Every particular that is necessary related to products/services should include in this section.

➔Territory and Primary Area:

Small businesses and start-up generally starts with small investment and small area. In this section, Area and territories covered initially and future expansion is written down. How many person will cover a particular territory also will be mentioned in it.

➔Sales Team:

You may require sales team at initial level or not that depend at size and requirement of your business.
Write down the requirement of sales team initially and after some time along with their expected salaries and expenditures.

➔Proposed Investment Required:

Estimate approximate finance/investment required for starting your business.
Investment required will vary depend upon your industry and nature of your business.
Trading/marketing business will require less investment whereas manufacturing business is highly invested business.

➔Financial Resources:

In this section, write about financial resources. From where you will manage finance to start your start-up business. Finance source could be your own saving, any bank loan, third party investment etc. Adequate finance is must for starting and growing any business.

➔Financial Resources:

In this section, write about financial resources. From where you will manage finance to start your start-up business. Finance source could be your own saving, any bank loan, third party investment etc. Adequate finance is must for starting and growing any business.

➔Distribution Channel:

Structure of your distribution channel depend at your proposed customer. If you are doing B2B then there is possibility you will not need any intermediary during distribution. In case of B2C, you will need of a proper distribution channel having CnF, distributor, wholesaler and retailer etc.
Define your distribution channel accordingly and include in this part of business plan.

➔Competitors:

In this section, list your direct and indirect competitors. Also mention, what step you will take to overcome from this competition.
Depend at your business, you can provide better rates or better services or timley delivery or provide problem solving product/service or unique products/services etc to beat the competition.

➔Why will buy from you:

In this section, define your specialty and uniqueness that will encourage your proposed customer to buy your product/service against your competitor’s product/service.
These may be better rates, better quality, better packaging or good consumer services etc.

➔Execute Plan:

Writing down a business at papers is one thing and implementing it at ground level is different thing.
For proper execution, you need to prioritize your steps. Set specific goal for particular time and first complete it. Setting priorities will help to maintain focus at necessary things.
In this section you will priorities your goals to stay focus at your prime motive.

➔Assumptions and risks:

You have assumed many thing during writing your business plan. After writing business plan, you are supposed to succeed in your business but it not the case.
Many things will not go as you planned. Suppose you are sure why a customer will purchase from you but your supposed quality/uniqueness doesn’t force customer to purchase from you.
Write down your assumptions and risk associated with them

Other Steps:

Check out : Sixteen Easy Steps to Set-up New Business

Step 1: Market Research

Step 3: Arrange Finance for Business
Step 4: Finding a premises for Business
Step 5: Name your business
Step 6: Trademark Registration
Step 7: Registrations and Licenses
Step 8 : Product Selection for Business/Start-up
Step 9: Name a Product and Service
Step 10: Recruit Staff/Employee
Step 11: Execute your business strategy Effectively
Step 12: Promotion and Marketing of Business
Step 13: Supply Chain: Set-up a Distribution Channel
Step 14: Recruit Sales Staff 
Step 15: Start taking Orders
Step 16 : Closing the sale (Supply Goods/services and collect payment)

Hope above information is helpful to you...