The plain truth is, business owners of any size that take the time to outline what they will offer, what they’ll need to start and what their goals are more likely to succeed.

What exactly is a business plan? It really isn’t a mystery; it is your plan for making your business a success. Not only will a good business plan help you in securing funds for starting your business, it can help you think about every aspect of your business, from who you plan to sell your services to, to what you’ll need before you even start selling your services.

You might even find yourself avoiding some common pitfalls of smaller businesses, such as not anticipating enough funds to keep you going for the first year of business or realizing that you may need assistance in an area you don’t have experience in, such as technical support or bookkeeping.

A business plan doesn’t have to be dozens of pages long, but it should include basic information about your goals in both the short and long term, your business and how you imagine you’ll run it, and what your start up costs will be. The following are a few things that should be included in your business plan.

The first thing in your business plan should be your purpose. Think about what you want to accomplish with your business and what your goals are. From there, describe your business. Here you can describe exactly what your business is, when and where it was formed, the structure of the business, who the owner is and who is operating it.

From there, you can describe your market. Who do you imagine your customers will be? Here, you can also go into better detail about what you’re offering, why there is a need for your particular service or goods, and what makes your business better or different from your competitors. From there, you can go on to explain how you intend to meet the needs of your market. How are you going to produce your services or the goods you intend to sell, and how are you going to deliver your goods or services to your customers?

If you’re not truly a one person business, include information about who your staff is and what they will do, as well your suppliers.

The next thing in your business plan should be your time table. Do you want to reach a specific goal in a certain amount of time? This is the area where you should detail what your financial goals are.

Finally, outline your financial requirements for starting your business. This is not the area to skimp — if anything, overestimate the amount of money you’ll need. Too many small businesses fail to count on enough operating money at the beginning and find that they have to close their doors all too soon. Don’t make this mistake!

Really sit down and itemize everything you’re going to need to get going, including advertising, your business license or fees for setting up the structure of your business, computer software, even keeping your utilities going in your home (if you don’t have any other income), plus the cost of operating your business for a fixed amount of time without profit.

Writing a business plan for your home based business shouldn’t be something to be afraid of. If anything, a business plan will help you focus, get all your goals and ideas on paper, and help guide you in making your business a success.

A business plan falls on the desk of an investor. They pick up the document and begin to read. A few pages in it has become crystal clear that this is the same plan they read earlier in the week, sometime last month, or dozens of times over the past year. While it may be written on different paper by a different management team, the business plan is obviously a “me too” document.

What is a “Me Too” business plan? It is a document that outlines a business model or strategy that closely mimics that of competitors in the market without bringing anything new or original to the table. It outlines a path that is already heavily travelled by competitors. It does not clearly identify why you will do it better than your competitors, or why you are taking a different approach from those that have already tried and failed. It jumps upon the latest “it” business model without directly addressing the issue of how you will differ from the hundreds or thousands of others on that same bandwagon.

In the hyper competitive and crowded business environment in which we all operate, it is critical to create a plan for your company that clearly, concisely and compelling demonstrates how you will succeed by taking a road that is all your own.

• Is it the composition, quality, or pricing of your products and services?
• Is it your ability to provide better value and service to your customers?
• Is it your ability to address a segment of the market which is either not served or underserved by your competitors?
• Is it the depth and experience of your team (be realistic here)?

Why is it so important to avoid a “Me Too” business plan? Because most investors review hundreds of business plans each year and if they can not quickly recognize in your document what makes you better and different than other similar concepts, you are doomed for the NO pile.

Good Luck!

I stumbled on a very interesting article that lead me to a very interesting competition. The article appeared in the New York Times on Friday 16 April with the following heading, “Can You Write a Business Plan With Fewer Than 140 Characters?” The article was written about a competition being run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in conjunction with their MIT $100K annual business plan competition.

They call it the TWITCH (Twitter Pitch) contest. And this brings me to the topic for this article, “How long should your business plan be?” Here are some of the advice you may find on the Net:

• It can vary from a 10 to a 100-page document;
• It should be short enough to not bore your reader;
• The shorter, the better;
• Shouldn’t take up more than 25 pages;
• Limit the plan length to 15 pages;
• 15 to 25 pages is the optimum length;
• Basic plans are under ten pages;
• Comprehensive plans are often 10-25 pages long;
• Length should be 20 to 30 pages max;
• Can be any length.

The general feeling is that shorter is better. A few factors should dictate the ideal length of your business plan.

The nature of your business – The simpler the shorter, the more complex or “new” the longer.

Purpose of the plan – To raise millions may have to explain a lot more.

We personally believe that the shorter the better as long as it achieves its objective. One expert said that “A business plan needs to be whatever length is required to excite the investor, prove that management truly understands the market, and detail the execution strategy.”

The “empathy” test, once the business plan has been done, is to put yourself in the shoes of the audience and to ask yourself if you would have done what you want them to do based on what you see and read.

If the plan does not pass your “empathy” test there may be several reasons for that and one of them may be incomplete information. This will require that you add more pages.

If one looks at the advertising industry the greatest challenge is to sell a product on the TV in a 30 seconds commercial. Can you sell your plan in 30 seconds? We therefore go for the “Short is good, long is bad.” approach. When we look at the various areas that should be covered in more detail we will endeavour to indicate how long each section should ideally be.

In the next article we’ll have a look at the concept of the “elevator speech” and how that can become a powerful tool in business planning.

Happy planning. Make it a challenging, exciting and creative experience.