Elements of a Good Business Plan Part 2

As explained in last month’s blog, a business plan is an essential part of planning for the success of your business. While these plans should ideally be written up prior to starting your business, you can create one at any point to help you to better understand how to move forward successfully.

In last month’s blog you read about key points of a plan that included a business overview, a description of your products or services, a marketing plan, your financial analysis, your operations plan, and funding requirements. This month you will read about other key components that should be found in most business plans.

Explanation of the Organization and Management

It is important to define how your company is going to be structured from a legal point of view. For example, will you be operating as a limited liability corporation (LLC), an S corporation, a general partnership, or something else. In addition, you want to identify key members of your management team including your president or CEO and other members of your leadership team if applicable. Including as much of the hierarchy of the company as possible will help to illustrate how you will operate. Some of this will also be found in your operations plan, but this section will take a deeper dive into the organization and management setup.

Analysis of the Market

In this section you want to avoid the trap of simply identifying key statistics about your market (though that should be included). This is where you are able to show that you have a deep knowledge of the entire industry that you are entering. This will help to show that you have properly researched the market you will be entering, which will give you a better chance at success. You can include an analysis of your key competition in this section as well, or you can add that as its own separate area of the plan.

Appendix

In most cases, you will need to have a final section where you can add in supporting documentation that is needed for any claims throughout the business plan. For example, you may include your legal documents, credit history, customer lists, and much more. Having all of these documents kept in one place will make it easier for investors and other interested parties to find what they need.

Get Help with Your Business Plan

While most people who want to start a business are great at their core activities, they often don’t have sufficient experience with creating a business plan or other legal documents. Contact Business + Beyond to go over your specific situation and get the help you need to create a business plan that will give you the best chance of success.