Content
Of course, you need to start your presentation with the title page. You can also include a subtitle, which can be as simple as “2018 Startup Business Plan” or as descriptive as a short tagline that you think best represents your business. After analyzing the market and understanding trends, customers, competitors, and pitfalls, you will be able to formulate a strategy that best fits your business. With this strategy, you are able to focus your efforts on your goals, prioritize tasks, pinpoint the best options, and work out the details. You will have a broader view of how to navigate the challenges of being a small business owner so you can be prepared no matter what comes your way. With our small business template, you will have the tool that you need in order to present your ideas to the world. This way, you will be able to execute your plan towards success in your entrepreneurial path.
If you use a standard business plan outline, remove sections that aren’t relevant to you or aren’t necessary to run your business. Including a breakeven analysis will demonstrate to financiers or investors what level of sales you need to achieve to make a profit. The operating plan outlines the physical requirements of your business, such as office, warehouse, retail space, equipment, inventory and supplies, labor, etc.
Liveshopbuy Sample Business Plan
It’s also heavily geared toward financing, making it a good choice if that’s a priority for you. The SBA’s template is available to fill out online and then download as a PDF. You can go back in and edit it as needed, so don’t worry about having everything ready the first time you sit down to tackle it. Even broken into sections, it’s a long document and a bit of a slog to get through, but it produces a professional-looking and useful business plan.
This section describes the legal structure, ownership, and the management, and staffing requirements of your business. Briefly describe the customer base you will be targeting and how your business will serve those customers.
By signing up for HubSpot Academy, you’ll unlock this resource alongside hundreds of other free business courses, templates, resources, and tools. Complete the Business Plan Template for a Startup Business to create a working business plan for your startup. After you complete the 11 worksheets, you will have a working business plan for your startup to show your SCORE mentor.
The Balance’s Business Plan Template
Even if you’ll never use it in this format for attracting investors and raising capital, it can be vital for helping all entrepreneurs to ask and think through essential questions. Santa Clara U’s MOBI is an initiative of its Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Leavey School of Business. On the site, you can download each of the 15 business plan sections individually as Word documents, or grab all 15 together in one doc. There’s a ton of other helpful resources as well, including guidelines for evaluating your potential sites, a list of key people to review your plan, and sample financial sheets. Who said a business plan has to be a long, complicated document? Some funders are going to want to see a lot of detail, but you can provide that in appendices.
Use this one-page business plan template — designed to be simple, organized, and easy to use — to immediately get started on your plan. Write down your thoughts and key ideas as you decide if your business concept is viable, and adjust it as circumstances change. You can also use this template as a basis to build a more detailed and elaborate plan. Of course, Microsoft offers a ton of business plan templates for Office users (you can get birthday invitations while you’re at it). If you’d rather do a business plan presentation than a Word doc, you can download one of Microsoft Office’s half a dozen or so PowerPoint templates for just that purpose. You’ll want to customize it with your company branding (you have your branding down, right?), but it’s easier than starting from a blank PPT.
Ensure your plan clearly communicates the relationship between your marketing, sales, and financial objectives. Use this simple business plan outline as a basis to create your own business plan. This template contains 11 sections, including a title page and a table of contents, which details what each section should cover in a traditional business plan. Simplify or expand this outline to create the foundation for a business plan that fits your business needs.
There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan. Now that you know what’s included and how to format a business plan, let’s review some templates. In this article, we’ve compiled a variety of simple business plan templates, all of which are free to download in PDF, Word, and Excel formats.
Simple Business Plan For Startup
Fill in the cells according to the due dates, and color-code the cells by phase, owner, or category to provide a visual timeline of progress. It is also crucial to understand that nothing in this document is set in stone. Roles will change, marketing will change, financial projections will change, and your product and service menu can change.
How to Write a Business Plan in 2021 Everything you need to know about how to write a business plan, from the executive summary to appendix. This template is suitable for freelance businesses that provide services, such as consultants, graphic designers, landscapers, and delivery services. When you’re first getting starting on your business plan, it can be daunting. That’s why it’s important to make sure you understand the format and information you’ll want to include.
This is another section which is an absolute must-have, even if you never develop a fully fledged business plan in its entirety. This holds key information that all financiers and potential investors are going to want to know. Even if you hope to just get away with using a pitch deck to raise the capital you need. SCORE Association’s recommended outline of categories, which covers most of the bases for exactly what to include in your business plan. Like some of the others, you fill out RocketLawyer’s form and download the business plan when you’re done–but its template allows you to choose your state before getting started. These plans are tailored to meet your financing requirements in your state, which is a huge bonus for those seeking funding through banks.
To have a fighting chance against any of their opponents, they need to prepare a specific game plan tailored to each of their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. Updates to the plan, spreadsheets, and supporting documents have to be made in multiple places . You still have to manually create charts and graphs to add to the plan to support your strategy. Multiple files containing different versions of the plan may be stored in more than one place. Provide details in your plan that illustrate your strategic plan of action, looking forward three to five years. For additional single page plans, take a look at “One-Page Business Plan Templates with a Quick How-To Guide.” Get up and running fast with streamlined implementation and solution building to address your immediate business needs.
For additional guidance, you may want to review the Executive Summary Template that I recently covered on Forbes as well. If you already know you’ll be reaching out to potential investors, the BizGym free business plan template may be an ideal choice. This template is designed specifically to help you pitch your startup business. You can access one-page plans, executive summary versions, and full business plans.
Describe the overall nature of the industry, including sales and other statistics. Include trends and demographics, and economic, cultural, and governmental influences. An overview of the industry and how your business will compete in the sector. If you need guidance, aBusiness Plan Example of the Industry Overviewwill prove useful. Briefly outline your financial projections for the first few years of operation. Enter your business information including the legal name, address, etc. If you already have a business logo you can add it at the top or bottom of the title page.
They created a fictional company called Acme Management Technology and wrote an entire business plan for them. Below, let’s review the format of a business plan and sample business plans you can use to inspire your own. The business world moves fast, and it’s full of ambitious companies scrambling to gain the majority of their industry’s market share. Writing a viable business plan and following it religiously is one of the most important first steps. If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare yourself for battle before you break into a market.
This business plan template is designed specifically for businesses that provide a service. This template also includes a timeline at the bottom for you to add key milestones.
- Who said a business plan has to be a long, complicated document?
- If you need guidance, aBusiness Plan Example of the Industry Overviewwill prove useful.
- One of the cons here is that it’s just not as comprehensive as others on my list.
- Using their sample business plan as a guide while filling out your own will help you catch and include small yet important details in your business plan that you otherwise might not have noticed.
Then, as the business matures, it can expand on its original business plan with a new iteration of the above document. Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. Referencing one throughout your voyage will keep you on the path toward success.
You can download it free with a trial subscription, but you’ll have to remember to cancel it within the week if you don’t plan to continue using it. Aside from market analysis and strategy formulation, you will also need to plan your finances. By creating a solid business plan, you will have a clear idea of where each cent is going so that investors will also see where their money is being spent. Forecasting expenses, profits, and return on investment is part of financial planning.
Capping your plan at 30 pages should be sufficient unless you need to include photos of products, equipment, logos, business premises or site plans, etc. Potential money lenders andinvestorswant solid research and analysis, not long, wordy descriptions. The resulting document can serve as the blueprint for your business and be supplied to financial institutions or investors if debt or equity financing is needed to get your business off the ground.
Section 2: Business
Oprah.com offers three sample templates already filled in for different businesses. You can get ideas from these completed models and easily adapt them to suit your business. Again, be transparent to your investors because they are also stakeholders in your business. Showing your clients and investors your expected sales and profits will give them a clearer idea of what they will get from associating with your business. Remember that numbers matter in business, but you should never overestimate expected sales and profits. Always be transparent to your investors because you need to build trust between you and them.
