No two business plans look alike but they all share the important common attribute of being your blueprint to success.  A business plan is a living document that combines your goals and aspirations with the practical realities of starting and operating a business. It's a document that will grow with your business and help you identify new opportunities.

A good business plan serves multiple purposes, such as a:

• Reality check when you first examine the feasibility of your business idea, which forces you to consider all relevant factors
• Resume, which will be vital in dealing with lenders and outside investors, and an important tool in negotiating with vendors and attracting employees
• Timetable to help you to coordinate all the diverse activities that go into running your own business
• Modeling tool that helps you evaluate the variable factors that affect your business, so you can better prepare to deal with situations that may arise as conditions change
• Vehicle to track the progress of your business in order to achieve your goals

Life cycle

Your business plan will reflect where your business is in its life cycle. A business just starting has to project its future without the benefit of experience that a business that has been operating for some time has. An ongoing business might require a plan that relates primarily to a new market that it wants to enter or a new product that it wants to introduce.

Common elements

Business plans customarily follow a certain format. There are four common key elements: (1) a description of your product or service; (2) your marketing plan; (3) an action plan; and (4) your financial projections.

Here's a look a typical format:

• General format and presentation: first, remember that the business plan is a clearly recognizable type of document, and your audience will have some expectations with respect to style and contents.
• Cover page and table of contents: these identify your business and make it easy for readers to find and examine particular documents.
• Executive summary: this is arguably the most important single part of your document. It is a high-level overview of the entire plan that emphasizes the factors that you believe will lead to success.
• Business background: this section gives company-specific information, describing the business organization, history, and the product or service the business will provide.
• Marketing plan: here is an analysis of the market conditions that the business faces, sets forth the marketing strategy that the business will follow, and provides a detailed schedule of marketing activities to support sales.
• Action plan: this is where you detail how operational and management issues will be resolved, including contingency planning.
• Financial projections: this is another extremely important section. Your projections (and historical financial information) show how the business can be expected to do financially if the business plan's assumptions are sound.
• Appendix:  here you present supporting documents, statistical analysis, product marketing materials, resumes of key employees, and so on.

You don't have to follow this exact format if another way makes more sense because of the nature of your business.  For example, the financial part of a plan for a business with a 10-year track record would be more comprehensive than the financial part of a start-up company's business plan.

Your product or service also affects the content of a plan. Issues relating to inventory, production, storage, etc., become less significant as the product/service mix moves toward a purely service business.  For example, a business that relies on the services of many professional employees would provide substantial details about acquiring and retaining these vital workers.

If you're thinking about starting a business - or you want to expand your current business - give our office a call. We can help you develop a business plan or fine-tune your existing plan.