North Brookfield Savings Bank’s Tips for Writing a Business Plan
A business plan is a great way to improve your chances of securing funding for your business venture. Simply writing down your idea and outlining how the business will operate is helpful in ensuring that you communicate your vision and that everyone is on the same page. It will also help you set benchmarks and check your progress as your company grows.
A business plan shows that you’ve thought through your idea, examined potential issues, and created a clear strategy to achieve your vision.
Your business plan should be clear, as concise as possible, and provide a map for your company. Without a plan, it will be difficult to communicate your business idea and secure funding to help make it a reality.
So, here are some great tips you can follow to help you make a strong business plan:
- Be realistic. This is the time to be honest with yourself. What is truly achievable for your business at this time? How much time and how many resources will you be spending? Being overly optimistic with things like time and resources is a common misstep new business owners make. As a rule, for now, always assume things will take longer, cost more, or require more effort than you anticipate. Being realistic is important because it lends credibility to your plan and helps to make you a safer person to invest in.
- Be concise. Having a business plan that is clear, to-the-point, and easy to understand is essential. Removing filler-language and fluff helps to make your business plan more obvious and grounded. Keeping your plan to only as long as necessary will help to ensure that it gets read in full and that the finer details of your plan gets noticed.
- Prove it. Any claims, expectations, or statements should be followed by facts and reasoning. If you say you expect to make X amount of dollars during your first quarter, then you should explain why you think this and provide facts supporting this. If you say you expect to have X% of the market share, then you should include your reasoning and supporting facts. Doing this will help whoever is reading your business plan to see things from your perspective and show that you’ve done your homework and are prepared for starting a business.
There is of course so much more that needs to go into making a business plan great but these core sections will help you make sure that your business plan has a strong foundation.
If writing a business plan from scratch seems like an intimidating task, the Small Business Administration (SBA) offers great tools and resources that can help you construct your business plan from the ground up.
As always, the North Brookfield Savings Bank Business Center’s friendly and experienced business lenders are ready to help you with your business goals.
