How To Create A Business Plan (The 5 Basic Essentials)

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In this article I cover the essentials of creating a business plan. I realize that many of my readers and subscribers desire to get started in creating a business of their own. In order to do so, you must start with a business plan!

What is a business plan? It is simply a document setting a business's future objectives and strategies for achieving those objectives.

One of the big keys in life to success is to plan ahead. Making a plan of action when you are going to do something, usually leads to the results that were initially sought, this applies to many things and businesses are no exception. When starting a business, the idea of just starting and acting depending on how things are coming with no planning can result in disaster. That would be the worst thing you could do, literally you could be in a lot of unnecessary financial distress for the lack of establishing a tangible plan. Not just one you have in your mind but you must create a written plan. Here I will give you a list of things you can do to avoid inconveniences. You can also include these in your business plan write ups.

5 Things To Include In Your Business Plan

Make A List Of Questions.

Before talking about customers, business, budget, etc. You have to start with the basics, make a list of all the things that will be in your business, ask yourself things like “What kind of business is this going to be?” “Where are you going to be located?” “What are the goals of the business? Will you be an online business or just have a work office? You have to ask these types of questions fairly early in the creation of your business so that you can keep in mind where you are going.

Once you have answered all these questions you will have to think about what kind of services and / or products your company will offer and towards what audience will it be directed. Which brings us to our next point:

Sales Strategy

Now that you know what structure your business will have and what you are going to sell, you must decide how to do it, this is crucial, because the sales will get you the necessary profits to pay for all the expenses and be able to keep
on growing. Your products and services need a series of descriptions, not only so the customer knows what the service/product is about, but also you have to explain why it has the price it has and why should customers choose your product /services. In addition you must think of a way to reach your customers, and this has to do with the next point.

Market Research

The most important part of your business is your customers. In order to effectively know what kind of customers your business will have and how to treat them, you must perform a study of the market. When you are researching you should take in consideration several factors such as the size of your company, the nature of your business, the things that are trend topic in your world, the possible growth that your company will have once the customers start to arrive, etc. This will allow you to have a good overview of everything you need, so when the time comes you will be well prepared and will successfully avoid unnecessary inconveniences.

Mention Things About Your Competition

Unless your company is something very innovative that has not been seen before, chances are that there are already companies that do the same as your business. For this reason you will have to study the competition in depth, starting with the study of who will be your direct competition, but not only that, you even have to look for those who compete with you in some services, your task is to study what they do and how you can be better. Keep in mind things that differentiate you from the competition, do they offer exactly the same products? Are your services more complete? Are you specialized in a very particular area? Etc. All this will give you a clear idea of what you must do to overcome the competition, in any aspect that you might compete with them and thus be able to attract as many customers to your side as possible.

The Economic Plan

Last but not least, before finishing your business plan and being able to start with your company, we still need to talk about something very important and that is the economic plan. After you have done all of the above, you probably already have in mind what you need, how much you need, etc. Ideally, you should have a list in which you describe all your plans, especially the economically related to your company, that way if you go looking for investors they will know what plans you have and if your company has enough potential for them to invest. In this list you must include all the expenses you have thought of, things like employees, taxes, basic services such as electricity and internet, but you should also include the money that you expect the company to earn and how much the profits will be.

Whether you want to get shareholders for your business that invest large sums of money, or want to use your own funds, having a highly detailed economic plan can be the difference between being successful or failing earlier than expected. As tedious as it may seems take whatever time it takes to do this right.

When you have everything ready, from what type of company you want to be, to what you will sell, what kind of customers you will have, how much your monthly expenses will be, you will be ready to start with your business. Always remember to keep all this in mind, the fact that your business grows and it’s going well is no reason to forget about these steps. You will also find that you will be making some tweaks to your plan as your business take form.

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