According to the SBA, all business plans, no matter how complicated, can be drilled down into four basic components.
- business description
- marketing
- finances
- management
Your plan should also contain an Executive Summary, a summation of all of the above. The Executive Summary is placed at the front of the plan, and will be the first thing your audience reads. Although it is the first part of the plan, it should be written last, so that you can be sure to incorporate what you feel are the most important highlights of your plan in it. Think of how many business plans a financier must read in a day. Make your summary concise and to-the-point, so that your audience will want to go further into the plan.
How many pages should your business plan contain? There are many different schools of thought on that, but my opinion (if you want it) is that it should be just long enough to provide your audience with the information they need. Read what Tim Berry has to say in Entrepreneur about keeping it short.
As you work on your plan, you may find yourself jumping from section to section. If you hit a stumbling block at one point in the plan, that's great! It means you've found a weakness before it could impact your business negatively. Move on and come back later after you've done additional research. You can put the plan together later in the correct order. The important thing now is to nail down the specifics of how you are going to start and run your business.
Now, on to our pared-down outline, not in any specific order.
Management
This is just what it says. Who owns your company? How long has it existed? Who will run the day-to-day operations? What experience or qualifications do they have? How many locations or employees do you expect to have?
Business description
Describe your business accurately. If it is small, play up the strengths of a small business, don't try to make it sound bigger than it is. What can you offer your customers that a larger company can't?
Describe your product or service. Who will your customers be? Why will they buy from you? Who is your competition, and how will you garner market share from them? What makes your product or service better than anyone else's?
Once you've identified your target market, use demographics to back up your claims. Census data is available free to anyone, or you can use a site such as American Demographics, which offers both free and paid content.
What are your company's objectives? How much revenue do you expect in your first year of operation? What is this number based on?
What will be the key factors to your success, and how will you measure them?
If these aren't enough questions for you to answer, I found two websites with even more questions, both of which will help you write your plan. There are other free templates available as well. Do a search in Google or your favorite search engine to find them.
At MyOwnBusiness, you are able to take a free online course, while at the same time, filling in templates which assist in putting together your business plan.
Among other things, Beehive offers an interactive tool that you can use to write your business plan. You do have to register to use the tool, but it's free. If you don't want to register, there is still plenty of information to be found on this site, whether you are just starting a business or already have an existing business.
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