Whether you are a veteran business owner, have recently begun your own venture, or are still in the dreaming stages, you have invariably spent many hours thinking about and envisioning your organization. While it is always exciting to try to realize your dream in your mind and to project that image into your future, the realization that barriers, stumbling blocks, and necessary “to-do’s” exist. These subjects range from broad to very specific, and can include questions such as:

• Who is my ideal client?
• What would be a good name for my organization?
• What is my unique selling proposition (USP)?
• How will I balance my work life with my personal life?
• How big do I want this business to be?
• Do I have the necessary resources? If not, where can I get them? If so, how do I most effectively utilize them?

The list goes on for pages and pages; indeed, there are numerous resources that outline these very details, and putting some time into exploring these ideas is always a smart move. For some specific ideas, check out some of the free articles on offer by MEG Enterprises.

The reasoning behind developing a business plan for businesses of all sizes can vary, but business plans are most often created for two primary reasons: as a management & planning tool, and to acquire funding for operational business needs.

Management & Planning Tool

If you are like many other small business owners, you are not only the owner of the company, you are likely also actively involved in the day-to-day operations as the President/CEO, the marketing department, the IT department, the HR department…the list goes on and on! One of the most important things to remember in trying to bring all of this together into a cohesive and efficient package is that planning is vital!

Many small businesses take a “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to operating their businesses. For example, let’s say that an excellent business opportunity arose for you, an opportunity that would net your business $5,000 over the next 3 months. However, in order to take advantage of this opportunity, you need an initial cash outlay of $1,000. Do you have the resources necessary to take advantage of this opportunity? If your answer is no, you may have been able to easily accomplish this goal by planning for such expenses in advance through a business plan. Even if having cash at the ready is not a viable alternative for you, you may have planned to have a line of credit available for such opportunities, knowing that in your field these opportunities do arise from time to time.

In a more broad sense, business planning helps businesses of all sizes to deal with the day-to-day needs of the organization by forcing the owner to weed through the operations of a typical work day. Business planning will assist you in understanding how to effectively market your business, how to understand and plan for financial stability both now and in the future, how to carry out your daily operations with a necessary level of routine, and so forth. Moreover, while unpredictable issues will certainly always arise, effective business planning will not only help you to navigate the predictable operations, but will also take these unpredictable situations into account. This will help you to deal with these issues with a level of comfort and ease, knowing that you have thought through and planned for such events.

In essence, here is a great way to think of superior business planning. Imagine you are taking a road trip from California to New York. No planning (“flying by the seat of your pants”) would involve you getting in the car and driving “East” on every freeway you come across. Adequate planning would involve mapping out your course, planning where to stay overnight, where to eat, sights to see, and so forth. This is a much better plan indeed. However, a superior plan would take all of these ideas to the next level by planning for “what if”: what will I do if I get a flat tire, if I run out of gas, if someone gets sick, or if I lose my wallet? You can see how the superior plan is clearly the best in most situations in that it allows for flexibility, plans for the expected and the unexpected, and allows you to spend more time enjoying the trip, knowing that you have all of your bases covered.

HELP…I Need Cash! (AKA Creating a Business Plan to Acquire Funding)

Another reason to create a business plan is to acquire funding. In today’s struggling economy, having access to cash as a small business is vital. In developing plans for this reason, a much more specific approach is taken. Here, the plan is created with a specific reader in mind: the lender. Whether seeking funds from a bank, an angel investor, or so forth, knowing your audience is vital.

How do you create an effective business plan in this situation? Well, simply stated, place yourself in the shoes of the person lending the money. What would you as the lender want to read in a plan? First and foremost, these individuals want to see that you have demonstrated the ability to repay the loan with the required level of return on investment (ROI) and within the required time frame.

These areas require that you present a strong case for your proposed financial expectations, grounded firmly in the supporting information of your plan, including marketing, market analysis, business operations, and so forth. Having confidence in your business and in yourself will assist you in demonstrating the potential for your company and in being able to deliver what your investor is looking for. Doing your due diligence and knowing the facts surrounding your business and your market will prove to be of great benefit when selling your business case, both in writing and verbally, to the lender you are seeking funding from.

So, How Do I Create A Business Plan? What Does It All Come Down To?

Although the term “business plan” conjures many negative images in the eyes of some business owners, taking a step-by-step approach will prove that creating a business plan is much less daunting than one might imagine. Although no two plans are exactly the same (the necessary details of the plan can vary between companies), the contents of a typical business plan include the following topics:

• Executive Summary – Sell your business to your reader!
• Business Overview – Giving a general summary of the business.
• Market & Competitive Analysis – What environment are you competing in?
• Marketing & Sales Strategy – How will you “win” in your market?
• Organization Plan – How is your organization structured?
• Financial Projections – Current status and future outlook.
• Funding Sought (if required)
• Key Milestones – What are your specific & achievable goals?
• Critical Risks – What keeps you awake at night?
• Appendix/Attachments

Does this look like a lot to you? Well, believe me, as you truly delve into the details of the plan and your business, you will be wondering why there isn’t more room for details!

The most important aspect of business planning (the “What does it all come down to?” part), however, is spending the time to do your research (“due diligence”) and critically thinking about these various aspects of your business. Of course, it is impossible to anticipate every detail simply by spending time thinking and writing; it is for this reason that plans are referred to and viewed as “dynamic”. However, the more issues and scenarios you are able to come up with ahead of time, the more prepared you will be to handle these as they arise.

So, in the end, I encourage you to realign whatever preconceived notions you may have of the business planning process and view it not as a daunting task or a necessary evil of running a successful business. Instead, view it as yet another opportunity, the chance to help make your dreams into a reality by mapping out the needs of your business, your customers, your employees, your suppliers, your community…and yourself!

A famed book by Stephen Covey highlights one habit that makes individuals and organizations succeed – begin with the end in mind. This is a very good answer to the question “why write a business plan”? It is tempting to put up a business and have a see-what-happens-next approach towards its management, twitching things along the way and be flexible enough to the challenges of running a business. But the truth is, even though that sounds simpler than drafting an exhaustive plan in paper, it can really get complicated – fast. In fact a business without a business plan is, put bluntly, a business that is planning to fail. A business must be intentional, and nothing can facilitate this better than having a written plan of what the business is all about, its direction, its goals, and its ultimate purpose. This will serve as the glue for the stakeholders of the business, a point of agreement on how the business should be run, and the route it would take to realize its profit targets.

It is simply impossible to grow a business if there is no tangible point of reference to where the business should go. Vision, mission, objectives and values of the business are all included in the drafting of the business plan, thereby making it possible for organizations to have objective metrics of performance. It is only then changes and adjustments can be effectively implemented. You simply cannot improve what you cannot measure.

Writing a business plan is important because it allows a business to sell itself better to its customers. The business plan is a 360 profile of your business model, giving you a bird’s eye view of what you can offer to your clients. Marketing would not be as hard because the point of differentiation and the niche market you want to develop overtime can be clearly seen. You can identify your competitive advantages and then capitalize on that exhaustively. It can also bolster your positioning efforts because you understand the strengths of your services or products. You can simply develop strategies that puts you in the best spot to both retain and attract new customers.

Why write a business plan? One of the most profound answers to this question is to be able to get the right people to run the business. It is of course a well established fact that a business is as good as the people that leads it to greatness. Well, you can have the best of the best in the field, but if they do not fit in, they are doomed to fail in establishing your organization as an industry leader. A business plan can help you implement a very good human capitalization effort. This simply means you are able to identify the right person for the job and then help that person identify himself with the job, and then the business.

Many small and medium enterprises downplay the question of why write a business plan. And this is the reason why many fail to reach its growth projections. Do you want your business to run smoothly? First things first. Write a business plan!

One of the key things I want to get everyone who reads this article to do is rethink (or think about in the first place) what a good business plan is and what is involved in putting one into writing. The bad news is – it will take time and effort – you’ll have to engage the strategic thinking part of your brain. The good news is – it’s not as hard as you think and there are numerous resources available to you to if you feel as though you’re not up to the task of putting it all together yourself. You never know, you might even find a friendly, helpful business banker that would be willing to point you in the right direction.

Essentially, there are three key elements to a good business plan. Remember, I am speaking from the perspective of the guy that is going to be putting your application together and submitting it to the bank’s credit people. There are literally hundreds of books, articles, websites, blogs, etc. out there that will tell you what “has to be” included in a business plan. At last check, a Google search of the term “business plan” returned about 195 million results. The fact of the matter is, whatever the format, whatever the content, you need to have a business plan – full stop. It can always be updated, amended to suit the audience (banker, investor, customer – whatever) and should be constantly reviewed to make sure it is a document that you can use in the day to day management of your business. That being said, let’s look at the three elements of a good business plan.

A Good Business Plan Has a “School of Thought”

Some people call this “vision” or a “mission statement”. I call it a School of Thought because, to me, you need to have a more expansive idea of why your business exists than just a catchy one-liner or slogan, which is what so many vision/mission statements have become. It’s good to be able to boil your School of Thought down into a single idea or even a sentence, but you have to have some meat on the bone. Your School of Thought should consider what you do best, why you do it and how you’ll go about executing it. It’s your philosophy, your guiding principles, your world view. Having this sort of thing written down will allow you to refer back to your core values when making important business decisions, basing them on the things you find most important rather than on emotional responses to an ever-changing environment. And from a banker’s point of view, it will help with understanding your company’s history or background and what makes your business different from your competition (and every other business out there looking for money).

A Good Business Plan Has a Strategy

Strategy is a word that has been turned into a “buzzword” and has almost become an industry unto itself. Looking up “Business strategy planning” will return you over 43 million results on Google. But like many aspects of running a business, strategy doesn’t need to be overcomplicated. Having a strategy simply means that you have thought about how you are going to turn your brilliant business idea into something that will generate revenue. Strategy is about how you’re going to do business and about setting goals that are well defined and measurable. Strategy, if it is going to be useful, is about execution. The best business idea in the world is useless if you are not able to define how you’re going to turn it into an enterprise that will make money. And the best strategy in the world isn’t worth one dollar if you aren’t able to effectively execute it. The precise elements of a business strategy will vary depending on what your business is. But a good strategy should always have these characteristics:

o It’s Robust. That means it’s sufficiently detailed to allow someone else to be able to execute even it if you’re not there to explain it.

o It’s Relevant. That means that it’s been reviewed in the last 12 months (max) and takes into consideration current conditions in the business environment.

o It’s Dynamic. That means it isn’t stagnant. It should be able to be adapted to changing conditions on an ongoing basis.

o It’s Consistent with your School of Thought. That means it is reflective of the core values of your business. A strategy that is inconsistent with your School of Thought has little chance of being executed successfully.

o It’s Innovative. That means you don’t make your strategy a carbon copy of someone else’s. Too many business owners make the mistake of copying some other business when it comes to strategy. What works in one organisation may not work in yours. Be creative.

A Good Business Plan Has a Good Handle on the Numbers

Everyone should have seen this one coming. The all important numbers. They can’t be ignored. You will have to show the bank that the numbers work out on paper even when you take into consideration the impacts of the real world. If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ll need to show them your historical figures – usually the last 3 financial years at a minimum. And regardless of whether you’ve been in business before or not, you will most likely need to provide three-way financial projections. If your reaction to that last sentence was “three-way WHAT?” – don’t panic. Three-way financial projections are simply a forecast of what your 1) profit and loss, 2) balance sheet and 3) statement of cash flows will look like for the upcoming financial year. Three-way can also refer to the fact that this forecast information takes into consideration 1) a best case scenario, 2) a worst case scenario and 3) a most likely scenario. For most business owners, having these forecast numbers put together will require the assistance of a good accountant. Make sure you get an accountant that is not only confident in his ability to put these numbers together for you, but one that is also willing to help you get some personal insight into what it all means. (A good question to ask that will sort the good accountants from the average ones is: “What are the key drivers of my business and what can I do to have a positive impact on my business performance?”) This forecast should become the monthly budget that your business works to over the upcoming financial year. If you don’t understand the forecasts, they won’t be very useful to you as a management tool. And remember, you’ll be the one trying to explain it all to your business banking manager. You must know what you’re talking about!

Now I know that the mere mention of the words “business plan” is enough to make most business owners cringe. They instantly conjure up images in their minds of endless pages of tedious, mind-numbing details that will take way too much effort to put together. In fact, most of the people I’ve spoken to that don’t have a business plan for their business have told me that they’re just “too busy” to put the time and effort required into writing a business plan. On the other hand, those whom I’ve spoken to that DO have a business plan mostly fall into the category of those that were required to write a business plan so they could apply for a loan from a bank. Of those minority that actually have a business plan in place, most of them would admit to not having touched it (or in some instances even seen it) since submitting it to the bank with their application. One of my goals is to get everyone to think again about what a good business plan is and what is involved in putting one into writing. It is not nearly as arduous as everyone imagines, and it is a critically important exercise for every business owner. As a first step, consider the fact that not having a business plan is an almost guaranteed way to ensure that the bank won’t want to back your business. The old cliche is true; failure to plan really is an indicator that your business is planning to fail.

If you can get a business plan together that has at least the three elements detailed above, you will be able to go to your bank with greater confidence that your loan request will at least be taken seriously. It will give you instant credibility if you put it together with some care and a bit of effort. And if you actually utilise the plan regularly as a management tool, you will become more and more familiar with some of the key elements of your business that will lead you to make better business decisions.