business plans questions

135 Business Plan Questions

Embarking on the business journey of your dreams begins with a robust business plan. This plan is not just a document—it’s the roadmap to your success, painting a clear picture of where you’re headed and how you plan to get there.

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or a hopeful startup pioneer, the questions I’ve compiled are designed as your compass, guiding you through the intricate landscape of business strategy.

From your executive summary to the details of your financial projections, each question serves to dig deep into the essence of your vision, solidifying your plan with precision and care.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

• What is the core mission of your business?
• How would you describe your company’s business model in simple terms?
• What unique problem does your business solve for its customers?
• What are the short-term and long-term goals of the company?
• Who are the intended clients or customers of your business?
• What is the vision statement for your business?
• Who are the founders and key team members, and what are their roles?
• How does your company set itself apart from the competition?
• What are the main achievements or milestones of your business to date?
• What key opportunities do you see in the market?
• How much funding are you seeking, and how will it be used?
• What are the main products or services your company offers?
• What is the current stage of your business (concept, start-up, growth)?
• How do you see your company evolving in the next five years?
• Can you summarize the financial outlook and projections for your company?

Company Description Considerations

• What is the legal structure of your business (e.g., sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation)?
• How did the idea for the business originate, and how has it been developed?
• Who are the target customers, and why will they choose your business?
• What are the key elements of your business’s operations?
• What are the specific advantages of your location or facilities, if any?
• How does your company’s history and background set it up for success?
• What business sector or industry does your company fall under?
• How does your company contribute to the economy and community?
• What partnerships or collaborations are essential to your business?
• What are the core values and culture of your company?
• How does your business respond to changes in the market?
• What relevant certifications, licenses, or permits does your business hold?
• What are the main risks and challenges your business faces?
• What role does sustainability play in your company’s operations?
• How does diversity and inclusion manifest in your company?

Market Analysis

• Who is your primary target market, and what are their defining characteristics?
• How large is the target market, and what is its projected growth?
• What are the trends and themes currently shaping your target market?
• Who are your top competitors, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
• What is your market share, or what market share do you project to capture?
• How do your target customers make their purchasing decisions?
• What factors influence the demand for your products or services?
• What barriers to entry exist in your market, and how can they be overcome?
• How does pricing play a role in your market position?
• What is your value proposition to customers in comparison to competitors?
• How might technology impact your market in the future?
• What are the legal or regulatory factors affecting your market?
• How have external factors like the economy affected your market historically?
• How does geography affect your market and business model?
• What are the risks associated with your target market?

Organization and Management Structure

• Who comprises the leadership team, and what are their backgrounds?
• What is the organizational structure of your business?
• How will your management team help achieve the business’s goals?
• What gaps exist in your current team, and how do you plan to fill them?
• What are the roles and responsibilities of your management team members?
• How does the management structure align with your business strategy?
• How does your team make decisions and communicate internally?
• What systems are in place for performance management and accountability?
• What is your plan for recruiting and retaining skilled employees?
• How do you approach leadership development and training?
• How does the current team’s expertise align with the business goals?
• What are the board of directors’ roles, if applicable?
• How do you plan to create a productive company culture?
• What external advisors or consultants does the business use, and why?
• How have you planned for succession in key management roles?

Service or Product Line Inquiry

• What are the main products or services your business offers?
• How do these products or services fulfill customer needs?
• What is unique about your products or services?
• How does product/service quality compare to competitors?
• What is the lifecycle of your products or services?
• How is your product or service produced or delivered?
• Are there any patents, copyrights, or trademarks involved?
• What research and development activities are you pursuing?
• How do you plan to expand your product or service range?
• What customer feedback have you received about your product or service?
• How does your product or service adapt to changes in the market?
• What is the pricing strategy for your products or services?
• How does your product or service contribute to your brand image?
• What are the future plans for developing your product or service?
• How do warranty or guarantee terms play into your offering?

Marketing and Sales Strategies

• What marketing channels will you use to reach your target audience?
• How will you position your company within the market?
• What promotional strategies will you utilize to attract customers?
• What is your sales forecast for the first year and beyond?
• How will you set sales targets and measure success?
• What sales tactics will you employ to enhance customer acquisition?
• How will your marketing and sales strategies evolve as the business grows?
• What is your approach to online and social media marketing?
• What customer relationship management processes will you put in place?
• How do you plan to establish your brand identity?
• What partnerships or sponsorships will you leverage to enhance marketing?
• What are your strategies for repeat business and customer loyalty?
• What is your process for tracking marketing ROI?
• How do customer service and support fit into your sales strategy?
• How does your marketing strategy cater to different customer segments?

Funding Request Fundamentals

• How much total funding is required to reach your business objectives?
• What specific purposes will the funding be used for?
• What is your proposed timeline for the utilization of funds?
• What types of funding (e.g., equity, loan) are you pursuing?
• How will investors or lenders get a return on their investment?
• What is the current financial position of the business?
• How much equity are you willing to exchange for investment?
• What are the key financial milestones that the funding will help achieve?
• What are the terms you’re seeking for any loans?
• How do you plan to manage cash flow and ensure financial stability?
• What collateral, if any, are you offering to back up your funding request?
• How does the funding impact your business’s financial projections?
• What is the exit strategy for investors?
• How will additional funding influence your strategic business decisions?
• What contingencies do you have in place if you don’t secure the expected funding?

Financial Projections and Feasibility

• What are your financial forecasts for the next three to five years?
• How did you arrive at your revenue and expense estimates?
• What are the key assumptions underlying your financial projections?
• What are the projected cash flow statements for the next few years?
• What is your break-even analysis showing?
• What are your strategies for maintaining a healthy profit margin?
• How do you plan to monitor and manage financial risks?
• What is your approach to pricing and cost control?
• How will you balance reinvestment in the business with profitability?
• What financial metrics will you use to gauge business performance?
• How will you handle unexpected financial shortfalls or emergencies?
• What is your strategy for financial record-keeping and accounting?
• How do customer payment terms and cycles affect your cash flow?
• What financial software or tools do you use for projections?
• How will financial trends and economic conditions potentially impact your projections?

Appendix and Supporting Documents

• What supporting documents will you include in the appendix?
• How will these documents reinforce your business plan’s credibility?
• What resumes or biographies of your team members will you present?
• What legal documents are relevant to include (e.g., licenses, permits)?
• How can we access extensive market studies mentioned in the plan?
• What are your key technical product specifications or service descriptions?
• How do your financial statements and accounting documents get audited?
• What testimonials or case studies from customers can you showcase?
• What press coverage or media mentions has your business received?
• Can you provide industry endorsements or expert opinions?
• How will technology prototypes or demos be made available for review?
• What are your policies and procedures manuals like?
• How do your charts, graphs, and tables support your plan’s data?
• What correspondence or contracts with suppliers/partners are appropriate to include?
• How does your intellectual property documentation reflect on your business’s value?

Frequently Asked Questions

Can i write a business plan myself, or should i hire a professional.

Writing a business plan yourself is possible, especially with the aid of specific questions that cover all business aspects. However, hiring a professional can provide expertise and a polished result, particularly if you seek significant funding.

How often should I update my business plan?

Regular updates are crucial—annually at minimum or more often if your business is rapidly changing. This keeps your business plan relevant and useful as a dynamic, guiding document.

What’s the most critical part of a business plan?

While all sections are important, the Executive Summary is critical as it’s often the first (and sometimes only) part read by potential investors or partners. Clear and compelling financial projections are also vital for potential funders.

Final Thoughts

As your blueprint comes together, remember that the strength of your business plan lies in its details and its ability to represent the vision and practicalities of your enterprise honestly.

The questions outlined will challenge you to think critically, anticipate future hurdles, and prepare for success. With these comprehensive inquiries as your cornerstone, you can turn your business from a dream into an actionable, thriving reality.

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Bea Mariel Saulo

More From Forbes

Top 10 questions every business plan should answer.

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Starting and building your own business can be overwhelming.  And while many business owners cringe at the mere mention of drafting a business plan, it is a great exercise to get your business back on track and to plan for future growth. More specifically, it forces you to map out where you are now, where you need to go and most importantly how you plan to get there.  If you are a first time business owner, or have never written a business plan, you may not know where to start. Our friends at Corporate Tax Network have helped thousands of business owners meet their goals through financial and business planning strategies. Below is their list of the Top 10 Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer.

1) What is the need that your business exists to satisfy?

• Every business exists because of some noticeable opportunity that you have discovered within the market. So you must clearly define the need and/or problem you are solving with this business.

2) How will your business satisfy the need?

• Introduce and describe the business itself. Consider including a mission or vision statement with objectives detailing how the business satisfies the need in the market.

3) How does your company differentiate itself?

• Describe your business model and competitive advantage. This will help you to outline how the business will sustain its position within the market.

4) Who will be the key players in the business?

• Name the management team, board and advisers to the business. Highlight their expertise and experiences.

5) How big is the market you are entering?

• Only after understanding the industry you are entering – its size, attractiveness and profit potential – can you truly justify the opportunity.

6) Who will you be targeting as customers?

• Narrowing down your target customer will help enhance and define your marketing strategy.

7) What will be your most effective marketing and promotional strategies?

• Once you’ve identified your target client, you’ll need to develop and implement a strategy on how best to reach them (e.g. PPC, television, radio, social, etc). And this in large part will be influenced by where your target client consumes information.

8) What are the economics of your business?

• Define your revenue streams including pricing structure, costs, margins and expenses.

9) How much money is required to get your business started and generating revenue?

• Identify needed capital requirements by determining where your business stands today, and what is needed in order to move forward.  Also, if you are in need of outside funding, what will be the sources and uses of funds requested.

10) What needs to happen to break-even?

• Play around with financial projections and forecasts to determine the volume of sales needed to cover your expenses and to become profitable.  Include monthly breakdowns for the first two years.

Whether your objective is to find an investor, get a business loan or just improve the way you run your business, your business plan must answer these key questions.  Remember, there is no right or wrong answer, but addressing these questions will help you build a roadmap for your business.  And, of course, the better the map, the greater the likelihood that you’ll reach your destination!

For more information on financial strategies, contact our partners at Corporate Tax Network today. They have a team of business consultants and tax advisors standing by to help you. You can also follow them on Twitter for daily business information.

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30+ Business Plan Questions & Step-By-Step Business Plan Guide

Last Updated: 30 May 2024

10 min read

Table Of Contents

• 30+ Business Plan Question s

8 Steps to Creating a Full-Proof Business Plan

• SurveySparrow: The Best Business Plan Tool

Whether in business, marketing, or sales, you know how crucial a solid business plan is to your success. It’s not just about getting started—it’s about setting a clear direction for growth and innovation. This blog is your first step toward clarity and strategy.

Creating a comprehensive business plan is critical for entrepreneurs and business owners. It serves as a roadmap for your business and helps secure funding from investors and banks.

A well-crafted business plan should address key areas of your business, providing a detailed overview of its objectives, strategies, and financial projections.

Here’s a guide structured around crucial categories, each followed by pertinent business plan questions that will help in developing a robust business plan

30 Critical Business Plan Questions to Ask

Whether you’re steering a startup toward uncharted territories, aiming to elevate an established brand, or driving relentless sales growth, your business plan is the compass that guides your strategy, operations, and financial foresight.

Understanding this, we’ve compiled 30 questions designed to ignite your planning process and refine your business strategy.

Here we go.

Executive Summary

• What is your business’s mission statement?
• What products or services does your business offer?
• Who are the founders, and what is their background?
• What is the current stage of the business (concept, start-up, expansion)?
• What are the key financial highlights?

Market Analysis

6. Who is your target market, and how large is it? 7. What are the current trends and growth in your industry? 8. Who are your competitors, and what are their strengths and weaknesses? 9. How does your business fit into the market? 10. What is your unique value proposition?

Wait, wouldn’t you need a survey to run these questions and gather feedback? What if I told you that you can do that easily with Surveysparrow .

If you’re ready to chart your business path, grab our Free Business Plan Questionnaire Template . Begin your journey to success now.

Sign up for free with your email and start using it right away.

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 Marketing and Sales Strategy

11. How will you reach your target market (marketing channels)? 12. What is your pricing strategy? 13. How do you plan to sell your product or service? 14. What is your sales forecast for the first year? 15. How will you measure the success of your marketing efforts?

Operations Plan

16. What is the location of your business, and why? 17. What facilities and equipment do you need? 18. Who are your suppliers, and what are your supply chain logistics? 19. What is the production process? 20. How will you ensure quality control and customer service?

Management and Organization

21. Who makes up the management team, and what are their roles? 22. How does your organizational structure look? 23. What are the backgrounds of your team members? 24. What gaps in expertise or knowledge exist in your team? 25. How will you fill these gaps (hiring, advisors, etc.)?

Financial Plan

26. What are your startup costs? 27. What is your break-even analysis? 28. What are your projected profit and loss statements for the first 1-3 years? 29. What are your cash flow projections? 30. What are the assumptions underlying your financial projections?

By carefully answering these questions, you can construct a thorough business plan that addresses all the critical components needed for your business’s success. Remember, a business plan is not a static document; it should evolve as your business grows and adapts to market changes.

• A Journey Begins: Identifying the Problem
• The Voyage of Discovery: Defining Your Customers
• The Battle Plan: Reaching Your Customers
• Understanding the Landscape: Identifying Your Competitors
• The Strategy Map: Outlining Your Operational Plan
• Charting the Course: Defining Your Business Structure
• The Guardian of Your Venture: Creating a Risk Management Plan
• Calculating the Costs: Budgeting and Financial Projections

1. Identify the Problem

Just as any memorable journey starts with a step, every successful business starts with identifying a problem.

The burning question to answer here is: what problem is your business attempting to solve? Remember, the more specific the issue, the better your chances of designing a unique solution that customers will flock to.

2. Define Your Customers

Identifying your target customer is crucial in the business planning process. This involves understanding and defining your potential customers’ specific demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and needs.

By doing this, you can tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to meet their specific needs. The more precisely you can define your target audience , the more effectively you can serve them and set your business up for success.

3. Reach Your Customers

Now that You’ve discovered your target customers. Now comes the next challenge: How do you reach them?

Consider all possible marketing channels. Will it be social media? Email newsletters? Influencer partnerships? The choice is yours, but ensure it aligns with where your customers spend their time. After all, there’s no point in sending smoke signals if your customers are tuned into the radio.

 4. Identify Your Competitors

Now you have your bearings; it’s time to study the lay of the land. This means understanding your competition. The question is: Who are they, and how do they solve the same problem?

Understanding your competitors will help you differentiate your business and position it uniquely in the market. After all, in the quest for customer loyalty, your unique selling proposition (USP) is your Excalibur.

 5. Outline Your Operational Plan

So, you’ve identified the problem, defined your customers, planned your marketing, and sized up the competition. You’re almost ready to set sail. But first, there’s another significant piece of the business puzzle to put in place: your operational plan.

Your operational plan should include a detailed plan for sourcing deals. Using the Grata data deal sourcing platform can further help streamline this process and ensure you have access to the most relevant and up-to-date information.

How will your business function day-to-day? What resources will you need? Answering these business plan questions will help you create a clear blueprint of your business operations, ensuring your venture runs as smoothly as a well-oiled machine.

6. Define Your Business Structure

One question that’s often overlooked in the excitement of crafting business plans is this: What is your business structure? Sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or LLC ?

Your business structure will significantly affect taxation, liability, and other legalities. It’s like choosing the right ship for your journey – you need one that will safely weather the storms of your entrepreneurial voyage.

7. Create a Risk Management Plan

In the entrepreneurship journey, bumps and detours are part of the course. Having a risk management plan is essential. The business plan question is: What potential obstacles might you face, and how will you mitigate them?

A well-thought-out risk management plan ensures you’re prepared for the challenges ahead.

8. Create Budget and Financial Projections

Now, onto the numbers. What will be the cost of starting and running your business? How soon before you break even? Financial forecasts might seem as daunting as navigating uncharted waters, but they’re vital in answering the essential business-related question : Will your venture be financially viable?

How Can SurveySparrow Help You in Critical Business Planning

With SurveySparrow by your side, you’re never alone in your business planning journey. Its extensive suite of customer and employee experience tools offers invaluable insights to help answer all these key questions in your business plan.

Use SurveySparrow to conduct comprehensive market research, understand customer behavior, and even keep tabs on employee satisfaction. With this trusty tool, you’re well-equipped to answer all your business plan questions, ensuring your entrepreneurial journey is successful.

Here’s how you can do it.

Market Research : SurveySparrow allows you to design and distribute surveys to gather insights about your market. You can explore potential customer needs, preferences, and pain points and evaluate market trends and size, all of which are critical inputs for your business plan.

Customer Segmentation and Profiling : Using SurveySparrow, you can categorize your potential customers based on their preferences, behavior, demographics, and more. This can help you define your target market, tailor your offerings, and devise effective marketing strategies.

Competitor Analysis : By surveying consumers, you can gain insights about your competitors – their strengths, weaknesses, and what customers think of them. This data can be vital in positioning your business uniquely in the market.

Pricing Strategy : You can use surveys to understand what customers are willing to pay for your product or service, helping you devise a suitable pricing strategy.

Risk Assessment : Use surveys to gather feedback about potential risks or barriers to your business. Understanding these risks in advance can help you form strategies to mitigate them.

Employee Engagement : If you plan to have employees, understanding their needs and expectations is crucial for crafting your operations plan and culture. SurveySparrow can assist with gathering employee feedback and gauging engagement .

Product Testing : Before launching, you can use SurveySparrow to get feedback on your product or service. This can help you fine-tune it according to your target market’s needs and preferences.

Financial Projections : The data you gather from customer and market surveys can help inform your sales forecasts and financial projections, key business plan components .

In short, SurveySparrow can offer a wealth of information, helping you answer the critical questions in your business plan. You’re better equipped to create a robust, data-driven business plan by leveraging these tools.

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That’s All of It.

Remember, every successful business starts with a comprehensive business plan. And every comprehensive business plan starts with answering the right questions. So, go ahead and take the plunge. Your entrepreneurial journey awaits, and with SurveySparrow as your co-pilot, you’re set for an exciting voyage.

After all, the sky’s the limit regarding what you can achieve in the business world. Onwards and upwards, future tycoons!

Growth Marketer at SurveySparrow

Passionate, eidetic, and a writer at large.

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How to Write a Business Plan in 9 Steps (+ Template and Examples)

Every successful business has one thing in common, a good and well-executed business plan. A business plan is more than a document, it is a complete guide that outlines the goals your business wants to achieve, including its financial goals . It helps you analyze results, make strategic decisions, show your business operations and growth.

If you want to start a business or already have one and need to pitch it to investors for funding, writing a good business plan improves your chances of attracting financiers. As a startup, if you want to secure loans from financial institutions, part of the requirements involve submitting your business plan.

Writing a business plan does not have to be a complicated or time-consuming process. In this article, you will learn the step-by-step process for writing a successful business plan.

You will also learn what you need a business plan for, tips and strategies for writing a convincing business plan, business plan examples and templates that will save you tons of time, and the alternatives to the traditional business plan.

Let’s get started.

What Do You Need A Business Plan For?

Businesses create business plans for different purposes such as to secure funds, monitor business growth, measure your marketing strategies, and measure your business success.

1. Secure Funds

One of the primary reasons for writing a business plan is to secure funds, either from financial institutions/agencies or investors.

For you to effectively acquire funds, your business plan must contain the key elements of your business plan . For example, your business plan should include your growth plans, goals you want to achieve, and milestones you have recorded.

A business plan can also attract new business partners that are willing to contribute financially and intellectually. If you are writing a business plan to a bank, your project must show your traction , that is, the proof that you can pay back any loan borrowed.

Also, if you are writing to an investor, your plan must contain evidence that you can effectively utilize the funds you want them to invest in your business. Here, you are using your business plan to persuade a group or an individual that your business is a source of a good investment.

2. Monitor Business Growth

A business plan can help you track cash flows in your business. It steers your business to greater heights. A business plan capable of tracking business growth should contain:

• The business goals
• Methods to achieve the goals
• Time-frame for attaining those goals

A good business plan should guide you through every step in achieving your goals. It can also track the allocation of assets to every aspect of the business. You can tell when you are spending more than you should on a project.

You can compare a business plan to a written GPS. It helps you manage your business and hints at the right time to expand your business.

3. Measure Business Success

A business plan can help you measure your business success rate. Some small-scale businesses are thriving better than more prominent companies because of their track record of success.

Right from the onset of your business operation, set goals and work towards them. Write a plan to guide you through your procedures. Use your plan to measure how much you have achieved and how much is left to attain.

You can also weigh your success by monitoring the position of your brand relative to competitors. On the other hand, a business plan can also show you why you have not achieved a goal. It can tell if you have elapsed the time frame you set to attain a goal.

4. Document Your Marketing Strategies

You can use a business plan to document your marketing plans. Every business should have an effective marketing plan.

Competition mandates every business owner to go the extraordinary mile to remain relevant in the market. Your business plan should contain your marketing strategies that work. You can measure the success rate of your marketing plans.

In your business plan, your marketing strategy must answer the questions:

• How do you want to reach your target audience?
• How do you plan to retain your customers?
• What is/are your pricing plans?
• What is your budget for marketing?

How to Write a Business Plan Step-by-Step

1. create your executive summary.

The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans . Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.

Generally, there are nine sections in a business plan, the executive summary should condense essential ideas from the other eight sections.

A good executive summary should do the following:

• A Snapshot of Growth Potential. Briefly inform the reader about your company and why it will be successful)
• Contain your Mission Statement which explains what the main objective or focus of your business is.
• Product Description and Differentiation. Brief description of your products or services and why it is different from other solutions in the market.
• The Team. Basic information about your company’s leadership team and employees
• Business Concept. A solid description of what your business does.
• Target Market. The customers you plan to sell to.
• Marketing Strategy. Your plans on reaching and selling to your customers
• Current Financial State. Brief information about what revenue your business currently generates.
• Projected Financial State. Brief information about what you foresee your business revenue to be in the future.

The executive summary is the make-or-break section of your business plan. If your summary cannot in less than two pages cannot clearly describe how your business will solve a particular problem of your target audience and make a profit, your business plan is set on a faulty foundation.

Avoid using the executive summary to hype your business, instead, focus on helping the reader understand the what and how of your plan.

View the executive summary as an opportunity to introduce your vision for your company. You know your executive summary is powerful when it can answer these key questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What sector or industry are you in?
• What are your products and services?
• What is the future of your industry?
• Is your company scaleable?
• Who are the owners and leaders of your company? What are their backgrounds and experience levels?
• What is the motivation for starting your company?
• What are the next steps?

Writing the executive summary last although it is the most important section of your business plan is an excellent idea. The reason why is because it is a high-level overview of your business plan. It is the section that determines whether potential investors and lenders will read further or not.

The executive summary can be a stand-alone document that covers everything in your business plan. It is not uncommon for investors to request only the executive summary when evaluating your business. If the information in the executive summary impresses them, they will ask for the complete business plan.

If you are writing your business plan for your planning purposes, you do not need to write the executive summary.

2. Add Your Company Overview

The company overview or description is the next section in your business plan after the executive summary. It describes what your business does.

Adding your company overview can be tricky especially when your business is still in the planning stages. Existing businesses can easily summarize their current operations but may encounter difficulties trying to explain what they plan to become.

Your company overview should contain the following:

• What products and services you will provide
• Geographical markets and locations your company have a presence
• What you need to run your business
• Who your target audience or customers are
• Who will service your customers
• Your company’s purpose, mission, and vision
• Information about your company’s founders
• Who the founders are
• Notable achievements of your company so far

When creating a company overview, you have to focus on three basics: identifying your industry, identifying your customer, and explaining the problem you solve.

If you are stuck when creating your company overview, try to answer some of these questions that pertain to you.

• Who are you targeting? (The answer is not everyone)
• What pain point does your product or service solve for your customers that they will be willing to spend money on resolving?
• How does your product or service overcome that pain point?
• Where is the location of your business?
• What products, equipment, and services do you need to run your business?
• How is your company’s product or service different from your competition in the eyes of your customers?
• How many employees do you need and what skills do you require them to have?

After answering some or all of these questions, you will get more than enough information you need to write your company overview or description section. When writing this section, describe what your company does for your customers.

The company description or overview section contains three elements: mission statement, history, and objectives.

• Mission Statement

The mission statement refers to the reason why your business or company is existing. It goes beyond what you do or sell, it is about the ‘why’. A good mission statement should be emotional and inspirational.

Your mission statement should follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For example, Shopify’s mission statement is “Make commerce better for everyone.”

When describing your company’s history, make it simple and avoid the temptation of tying it to a defensive narrative. Write it in the manner you would a profile. Your company’s history should include the following information:

• Founding Date
• Major Milestones
• Location(s)
• Flagship Products or Services
• Number of Employees
• Executive Leadership Roles

When you fill in this information, you use it to write one or two paragraphs about your company’s history.

Business Objectives

Your business objective must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.) Failure to clearly identify your business objectives does not inspire confidence and makes it hard for your team members to work towards a common purpose.

3. Perform Market and Competitive Analyses to Proof a Big Enough Business Opportunity

The third step in writing a business plan is the market and competitive analysis section. Every business, no matter the size, needs to perform comprehensive market and competitive analyses before it enters into a market.

Performing market and competitive analyses are critical for the success of your business. It helps you avoid entering the right market with the wrong product, or vice versa. Anyone reading your business plans, especially financiers and financial institutions will want to see proof that there is a big enough business opportunity you are targeting.

This section is where you describe the market and industry you want to operate in and show the big opportunities in the market that your business can leverage to make a profit. If you noticed any unique trends when doing your research, show them in this section.

Market analysis alone is not enough, you have to add competitive analysis to strengthen this section. There are already businesses in the industry or market, how do you plan to take a share of the market from them?

You have to clearly illustrate the competitive landscape in your business plan. Are there areas your competitors are doing well? Are there areas where they are not doing so well? Show it.

Make it clear in this section why you are moving into the industry and what weaknesses are present there that you plan to explain. How are your competitors going to react to your market entry? How do you plan to get customers? Do you plan on taking your competitors' competitors, tap into other sources for customers, or both?

Illustrate the competitive landscape as well. What are your competitors doing well and not so well?

Answering these questions and thoughts will aid your market and competitive analysis of the opportunities in your space. Depending on how sophisticated your industry is, or the expectations of your financiers, you may need to carry out a more comprehensive market and competitive analysis to prove that big business opportunity.

Instead of looking at the market and competitive analyses as one entity, separating them will make the research even more comprehensive.

Market Analysis

Market analysis, boarding speaking, refers to research a business carried out on its industry, market, and competitors. It helps businesses gain a good understanding of their target market and the outlook of their industry. Before starting a company, it is vital to carry out market research to find out if the market is viable.

The market analysis section is a key part of the business plan. It is the section where you identify who your best clients or customers are. You cannot omit this section, without it your business plan is incomplete.

A good market analysis will tell your readers how you fit into the existing market and what makes you stand out. This section requires in-depth research, it will probably be the most time-consuming part of the business plan to write.

• Market Research

To create a compelling market analysis that will win over investors and financial institutions, you have to carry out thorough market research . Your market research should be targeted at your primary target market for your products or services. Here is what you want to find out about your target market.

• Your target market’s needs or pain points
• The existing solutions for their pain points
• Geographic Location
• Demographics

The purpose of carrying out a marketing analysis is to get all the information you need to show that you have a solid and thorough understanding of your target audience.

Only after you have fully understood the people you plan to sell your products or services to, can you evaluate correctly if your target market will be interested in your products or services.

You can easily convince interested parties to invest in your business if you can show them you thoroughly understand the market and show them that there is a market for your products or services.

How to Quantify Your Target Market

One of the goals of your marketing research is to understand who your ideal customers are and their purchasing power. To quantify your target market, you have to determine the following:

• Your Potential Customers: They are the people you plan to target. For example, if you sell accounting software for small businesses , then anyone who runs an enterprise or large business is unlikely to be your customers. Also, individuals who do not have a business will most likely not be interested in your product.
• Total Households: If you are selling household products such as heating and air conditioning systems, determining the number of total households is more important than finding out the total population in the area you want to sell to. The logic is simple, people buy the product but it is the household that uses it.
• Median Income: You need to know the median income of your target market. If you target a market that cannot afford to buy your products and services, your business will not last long.
• Income by Demographics: If your potential customers belong to a certain age group or gender, determining income levels by demographics is necessary. For example, if you sell men's clothes, your target audience is men.

What Does a Good Market Analysis Entail?

Your business does not exist on its own, it can only flourish within an industry and alongside competitors. Market analysis takes into consideration your industry, target market, and competitors. Understanding these three entities will drastically improve your company’s chances of success.

You can view your market analysis as an examination of the market you want to break into and an education on the emerging trends and themes in that market. Good market analyses include the following:

• Industry Description. You find out about the history of your industry, the current and future market size, and who the largest players/companies are in your industry.
• Overview of Target Market. You research your target market and its characteristics. Who are you targeting? Note, it cannot be everyone, it has to be a specific group. You also have to find out all information possible about your customers that can help you understand how and why they make buying decisions.
• Size of Target Market: You need to know the size of your target market, how frequently they buy, and the expected quantity they buy so you do not risk overproducing and having lots of bad inventory. Researching the size of your target market will help you determine if it is big enough for sustained business or not.
• Growth Potential: Before picking a target market, you want to be sure there are lots of potential for future growth. You want to avoid going for an industry that is declining slowly or rapidly with almost zero growth potential.
• Market Share Potential: Does your business stand a good chance of taking a good share of the market?
• Market Pricing and Promotional Strategies: Your market analysis should give you an idea of the price point you can expect to charge for your products and services. Researching your target market will also give you ideas of pricing strategies you can implement to break into the market or to enjoy maximum profits.
• Potential Barriers to Entry: One of the biggest benefits of conducting market analysis is that it shows you every potential barrier to entry your business will likely encounter. It is a good idea to discuss potential barriers to entry such as changing technology. It informs readers of your business plan that you understand the market.
• Research on Competitors: You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and how you can exploit them for the benefit of your business. Find patterns and trends among your competitors that make them successful, discover what works and what doesn’t, and see what you can do better.

The market analysis section is not just for talking about your target market, industry, and competitors. You also have to explain how your company can fill the hole you have identified in the market.

Here are some questions you can answer that can help you position your product or service in a positive light to your readers.

• Is your product or service of superior quality?
• What additional features do you offer that your competitors do not offer?
• Are you targeting a ‘new’ market?

Basically, your market analysis should include an analysis of what already exists in the market and an explanation of how your company fits into the market.

Competitive Analysis

In the competitive analysis section, y ou have to understand who your direct and indirect competitions are, and how successful they are in the marketplace. It is the section where you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, the advantage(s) they possess in the market and show the unique features or qualities that make you different from your competitors.

Many businesses do market analysis and competitive analysis together. However, to fully understand what the competitive analysis entails, it is essential to separate it from the market analysis.

Competitive analysis for your business can also include analysis on how to overcome barriers to entry in your target market.

The primary goal of conducting a competitive analysis is to distinguish your business from your competitors. A strong competitive analysis is essential if you want to convince potential funding sources to invest in your business. You have to show potential investors and lenders that your business has what it takes to compete in the marketplace successfully.

Competitive analysis will s how you what the strengths of your competition are and what they are doing to maintain that advantage.

When doing your competitive research, you first have to identify your competitor and then get all the information you can about them. The idea of spending time to identify your competitor and learn everything about them may seem daunting but it is well worth it.

Find answers to the following questions after you have identified who your competitors are.

• What are your successful competitors doing?
• Why is what they are doing working?
• Can your business do it better?
• What are the weaknesses of your successful competitors?
• What are they not doing well?
• Can your business turn its weaknesses into strengths?
• How good is your competitors’ customer service?
• Where do your competitors invest in advertising?
• What sales and pricing strategies are they using?
• What marketing strategies are they using?
• What kind of press coverage do they get?
• What are their customers saying about your competitors (both the positive and negative)?

If your competitors have a website, it is a good idea to visit their websites for more competitors’ research. Check their “About Us” page for more information.

If you are presenting your business plan to investors, you need to clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors. Investors can easily tell when you have not properly researched your competitors.

Take time to think about what unique qualities or features set you apart from your competitors. If you do not have any direct competition offering your product to the market, it does not mean you leave out the competitor analysis section blank. Instead research on other companies that are providing a similar product, or whose product is solving the problem your product solves.

The next step is to create a table listing the top competitors you want to include in your business plan. Ensure you list your business as the last and on the right. What you just created is known as the competitor analysis table.

Direct vs Indirect Competition

You cannot know if your product or service will be a fit for your target market if you have not understood your business and the competitive landscape.

There is no market you want to target where you will not encounter competition, even if your product is innovative. Including competitive analysis in your business plan is essential.

If you are entering an established market, you need to explain how you plan to differentiate your products from the available options in the market. Also, include a list of few companies that you view as your direct competitors The competition you face in an established market is your direct competition.

In situations where you are entering a market with no direct competition, it does not mean there is no competition there. Consider your indirect competition that offers substitutes for the products or services you offer.

For example, if you sell an innovative SaaS product, let us say a project management software , a company offering time management software is your indirect competition.

There is an easy way to find out who your indirect competitors are in the absence of no direct competitors. You simply have to research how your potential customers are solving the problems that your product or service seeks to solve. That is your direct competition.

Factors that Differentiate Your Business from the Competition

There are three main factors that any business can use to differentiate itself from its competition. They are cost leadership, product differentiation, and market segmentation.

1. Cost Leadership

A strategy you can impose to maximize your profits and gain an edge over your competitors. It involves offering lower prices than what the majority of your competitors are offering.

A common practice among businesses looking to enter into a market where there are dominant players is to use free trials or pricing to attract as many customers as possible to their offer.

2. Product Differentiation

Your product or service should have a unique selling proposition (USP) that your competitors do not have or do not stress in their marketing.

Part of the marketing strategy should involve making your products unique and different from your competitors. It does not have to be different from your competitors, it can be the addition to a feature or benefit that your competitors do not currently have.

3. Market Segmentation

As a new business seeking to break into an industry, you will gain more success from focusing on a specific niche or target market, and not the whole industry.

If your competitors are focused on a general need or target market, you can differentiate yourself from them by having a small and hyper-targeted audience. For example, if your competitors are selling men’s clothes in their online stores , you can sell hoodies for men.

4. Define Your Business and Management Structure

The next step in your business plan is your business and management structure. It is the section where you describe the legal structure of your business and the team running it.

Your business is only as good as the management team that runs it, while the management team can only strive when there is a proper business and management structure in place.

If your company is a sole proprietor or a limited liability company (LLC), a general or limited partnership, or a C or an S corporation, state it clearly in this section.

Use an organizational chart to show the management structure in your business. Clearly show who is in charge of what area in your company. It is where you show how each key manager or team leader’s unique experience can contribute immensely to the success of your company. You can also opt to add the resumes and CVs of the key players in your company.

The business and management structure section should show who the owner is, and other owners of the businesses (if the business has other owners). For businesses or companies with multiple owners, include the percent ownership of the various owners and clearly show the extent of each others’ involvement in the company.

Investors want to know who is behind the company and the team running it to determine if it has the right management to achieve its set goals.

Management Team

The management team section is where you show that you have the right team in place to successfully execute the business operations and ideas. Take time to create the management structure for your business. Think about all the important roles and responsibilities that you need managers for to grow your business.

Include brief bios of each key team member and ensure you highlight only the relevant information that is needed. If your team members have background industry experience or have held top positions for other companies and achieved success while filling that role, highlight it in this section.

A common mistake that many startups make is assigning C-level titles such as (CMO and CEO) to everyone on their team. It is unrealistic for a small business to have those titles. While it may look good on paper for the ego of your team members, it can prevent investors from investing in your business.

Instead of building an unrealistic management structure that does not fit your business reality, it is best to allow business titles to grow as the business grows. Starting everyone at the top leaves no room for future change or growth, which is bad for productivity.

Your management team does not have to be complete before you start writing your business plan. You can have a complete business plan even when there are managerial positions that are empty and need filling.

If you have management gaps in your team, simply show the gaps and indicate you are searching for the right candidates for the role(s). Investors do not expect you to have a full management team when you are just starting your business.

Key Questions to Answer When Structuring Your Management Team

• Who are the key leaders?
• What experiences, skills, and educational backgrounds do you expect your key leaders to have?
• Do your key leaders have industry experience?
• What positions will they fill and what duties will they perform in those positions?
• What level of authority do the key leaders have and what are their responsibilities?
• What is the salary for the various management positions that will attract the ideal candidates?

Additional Tips for Writing the Management Structure Section

1. Avoid Adding ‘Ghost’ Names to Your Management Team

There is always that temptation to include a ‘ghost’ name to your management team to attract and influence investors to invest in your business. Although the presence of these celebrity management team members may attract the attention of investors, it can cause your business to lose any credibility if you get found out.

Seasoned investors will investigate further the members of your management team before committing fully to your business If they find out that the celebrity name used does not play any actual role in your business, they will not invest and may write you off as dishonest.

2. Focus on Credentials But Pay Extra Attention to the Roles

Investors want to know the experience that your key team members have to determine if they can successfully reach the company’s growth and financial goals.

While it is an excellent boost for your key management team to have the right credentials, you also want to pay extra attention to the roles they will play in your company.

Organizational Chart

Adding an organizational chart in this section of your business plan is not necessary, you can do it in your business plan’s appendix.

If you are exploring funding options, it is not uncommon to get asked for your organizational chart. The function of an organizational chart goes beyond raising money, you can also use it as a useful planning tool for your business.

An organizational chart can help you identify how best to structure your management team for maximum productivity and point you towards key roles you need to fill in the future.

You can use the organizational chart to show your company’s internal management structure such as the roles and responsibilities of your management team, and relationships that exist between them.

5. Describe Your Product and Service Offering

In your business plan, you have to describe what you sell or the service you plan to offer. It is the next step after defining your business and management structure. The products and services section is where you sell the benefits of your business.

Here you have to explain how your product or service will benefit your customers and describe your product lifecycle. It is also the section where you write down your plans for intellectual property like patent filings and copyrighting.

The research and development that you are undertaking for your product or service need to be explained in detail in this section. However, do not get too technical, sell the general idea and its benefits.

If you have any diagrams or intricate designs of your product or service, do not include them in the products and services section. Instead, leave them for the addendum page. Also, if you are leaving out diagrams or designs for the addendum, ensure you add this phrase “For more detail, visit the addendum Page #.”

Your product and service section in your business plan should include the following:

• A detailed explanation that clearly shows how your product or service works.
• The pricing model for your product or service.
• Your business’ sales and distribution strategy.
• The ideal customers that want your product or service.
• The benefits of your products and services.
• Reason(s) why your product or service is a better alternative to what your competitors are currently offering in the market.
• Plans for filling the orders you receive
• If you have current or pending patents, copyrights, and trademarks for your product or service, you can also discuss them in this section.

What to Focus On When Describing the Benefits, Lifecycle, and Production Process of Your Products or Services

In the products and services section, you have to distill the benefits, lifecycle, and production process of your products and services.

When describing the benefits of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Unique features
• Translating the unique features into benefits
• The emotional, psychological, and practical payoffs to attract customers
• Intellectual property rights or any patents

When describing the product life cycle of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Upsells, cross-sells, and down-sells
• Time between purchases
• Plans for research and development.

When describing the production process for your products or services, you need to think about the following:

• The creation of new or existing products and services.
• The sources for the raw materials or components you need for production.
• Assembling the products
• Maintaining quality control
• Supply-chain logistics (receiving the raw materials and delivering the finished products)
• The day-to-day management of the production processes, bookkeeping, and inventory.

Tips for Writing the Products or Services Section of Your Business Plan

1. Avoid Technical Descriptions and Industry Buzzwords

The products and services section of your business plan should clearly describe the products and services that your company provides. However, it is not a section to include technical jargons that anyone outside your industry will not understand.

A good practice is to remove highly detailed or technical descriptions in favor of simple terms. Industry buzzwords are not necessary, if there are simpler terms you can use, then use them. If you plan to use your business plan to source funds, making the product or service section so technical will do you no favors.

2. Describe How Your Products or Services Differ from Your Competitors

When potential investors look at your business plan, they want to know how the products and services you are offering differ from that of your competition. Differentiating your products or services from your competition in a way that makes your solution more attractive is critical.

If you are going the innovative path and there is no market currently for your product or service, you need to describe in this section why the market needs your product or service.

For example, overnight delivery was a niche business that only a few companies were participating in. Federal Express (FedEx) had to show in its business plan that there was a large opportunity for that service and they justified why the market needed that service.

3. Long or Short Products or Services Section

Should your products or services section be short? Does the long products or services section attract more investors?

There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Whether your products or services section should be long or relatively short depends on the nature of your business.

If your business is product-focused, then automatically you need to use more space to describe the details of your products. However, if the product your business sells is a commodity item that relies on competitive pricing or other pricing strategies, you do not have to use up so much space to provide significant details about the product.

Likewise, if you are selling a commodity that is available in numerous outlets, then you do not have to spend time on writing a long products or services section.

The key to the success of your business is most likely the effectiveness of your marketing strategies compared to your competitors. Use more space to address that section.

If you are creating a new product or service that the market does not know about, your products or services section can be lengthy. The reason why is because you need to explain everything about the product or service such as the nature of the product, its use case, and values.

A short products or services section for an innovative product or service will not give the readers enough information to properly evaluate your business.

4. Describe Your Relationships with Vendors or Suppliers

Your business will rely on vendors or suppliers to supply raw materials or the components needed to make your products. In your products and services section, describe your relationships with your vendors and suppliers fully.

Avoid the mistake of relying on only one supplier or vendor. If that supplier or vendor fails to supply or goes out of business, you can easily face supply problems and struggle to meet your demands. Plan to set up multiple vendor or supplier relationships for better business stability.

5. Your Primary Goal Is to Convince Your Readers

The primary goal of your business plan is to convince your readers that your business is viable and to create a guide for your business to follow. It applies to the products and services section.

When drafting this section, think like the reader. See your reader as someone who has no idea about your products and services. You are using the products and services section to provide the needed information to help your reader understand your products and services. As a result, you have to be clear and to the point.

While you want to educate your readers about your products or services, you also do not want to bore them with lots of technical details. Show your products and services and not your fancy choice of words.

Your products and services section should provide the answer to the “what” question for your business. You and your management team may run the business, but it is your products and services that are the lifeblood of the business.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing your Products and Services Section

Answering these questions can help you write your products and services section quickly and in a way that will appeal to your readers.

• Are your products existing on the market or are they still in the development stage?
• What is your timeline for adding new products and services to the market?
• What are the positives that make your products and services different from your competitors?
• Do your products and services have any competitive advantage that your competitors’ products and services do not currently have?
• Do your products or services have any competitive disadvantages that you need to overcome to compete with your competitors? If your answer is yes, state how you plan to overcome them,
• How much does it cost to produce your products or services? How much do you plan to sell it for?
• What is the price for your products and services compared to your competitors? Is pricing an issue?
• What are your operating costs and will it be low enough for you to compete with your competitors and still take home a reasonable profit margin?
• What is your plan for acquiring your products? Are you involved in the production of your products or services?
• Are you the manufacturer and produce all the components you need to create your products? Do you assemble your products by using components supplied by other manufacturers? Do you purchase your products directly from suppliers or wholesalers?
• Do you have a steady supply of products that you need to start your business? (If your business is yet to kick-off)
• How do you plan to distribute your products or services to the market?

You can also hint at the marketing or promotion plans you have for your products or services such as how you plan to build awareness or retain customers. The next section is where you can go fully into details about your business’s marketing and sales plan.

6. Show and Explain Your Marketing and Sales Plan

Providing great products and services is wonderful, but it means nothing if you do not have a marketing and sales plan to inform your customers about them. Your marketing and sales plan is critical to the success of your business.

The sales and marketing section is where you show and offer a detailed explanation of your marketing and sales plan and how you plan to execute it. It covers your pricing plan, proposed advertising and promotion activities, activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success, and the benefits of your products and services.

There are several ways you can approach your marketing and sales strategy. Ideally, your marketing and sales strategy has to fit the unique needs of your business.

In this section, you describe how the plans your business has for attracting and retaining customers, and the exact process for making a sale happen. It is essential to thoroughly describe your complete marketing and sales plans because you are still going to reference this section when you are making financial projections for your business.

Outline Your Business’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The sales and marketing section is where you outline your business’s unique selling proposition (USP). When you are developing your unique selling proposition, think about the strongest reasons why people should buy from you over your competition. That reason(s) is most likely a good fit to serve as your unique selling proposition (USP).

Target Market and Target Audience

Plans on how to get your products or services to your target market and how to get your target audience to buy them go into this section. You also highlight the strengths of your business here, particularly what sets them apart from your competition.

Before you start writing your marketing and sales plan, you need to have properly defined your target audience and fleshed out your buyer persona. If you do not first understand the individual you are marketing to, your marketing and sales plan will lack any substance and easily fall.

Creating a Smart Marketing and Sales Plan

Marketing your products and services is an investment that requires you to spend money. Like any other investment, you have to generate a good return on investment (ROI) to justify using that marketing and sales plan. Good marketing and sales plans bring in high sales and profits to your company.

Avoid spending money on unproductive marketing channels. Do your research and find out the best marketing and sales plan that works best for your company.

Your marketing and sales plan can be broken into different parts: your positioning statement, pricing, promotion, packaging, advertising, public relations, content marketing, social media, and strategic alliances.

Your Positioning Statement

Your positioning statement is the first part of your marketing and sales plan. It refers to the way you present your company to your customers.

Are you the premium solution, the low-price solution, or are you the intermediary between the two extremes in the market? What do you offer that your competitors do not that can give you leverage in the market?

Before you start writing your positioning statement, you need to spend some time evaluating the current market conditions. Here are some questions that can help you to evaluate the market

• What are the unique features or benefits that you offer that your competitors lack?
• What are your customers’ primary needs and wants?
• Why should a customer choose you over your competition? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?
• How does your company’s solution compare with other solutions in the market?

After answering these questions, then you can start writing your positioning statement. Your positioning statement does not have to be in-depth or too long.

All you need to explain with your positioning statement are two focus areas. The first is the position of your company within the competitive landscape. The other focus area is the core value proposition that sets your company apart from other alternatives that your ideal customer might consider.

Here is a simple template you can use to develop a positioning statement.

For [description of target market] who [need of target market], [product or service] [how it meets the need]. Unlike [top competition], it [most essential distinguishing feature].

For example, let’s create the positioning statement for fictional accounting software and QuickBooks alternative , TBooks.

“For small business owners who need accounting services, TBooks is an accounting software that helps small businesses handle their small business bookkeeping basics quickly and easily. Unlike Wave, TBooks gives small businesses access to live sessions with top accountants.”

You can edit this positioning statement sample and fill it with your business details.

After writing your positioning statement, the next step is the pricing of your offerings. The overall positioning strategy you set in your positioning statement will often determine how you price your products or services.

Pricing is a powerful tool that sends a strong message to your customers. Failure to get your pricing strategy right can make or mar your business. If you are targeting a low-income audience, setting a premium price can result in low sales.

You can use pricing to communicate your positioning to your customers. For example, if you are offering a product at a premium price, you are sending a message to your customers that the product belongs to the premium category.

Basic Rules to Follow When Pricing Your Offering

Setting a price for your offering involves more than just putting a price tag on it. Deciding on the right pricing for your offering requires following some basic rules. They include covering your costs, primary and secondary profit center pricing, and matching the market rate.

• Covering Your Costs: The price you set for your products or service should be more than it costs you to produce and deliver them. Every business has the same goal, to make a profit. Depending on the strategy you want to use, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the vast majority of businesses follow this rule.
• Primary and Secondary Profit Center Pricing: When a company sets its price above the cost of production, it is making that product its primary profit center. A company can also decide not to make its initial price its primary profit center by selling below or at even with its production cost. It rather depends on the support product or even maintenance that is associated with the initial purchase to make its profit. The initial price thus became its secondary profit center.
• Matching the Market Rate: A good rule to follow when pricing your products or services is to match your pricing with consumer demand and expectations. If you price your products or services beyond the price your customer perceives as the ideal price range, you may end up with no customers. Pricing your products too low below what your customer perceives as the ideal price range may lead to them undervaluing your offering.

Pricing Strategy

Your pricing strategy influences the price of your offering. There are several pricing strategies available for you to choose from when examining the right pricing strategy for your business. They include cost-plus pricing, market-based pricing, value pricing, and more.

• Cost-plus Pricing: This strategy is one of the simplest and oldest pricing strategies. Here you consider the cost of producing a unit of your product and then add a profit to it to arrive at your market price. It is an effective pricing strategy for manufacturers because it helps them cover their initial costs. Another name for the cost-plus pricing strategy is the markup pricing strategy.
• Market-based Pricing: This pricing strategy analyses the market including competitors’ pricing and then sets a price based on what the market is expecting. With this pricing strategy, you can either set your price at the low-end or high-end of the market.
• Value Pricing: This pricing strategy involves setting a price based on the value you are providing to your customer. When adopting a value-based pricing strategy, you have to set a price that your customers are willing to pay. Service-based businesses such as small business insurance providers , luxury goods sellers, and the fashion industry use this pricing strategy.

After carefully sorting out your positioning statement and pricing, the next item to look at is your promotional strategy. Your promotional strategy explains how you plan on communicating with your customers and prospects.

As a business, you must measure all your costs, including the cost of your promotions. You also want to measure how much sales your promotions bring for your business to determine its usefulness. Promotional strategies or programs that do not lead to profit need to be removed.

There are different types of promotional strategies you can adopt for your business, they include advertising, public relations, and content marketing.

Advertising

Your business plan should include your advertising plan which can be found in the marketing and sales plan section. You need to include an overview of your advertising plans such as the areas you plan to spend money on to advertise your business and offers.

Ensure that you make it clear in this section if your business will be advertising online or using the more traditional offline media, or the combination of both online and offline media. You can also include the advertising medium you want to use to raise awareness about your business and offers.

Some common online advertising mediums you can use include social media ads, landing pages, sales pages, SEO, Pay-Per-Click, emails, Google Ads, and others. Some common traditional and offline advertising mediums include word of mouth, radios, direct mail, televisions, flyers, billboards, posters, and others.

A key component of your advertising strategy is how you plan to measure the effectiveness and success of your advertising campaign. There is no point in sticking with an advertising plan or medium that does not produce results for your business in the long run.

Public Relations

A great way to reach your customers is to get the media to cover your business or product. Publicity, especially good ones, should be a part of your marketing and sales plan. In this section, show your plans for getting prominent reviews of your product from reputable publications and sources.

Your business needs that exposure to grow. If public relations is a crucial part of your promotional strategy, provide details about your public relations plan here.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a popular promotional strategy used by businesses to inform and attract their customers. It is about teaching and educating your prospects on various topics of interest in your niche, it does not just involve informing them about the benefits and features of the products and services you have,

Businesses publish content usually for free where they provide useful information, tips, and advice so that their target market can be made aware of the importance of their products and services. Content marketing strategies seek to nurture prospects into buyers over time by simply providing value.

Your company can create a blog where it will be publishing content for its target market. You will need to use the best website builder such as Wix and Squarespace and the best web hosting services such as Bluehost, Hostinger, and other Bluehost alternatives to create a functional blog or website.

If content marketing is a crucial part of your promotional strategy (as it should be), detail your plans under promotions.

Including high-quality images of the packaging of your product in your business plan is a lovely idea. You can add the images of the packaging of that product in the marketing and sales plan section. If you are not selling a product, then you do not need to include any worry about the physical packaging of your product.

When organizing the packaging section of your business plan, you can answer the following questions to make maximum use of this section.

• Is your choice of packaging consistent with your positioning strategy?
• What key value proposition does your packaging communicate? (It should reflect the key value proposition of your business)
• How does your packaging compare to that of your competitors?

Social Media

Your 21st-century business needs to have a good social media presence. Not having one is leaving out opportunities for growth and reaching out to your prospect.

You do not have to join the thousands of social media platforms out there. What you need to do is join the ones that your customers are active on and be active there.

Businesses use social media to provide information about their products such as promotions, discounts, the benefits of their products, and content on their blogs.

Social media is also a platform for engaging with your customers and getting feedback about your products or services. Make no mistake, more and more of your prospects are using social media channels to find more information about companies.

You need to consider the social media channels you want to prioritize your business (prioritize the ones your customers are active in) and your branding plans in this section.

Strategic Alliances

If your company plans to work closely with other companies as part of your sales and marketing plan, include it in this section. Prove details about those partnerships in your business plan if you have already established them.

Strategic alliances can be beneficial for all parties involved including your company. Working closely with another company in the form of a partnership can provide access to a different target market segment for your company.

The company you are partnering with may also gain access to your target market or simply offer a new product or service (that of your company) to its customers.

Mutually beneficial partnerships can cover the weaknesses of one company with the strength of another. You should consider strategic alliances with companies that sell complimentary products to yours. For example, if you provide printers, you can partner with a company that produces ink since the customers that buy printers from you will also need inks for printing.

Steps Involved in Creating a Marketing and Sales Plan

1. Focus on Your Target Market

Identify who your customers are, the market you want to target. Then determine the best ways to get your products or services to your potential customers.

2. Evaluate Your Competition

One of the goals of having a marketing plan is to distinguish yourself from your competition. You cannot stand out from them without first knowing them in and out.

You can know your competitors by gathering information about their products, pricing, service, and advertising campaigns.

These questions can help you know your competition.

• What makes your competition successful?
• What are their weaknesses?
• What are customers saying about your competition?

3. Consider Your Brand

Customers' perception of your brand has a strong impact on your sales. Your marketing and sales plan should seek to bolster the image of your brand. Before you start marketing your business, think about the message you want to pass across about your business and your products and services.

4. Focus on Benefits

The majority of your customers do not view your product in terms of features, what they want to know is the benefits and solutions your product offers. Think about the problems your product solves and the benefits it delivers, and use it to create the right sales and marketing message.

Your marketing plan should focus on what you want your customer to get instead of what you provide. Identify those benefits in your marketing and sales plan.

5. Focus on Differentiation

Your marketing and sales plan should look for a unique angle they can take that differentiates your business from the competition, even if the products offered are similar. Some good areas of differentiation you can use are your benefits, pricing, and features.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing Your Marketing and Sales Plan

• What is your company’s budget for sales and marketing campaigns?
• What key metrics will you use to determine if your marketing plans are successful?
• What are your alternatives if your initial marketing efforts do not succeed?
• Who are the sales representatives you need to promote your products or services?
• What are the marketing and sales channels you plan to use? How do you plan to get your products in front of your ideal customers?
• Where will you sell your products?

You may want to include samples of marketing materials you plan to use such as print ads, website descriptions, and social media ads. While it is not compulsory to include these samples, it can help you better communicate your marketing and sales plan and objectives.

The purpose of the marketing and sales section is to answer this question “How will you reach your customers?” If you cannot convincingly provide an answer to this question, you need to rework your marketing and sales section.

7. Clearly Show Your Funding Request

If you are writing your business plan to ask for funding from investors or financial institutions, the funding request section is where you will outline your funding requirements. The funding request section should answer the question ‘How much money will your business need in the near future (3 to 5 years)?’

A good funding request section will clearly outline and explain the amount of funding your business needs over the next five years. You need to know the amount of money your business needs to make an accurate funding request.

Also, when writing your funding request, provide details of how the funds will be used over the period. Specify if you want to use the funds to buy raw materials or machinery, pay salaries, pay for advertisements, and cover specific bills such as rent and electricity.

In addition to explaining what you want to use the funds requested for, you need to clearly state the projected return on investment (ROI) . Investors and creditors want to know if your business can generate profit for them if they put funds into it.

Ensure you do not inflate the figures and stay as realistic as possible. Investors and financial institutions you are seeking funds from will do their research before investing money in your business.

If you are not sure of an exact number to request from, you can use some range of numbers as rough estimates. Add a best-case scenario and a work-case scenario to your funding request. Also, include a description of your strategic future financial plans such as selling your business or paying off debts.

Funding Request: Debt or Equity?

When making your funding request, specify the type of funding you want. Do you want debt or equity? Draw out the terms that will be applicable for the funding, and the length of time the funding request will cover.

Case for Equity

If your new business has not yet started generating profits, you are most likely preparing to sell equity in your business to raise capital at the early stage. Equity here refers to ownership. In this case, you are selling a portion of your company to raise capital.

Although this method of raising capital for your business does not put your business in debt, keep in mind that an equity owner may expect to play a key role in company decisions even if he does not hold a major stake in the company.

Most equity sales for startups are usually private transactions . If you are making a funding request by offering equity in exchange for funding, let the investor know that they will be paid a dividend (a share of the company’s profit). Also, let the investor know the process for selling their equity in your business.

Case for Debt

You may decide not to offer equity in exchange for funds, instead, you make a funding request with the promise to pay back the money borrowed at the agreed time frame.

When making a funding request with an agreement to pay back, note that you will have to repay your creditors both the principal amount borrowed and the interest on it. Financial institutions offer this type of funding for businesses.

Large companies combine both equity and debt in their capital structure. When drafting your business plan, decide if you want to offer both or one over the other.

Before you sell equity in exchange for funding in your business, consider if you are willing to accept not being in total control of your business. Also, before you seek loans in your funding request section, ensure that the terms of repayment are favorable.

You should set a clear timeline in your funding request so that potential investors and creditors can know what you are expecting. Some investors and creditors may agree to your funding request and then delay payment for longer than 30 days, meanwhile, your business needs an immediate cash injection to operate efficiently.

Additional Tips for Writing the Funding Request Section of your Business Plan

The funding request section is not necessary for every business, it is only needed by businesses who plan to use their business plan to secure funding.

If you are adding the funding request section to your business plan, provide an itemized summary of how you plan to use the funds requested. Hiring a lawyer, accountant, or other professionals may be necessary for the proper development of this section.

You should also gather and use financial statements that add credibility and support to your funding requests. Ensure that the financial statements you use should include your projected financial data such as projected cash flows, forecast statements, and expenditure budgets.

If you are an existing business, include all historical financial statements such as cash flow statements, balance sheets and income statements .

Provide monthly and quarterly financial statements for a year. If your business has records that date back beyond the one-year mark, add the yearly statements of those years. These documents are for the appendix section of your business plan.

8. Detail Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projections

If you used the funding request section in your business plan, supplement it with a financial plan, metrics, and projections. This section paints a picture of the past performance of your business and then goes ahead to make an informed projection about its future.

The goal of this section is to convince readers that your business is going to be a financial success. It outlines your business plan to generate enough profit to repay the loan (with interest if applicable) and to generate a decent return on investment for investors.

If you have an existing business already in operation, use this section to demonstrate stability through finance. This section should include your cash flow statements, balance sheets, and income statements covering the last three to five years. If your business has some acceptable collateral that you can use to acquire loans, list it in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

Apart from current financial statements, this section should also contain a prospective financial outlook that spans the next five years. Include forecasted income statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, and capital expenditure budget.

If your business is new and is not yet generating profit, use clear and realistic projections to show the potentials of your business.

When drafting this section, research industry norms and the performance of comparable businesses. Your financial projections should cover at least five years. State the logic behind your financial projections. Remember you can always make adjustments to this section as the variables change.

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section create a baseline which your business can either exceed or fail to reach. If your business fails to reach your projections in this section, you need to understand why it failed.

Investors and loan managers spend a lot of time going through the financial plan, metrics, and projection section compared to other parts of the business plan. Ensure you spend time creating credible financial analyses for your business in this section.

Many entrepreneurs find this section daunting to write. You do not need a business degree to create a solid financial forecast for your business. Business finances, especially for startups, are not as complicated as they seem. There are several online tools and templates that make writing this section so much easier.

Use Graphs and Charts

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section is a great place to use graphs and charts to tell the financial story of your business. Charts and images make it easier to communicate your finances.

Accuracy in this section is key, ensure you carefully analyze your past financial statements properly before making financial projects.

Address the Risk Factors and Show Realistic Financial Projections

Keep your financial plan, metrics, and projection realistic. It is okay to be optimistic in your financial projection, however, you have to justify it.

You should also address the various risk factors associated with your business in this section. Investors want to know the potential risks involved, show them. You should also show your plans for mitigating those risks.

What You Should In The Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection Section of Your Business Plan

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section of your business plan should have monthly sales and revenue forecasts for the first year. It should also include annual projections that cover 3 to 5 years.

A three-year projection is a basic requirement to have in your business plan. However, some investors may request a five-year forecast.

Your business plan should include the following financial statements: sales forecast, personnel plan, income statement, income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and an exit strategy.

1. Sales Forecast

Sales forecast refers to your projections about the number of sales your business is going to record over the next few years. It is typically broken into several rows, with each row assigned to a core product or service that your business is offering.

One common mistake people make in their business plan is to break down the sales forecast section into long details. A sales forecast should forecast the high-level details.

For example, if you are forecasting sales for a payroll software provider, you could break down your forecast into target market segments or subscription categories.

Your sales forecast section should also have a corresponding row for each sales row to cover the direct cost or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). The objective of these rows is to show the expenses that your business incurs in making and delivering your product or service.

Note that your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) should only cover those direct costs incurred when making your products. Other indirect expenses such as insurance, salaries, payroll tax, and rent should not be included.

For example, the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a restaurant is the cost of ingredients while for a consulting company it will be the cost of paper and other presentation materials.

2. Personnel Plan

The personnel plan section is where you provide details about the payment plan for your employees. For a small business, you can easily list every position in your company and how much you plan to pay in the personnel plan.

However, for larger businesses, you have to break the personnel plan into functional groups such as sales and marketing.

The personnel plan will also include the cost of an employee beyond salary, commonly referred to as the employee burden. These costs include insurance, payroll taxes , and other essential costs incurred monthly as a result of having employees on your payroll.

3. Income Statement

The income statement section shows if your business is making a profit or taking a loss. Another name for the income statement is the profit and loss (P&L). It takes data from your sales forecast and personnel plan and adds other ongoing expenses you incur while running your business.

Every business plan should have an income statement. It subtracts your business expenses from its earnings to show if your business is generating profit or incurring losses.

The income statement has the following items: sales, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), gross margin, operating expenses, total operating expenses, operating income , total expenses, and net profit.

• Sales refer to the revenue your business generates from selling its products or services. Other names for sales are income or revenue.
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) refers to the total cost of selling your products. Other names for COGS are direct costs or cost of sales. Manufacturing businesses use the Costs of Goods Manufactured (COGM) .
• Gross Margin is the figure you get when you subtract your COGS from your sales. In your income statement, you can express it as a percentage of total sales (Gross margin / Sales = Gross Margin Percent).
• Operating Expenses refer to all the expenses you incur from running your business. It exempts the COGS because it stands alone as a core part of your income statement. You also have to exclude taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Your operating expenses include salaries, marketing expenses, research and development (R&D) expenses, and other expenses.
• Total Operating Expenses refers to the sum of all your operating expenses including those exemptions named above under operating expenses.
• Operating Income refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is simply known as the acronym EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). Calculating your operating income is simple, all you need to do is to subtract your COGS and total operating expenses from your sales.
• Total Expenses refer to the sum of your operating expenses and your business’ interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
• Net profit shows whether your business has made a profit or taken a loss during a given timeframe.

4. Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement tracks the money you have in the bank at any given point. It is often confused with the income statement or the profit and loss statement. They are both different types of financial statements. The income statement calculates your profits and losses while the cash flow statement shows you how much you have in the bank.

5. Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is a financial statement that provides an overview of the financial health of your business. It contains information about the assets and liabilities of your company, and owner’s or shareholders’ equity.

You can get the net worth of your company by subtracting your company’s liabilities from its assets.

6. Exit Strategy

The exit strategy refers to a probable plan for selling your business either to the public in an IPO or to another company. It is the last thing you include in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

You can choose to omit the exit strategy from your business plan if you plan to maintain full ownership of your business and do not plan on seeking angel investment or virtual capitalist (VC) funding.

Investors may want to know what your exit plan is. They invest in your business to get a good return on investment.

Your exit strategy does not have to include long and boring details. Ensure you identify some interested parties who may be interested in buying the company if it becomes a success.

Key Questions to Answer with Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection

Your financial plan, metrics, and projection section helps investors, creditors, or your internal managers to understand what your expenses are, the amount of cash you need, and what it takes to make your company profitable. It also shows what you will be doing with any funding.

You do not need to show actual financial data if you do not have one. Adding forecasts and projections to your financial statements is added proof that your strategy is feasible and shows investors you have planned properly.

Here are some key questions to answer to help you develop this section.

• What is your sales forecast for the next year?
• When will your company achieve a positive cash flow?
• What are the core expenses you need to operate?
• How much money do you need upfront to operate or grow your company?
• How will you use the loans or investments?

9. Add an Appendix to Your Business Plan

Adding an appendix to your business plan is optional. It is a useful place to put any charts, tables, legal notes, definitions, permits, résumés, and other critical information that do not fit into other sections of your business plan.

The appendix section is where you would want to include details of a patent or patent-pending if you have one. You can always add illustrations or images of your products here. It is the last section of your business plan.

When writing your business plan, there are details you cut short or remove to prevent the entire section from becoming too lengthy. There are also details you want to include in the business plan but are not a good fit for any of the previous sections. You can add that additional information to the appendix section.

Businesses also use the appendix section to include supporting documents or other materials specially requested by investors or lenders.

You can include just about any information that supports the assumptions and statements you made in the business plan under the appendix. It is the one place in the business plan where unrelated data and information can coexist amicably.

If your appendix section is lengthy, try organizing it by adding a table of contents at the beginning of the appendix section. It is also advisable to group similar information to make it easier for the reader to access them.

A well-organized appendix section makes it easier to share your information clearly and concisely. Add footnotes throughout the rest of the business plan or make references in the plan to the documents in the appendix.

The appendix section is usually only necessary if you are seeking funding from investors or lenders, or hoping to attract partners.

People reading business plans do not want to spend time going through a heap of backup information, numbers, and charts. Keep these documents or information in the Appendix section in case the reader wants to dig deeper.

Common Items to Include in the Appendix Section of Your Business Plan

The appendix section includes documents that supplement or support the information or claims given in other sections of the business plans. Common items you can include in the appendix section include:

• Additional data about the process of manufacturing or creation
• Additional description of products or services such as product schematics
• Additional financial documents or projections
• Articles of incorporation and status
• Backup for market research or competitive analysis
• Bank statements
• Business registries
• Client testimonials (if your business is already running)
• Copies of insurances
• Credit histories (personal or/and business)
• Deeds and permits
• Equipment leases
• Examples of marketing and advertising collateral
• Industry associations and memberships
• Images of product
• Intellectual property
• Key customer contracts
• Legal documents and other contracts
• Letters of reference
• Links to references
• Market research data
• Organizational charts
• Photographs of potential facilities
• Professional licenses pertaining to your legal structure or type of business
• Purchase orders
• Resumes of the founder(s) and key managers
• State and federal identification numbers or codes
• Trademarks or patents’ registrations

Avoid using the appendix section as a place to dump any document or information you feel like adding. Only add documents or information that you support or increase the credibility of your business plan.

Tips and Strategies for Writing a Convincing Business Plan

To achieve a perfect business plan, you need to consider some key tips and strategies. These tips will raise the efficiency of your business plan above average.

1. Know Your Audience

When writing a business plan, you need to know your audience . Business owners write business plans for different reasons. Your business plan has to be specific. For example, you can write business plans to potential investors, banks, and even fellow board members of the company.

The audience you are writing to determines the structure of the business plan. As a business owner, you have to know your audience. Not everyone will be your audience. Knowing your audience will help you to narrow the scope of your business plan.

Consider what your audience wants to see in your projects, the likely questions they might ask, and what interests them.

• A business plan used to address a company's board members will center on its employment schemes, internal affairs, projects, stakeholders, etc.
• A business plan for financial institutions will talk about the size of your market and the chances for you to pay back any loans you demand.
• A business plan for investors will show proof that you can return the investment capital within a specific time. In addition, it discusses your financial projections, tractions, and market size.

2. Get Inspiration from People

Writing a business plan from scratch as an entrepreneur can be daunting. That is why you need the right inspiration to push you to write one. You can gain inspiration from the successful business plans of other businesses. Look at their business plans, the style they use, the structure of the project, etc.

To make your business plan easier to create, search companies related to your business to get an exact copy of what you need to create an effective business plan. You can also make references while citing examples in your business plans.

When drafting your business plan, get as much help from others as you possibly can. By getting inspiration from people, you can create something better than what they have.

3. Avoid Being Over Optimistic

Many business owners make use of strong adjectives to qualify their content. One of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make when preparing a business plan is promising too much.

The use of superlatives and over-optimistic claims can prepare the audience for more than you can offer. In the end, you disappoint the confidence they have in you.

In most cases, the best option is to be realistic with your claims and statistics. Most of the investors can sense a bit of incompetency from the overuse of superlatives. As a new entrepreneur, do not be tempted to over-promise to get the interests of investors.

The concept of entrepreneurship centers on risks, nothing is certain when you make future analyses. What separates the best is the ability to do careful research and work towards achieving that, not promising more than you can achieve.

To make an excellent first impression as an entrepreneur, replace superlatives with compelling data-driven content. In this way, you are more specific than someone promising a huge ROI from an investment.

4. Keep it Simple and Short

When writing business plans, ensure you keep them simple throughout. Irrespective of the purpose of the business plan, your goal is to convince the audience.

One way to achieve this goal is to make them understand your proposal. Therefore, it would be best if you avoid the use of complex grammar to express yourself. It would be a huge turn-off if the people you want to convince are not familiar with your use of words.

Another thing to note is the length of your business plan. It would be best if you made it as brief as possible.

You hardly see investors or agencies that read through an extremely long document. In that case, if your first few pages can’t convince them, then you have lost it. The more pages you write, the higher the chances of you derailing from the essential contents.

To ensure your business plan has a high conversion rate, you need to dispose of every unnecessary information. For example, if you have a strategy that you are not sure of, it would be best to leave it out of the plan.

5. Make an Outline and Follow Through

A perfect business plan must have touched every part needed to convince the audience. Business owners get easily tempted to concentrate more on their products than on other sections. Doing this can be detrimental to the efficiency of the business plan.

For example, imagine you talking about a product but omitting or providing very little information about the target audience. You will leave your clients confused.

To ensure that your business plan communicates your full business model to readers, you have to input all the necessary information in it. One of the best ways to achieve this is to design a structure and stick to it.

This structure is what guides you throughout the writing. To make your work easier, you can assign an estimated word count or page limit to every section to avoid making it too bulky for easy reading. As a guide, the necessary things your business plan must contain are:

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Product or service description
• Target audience
• Market size
• Competition analysis
• Financial projections

Some specific businesses can include some other essential sections, but these are the key sections that must be in every business plan.

6. Ask a Professional to Proofread

When writing a business plan, you must tie all loose ends to get a perfect result. When you are done with writing, call a professional to go through the document for you. You are bound to make mistakes, and the way to correct them is to get external help.

You should get a professional in your field who can relate to every section of your business plan. It would be easier for the professional to notice the inner flaws in the document than an editor with no knowledge of your business.

In addition to getting a professional to proofread, get an editor to proofread and edit your document. The editor will help you identify grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and inappropriate writing styles.

Writing a business plan can be daunting, but you can surmount that obstacle and get the best out of it with these tips.

Business Plan Examples and Templates That’ll Save You Tons of Time

1. hubspot's one-page business plan.

The one-page business plan template by HubSpot is the perfect guide for businesses of any size, irrespective of their business strategy. Although the template is condensed into a page, your final business plan should not be a page long! The template is designed to ask helpful questions that can help you develop your business plan.

Hubspot’s one-page business plan template is divided into nine fields:

• Business opportunity
• Company description
• Industry analysis
• Target market
• Implementation timeline
• Marketing plan
• Financial summary
• Funding required

2. Bplan’s Free Business Plan Template

Bplans' free business plan template is investor-approved. It is a rich template used by prestigious educational institutions such as Babson College and Princeton University to teach entrepreneurs how to create a business plan.

The template has six sections: the executive summary, opportunity, execution, company, financial plan, and appendix. There is a step-by-step guide for writing every little detail in the business plan. Follow the instructions each step of the way and you will create a business plan that impresses investors or lenders easily.

3. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

HubSpot’s downloadable business plan template is a more comprehensive option compared to the one-page business template by HubSpot. This free and downloadable business plan template is designed for entrepreneurs.

The template is a comprehensive guide and checklist for business owners just starting their businesses. It tells you everything you need to fill in each section of the business plan and how to do it.

There are nine sections in this business plan template: an executive summary, company and business description, product and services line, market analysis, marketing plan, sales plan, legal notes, financial considerations, and appendix.

4. Business Plan by My Own Business Institute

My Own Business Institute (MOBI) which is a part of Santa Clara University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers a free business plan template. You can either copy the free business template from the link provided above or download it as a Word document.

The comprehensive template consists of a whopping 15 sections.

• The Business Profile
• The Vision and the People
• Home-Based Business and Freelance Business Opportunities
• Organization
• Licenses and Permits
• Business Insurance
• Communication Tools
• Acquisitions
• Location and Leasing
• Accounting and Cash Flow
• Opening and Marketing
• Managing Employees
• Expanding and Handling Problems

There are lots of helpful tips on how to fill each section in the free business plan template by MOBI.

5. Score's Business Plan Template for Startups

Score is an American nonprofit organization that helps entrepreneurs build successful companies. This business plan template for startups by Score is available for free download. The business plan template asks a whooping 150 generic questions that help entrepreneurs from different fields to set up the perfect business plan.

The business plan template for startups contains clear instructions and worksheets, all you have to do is answer the questions and fill the worksheets.

There are nine sections in the business plan template: executive summary, company description, products and services, marketing plan, operational plan, management and organization, startup expenses and capitalization, financial plan, and appendices.

The ‘refining the plan’ resource contains instructions that help you modify your business plan to suit your specific needs, industry, and target audience. After you have completed Score’s business plan template, you can work with a SCORE mentor for expert advice in business planning.

6. Minimalist Architecture Business Plan Template by Venngage

The minimalist architecture business plan template is a simple template by Venngage that you can customize to suit your business needs .

There are five sections in the template: an executive summary, statement of problem, approach and methodology, qualifications, and schedule and benchmark. The business plan template has instructions that guide users on what to fill in each section.

7. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers two free business plan templates, filled with practical real-life examples that you can model to create your business plan. Both free business plan templates are written by fictional business owners: Rebecca who owns a consulting firm, and Andrew who owns a toy company.

There are five sections in the two SBA’s free business plan templates.

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Service Line
• Marketing and Sales

8. The $100 Startup's One-Page Business Plan

The one-page business plan by the $100 startup is a simple business plan template for entrepreneurs who do not want to create a long and complicated plan . You can include more details in the appendices for funders who want more information beyond what you can put in the one-page business plan.

There are five sections in the one-page business plan such as overview, ka-ching, hustling, success, and obstacles or challenges or open questions. You can answer all the questions using one or two sentences.

9. PandaDoc’s Free Business Plan Template

The free business plan template by PandaDoc is a comprehensive 15-page document that describes the information you should include in every section.

There are 11 sections in PandaDoc’s free business plan template.

• Executive summary
• Business description
• Products and services
• Operations plan
• Management organization
• Financial plan
• Conclusion / Call to action
• Confidentiality statement

You have to sign up for its 14-day free trial to access the template. You will find different business plan templates on PandaDoc once you sign up (including templates for general businesses and specific businesses such as bakeries, startups, restaurants, salons, hotels, and coffee shops)

PandaDoc allows you to customize its business plan templates to fit the needs of your business. After editing the template, you can send it to interested parties and track opens and views through PandaDoc.

10. Invoiceberry Templates for Word, Open Office, Excel, or PPT

InvoiceBerry is a U.K based online invoicing and tracking platform that offers free business plan templates in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats for freelancers and small businesses.

Before you can download the free business plan template, it will ask you to give it your email address. After you complete the little task, it will send the download link to your inbox for you to download. It also provides a business plan checklist in .xlsx file format that ensures you add the right information to the business plan.

Alternatives to the Traditional Business Plan

A business plan is very important in mapping out how one expects their business to grow over a set number of years, particularly when they need external investment in their business. However, many investors do not have the time to watch you present your business plan. It is a long and boring read.

Luckily, there are three alternatives to the traditional business plan (the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck). These alternatives are less laborious and easier and quicker to present to investors.

Business Model Canvas (BMC)

The business model canvas is a business tool used to present all the important components of setting up a business, such as customers, route to market, value proposition, and finance in a single sheet. It provides a very focused blueprint that defines your business initially which you can later expand on if needed.

The sheet is divided mainly into company, industry, and consumer models that are interconnected in how they find problems and proffer solutions.

Segments of the Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas was developed by founder Alexander Osterwalder to answer important business questions. It contains nine segments.

• Key Partners: Who will be occupying important executive positions in your business? What do they bring to the table? Will there be a third party involved with the company?
• Key Activities: What important activities will production entail? What activities will be carried out to ensure the smooth running of the company?
• The Product’s Value Propositions: What does your product do? How will it be different from other products?
• Customer Segments: What demography of consumers are you targeting? What are the habits of these consumers? Who are the MVPs of your target consumers?
• Customer Relationships: How will the team support and work with its customer base? How do you intend to build and maintain trust with the customer?
• Key Resources: What type of personnel and tools will be needed? What size of the budget will they need access to?
• Channels: How do you plan to create awareness of your products? How do you intend to transport your product to the customer?
• Cost Structure: What is the estimated cost of production? How much will distribution cost?
• Revenue Streams: For what value are customers willing to pay? How do they prefer to pay for the product? Are there any external revenues attached apart from the main source? How do the revenue streams contribute to the overall revenue?

Lean Canvas

The lean canvas is a problem-oriented alternative to the standard business model canvas. It was proposed by Ash Maurya, creator of Lean Stack as a development of the business model generation. It uses a more problem-focused approach and it majorly targets entrepreneurs and startup businesses.

Lean Canvas uses the same 9 blocks concept as the business model canvas, however, they have been modified slightly to suit the needs and purpose of a small startup. The key partners, key activities, customer relationships, and key resources are replaced by new segments which are:

• Problem: Simple and straightforward number of problems you have identified, ideally three.
• Solution: The solutions to each problem.
• Unfair Advantage: Something you possess that can't be easily bought or replicated.
• Key Metrics: Important numbers that will tell how your business is doing.

Startup Pitch Deck

While the business model canvas compresses into a factual sheet, startup pitch decks expand flamboyantly.

Pitch decks, through slides, convey your business plan, often through graphs and images used to emphasize estimations and observations in your presentation. Entrepreneurs often use pitch decks to fully convince their target audience of their plans before discussing funding arrangements.

Considering the likelihood of it being used in a small time frame, a good startup pitch deck should ideally contain 20 slides or less to have enough time to answer questions from the audience.

Unlike the standard and lean business model canvases, a pitch deck doesn't have a set template on how to present your business plan but there are still important components to it. These components often mirror those of the business model canvas except that they are in slide form and contain more details.

Using Airbnb (one of the most successful start-ups in recent history) for reference, the important components of a good slide are listed below.

• Cover/Introduction Slide: Here, you should include your company's name and mission statement. Your mission statement should be a very catchy tagline. Also, include personal information and contact details to provide an easy link for potential investors.
• Problem Slide: This slide requires you to create a connection with the audience or the investor that you are pitching. For example in their pitch, Airbnb summarized the most important problems it would solve in three brief points – pricing of hotels, disconnection from city culture, and connection problems for local bookings.
• Solution Slide: This slide includes your core value proposition. List simple and direct solutions to the problems you have mentioned
• Customer Analysis: Here you will provide information on the customers you will be offering your service to. The identity of your customers plays an important part in fundraising as well as the long-run viability of the business.
• Market Validation: Use competitive analysis to show numbers that prove the presence of a market for your product, industry behavior in the present and the long run, as well as the percentage of the market you aim to attract. It shows that you understand your competitors and customers and convinces investors of the opportunities presented in the market.
• Business Model: Your business model is the hook of your presentation. It may vary in complexity but it should generally include a pricing system informed by your market analysis. The goal of the slide is to confirm your business model is easy to implement.
• Marketing Strategy: This slide should summarize a few customer acquisition methods that you plan to use to grow the business.
• Competitive Advantage: What this slide will do is provide information on what will set you apart and make you a more attractive option to customers. It could be the possession of technology that is not widely known in the market.
• Team Slide: Here you will give a brief description of your team. Include your key management personnel here and their specific roles in the company. Include their educational background, job history, and skillsets. Also, talk about their accomplishments in their careers so far to build investors' confidence in members of your team.
• Traction Slide: This validates the company’s business model by showing growth through early sales and support. The slide aims to reduce any lingering fears in potential investors by showing realistic periodic milestones and profit margins. It can include current sales, growth, valuable customers, pre-orders, or data from surveys outlining current consumer interest.
• Funding Slide: This slide is popularly referred to as ‘the ask'. Here you will include important details like how much is needed to get your business off the ground and how the funding will be spent to help the company reach its goals.
• Appendix Slides: Your pitch deck appendix should always be included alongside a standard pitch presentation. It consists of additional slides you could not show in the pitch deck but you need to complement your presentation.

It is important to support your calculations with pictorial renditions. Infographics, such as pie charts or bar graphs, will be more effective in presenting the information than just listing numbers. For example, a six-month graph that shows rising profit margins will easily look more impressive than merely writing it.

Lastly, since a pitch deck is primarily used to secure meetings and you may be sharing your pitch with several investors, it is advisable to keep a separate public version that doesn't include financials. Only disclose the one with projections once you have secured a link with an investor.

Advantages of the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck over the Traditional Business Plan

• Time-Saving: Writing a detailed traditional business plan could take weeks or months. On the other hand, all three alternatives can be done in a few days or even one night of brainstorming if you have a comprehensive understanding of your business.
• Easier to Understand: Since the information presented is almost entirely factual, it puts focus on what is most important in running the business. They cut away the excess pages of fillers in a traditional business plan and allow investors to see what is driving the business and what is getting in the way.
• Easy to Update: Businesses typically present their business plans to many potential investors before they secure funding. What this means is that you may regularly have to amend your presentation to update statistics or adjust to audience-specific needs. For a traditional business plan, this could mean rewriting a whole section of your plan. For the three alternatives, updating is much easier because they are not voluminous.
• Guide for a More In-depth Business Plan: All three alternatives have the added benefit of being able to double as a sketch of your business plan if the need to create one arises in the future.

Business Plan FAQ

Business plans are important for any entrepreneur who is looking for a framework to run their company over some time or seeking external support. Although they are essential for new businesses, every company should ideally have a business plan to track their growth from time to time.  They can be used by startups seeking investments or loans to convey their business ideas or an employee to convince his boss of the feasibility of starting a new project. They can also be used by companies seeking to recruit high-profile employee targets into key positions or trying to secure partnerships with other firms.

Business plans often vary depending on your target audience, the scope, and the goals for the plan. Startup plans are the most common among the different types of business plans.  A start-up plan is used by a new business to present all the necessary information to help get the business up and running. They are usually used by entrepreneurs who are seeking funding from investors or bank loans. The established company alternative to a start-up plan is a feasibility plan. A feasibility plan is often used by an established company looking for new business opportunities. They are used to show the upsides of creating a new product for a consumer base. Because the audience is usually company people, it requires less company analysis. The third type of business plan is the lean business plan. A lean business plan is a brief, straight-to-the-point breakdown of your ideas and analysis for your business. It does not contain details of your proposal and can be written on one page. Finally, you have the what-if plan. As it implies, a what-if plan is a preparation for the worst-case scenario. You must always be prepared for the possibility of your original plan being rejected. A good what-if plan will serve as a good plan B to the original.

A good business plan has 10 key components. They include an executive plan, product analysis, desired customer base, company analysis, industry analysis, marketing strategy, sales strategy, financial projection, funding, and appendix. Executive Plan Your business should begin with your executive plan. An executive plan will provide early insight into what you are planning to achieve with your business. It should include your mission statement and highlight some of the important points which you will explain later. Product Analysis The next component of your business plan is your product analysis. A key part of this section is explaining the type of item or service you are going to offer as well as the market problems your product will solve. Desired Consumer Base Your product analysis should be supplemented with a detailed breakdown of your desired consumer base. Investors are always interested in knowing the economic power of your market as well as potential MVP customers. Company Analysis The next component of your business plan is your company analysis. Here, you explain how you want to run your business. It will include your operational strategy, an insight into the workforce needed to keep the company running, and important executive positions. It will also provide a calculation of expected operational costs.  Industry Analysis A good business plan should also contain well laid out industry analysis. It is important to convince potential investors you know the companies you will be competing with, as well as your plans to gain an edge on the competition. Marketing Strategy Your business plan should also include your marketing strategy. This is how you intend to spread awareness of your product. It should include a detailed explanation of the company brand as well as your advertising methods. Sales Strategy Your sales strategy comes after the market strategy. Here you give an overview of your company's pricing strategy and how you aim to maximize profits. You can also explain how your prices will adapt to market behaviors. Financial Projection The financial projection is the next component of your business plan. It explains your company's expected running cost and revenue earned during the tenure of the business plan. Financial projection gives a clear idea of how your company will develop in the future. Funding The next component of your business plan is funding. You have to detail how much external investment you need to get your business idea off the ground here. Appendix The last component of your plan is the appendix. This is where you put licenses, graphs, or key information that does not fit in any of the other components.

The business model canvas is a business management tool used to quickly define your business idea and model. It is often used when investors need you to pitch your business idea during a brief window.

A pitch deck is similar to a business model canvas except that it makes use of slides in its presentation. A pitch is not primarily used to secure funding, rather its main purpose is to entice potential investors by selling a very optimistic outlook on the business.

Business plan competitions help you evaluate the strength of your business plan. By participating in business plan competitions, you are improving your experience. The experience provides you with a degree of validation while practicing important skills. The main motivation for entering into the competitions is often to secure funding by finishing in podium positions. There is also the chance that you may catch the eye of a casual observer outside of the competition. These competitions also provide good networking opportunities. You could meet mentors who will take a keen interest in guiding you in your business journey. You also have the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs whose ideas can complement yours.

Exlore Further

• 12 Key Elements of a Business Plan (Top Components Explained)
• 13 Sources of Business Finance For Companies & Sole Traders
• 5 Common Types of Business Structures (+ Pros & Cons)
• How to Buy a Business in 8 Steps (+ Due Diligence Checklist)

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Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

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6 Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer

Lay out your goals and a road map for achieving them.

Table of Contents

An actionable business plan is crucial, whether your business is brand-new or an established player in its field. A business plan is especially vital for SMBs, which often must contend with lower name recognition, fewer loyal customers and other typical business challenges. While it doesn’t guarantee success, creating a business plan with research and care can help a business prepare for any future uncertainties.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners must ensure their business plans address six primary questions. Thinking through these questions and developing potential solutions helps set up your venture for success. 

What is a business plan, and why does it matter?

A business plan is a formal document designed to help you set achievable business goals and outline how you’ll accomplish them. The business plan should include various road maps dedicated to the following operational elements:

• Product creation
• Operational goals

A business plan is a valuable tool internally and externally.

• Internal business plan functions: Internally, a business plan helps align its decisions with an overall road map to help it stay on track. Businesses can also use road maps to help think through difficult choices, such as headcount decisions.
• External business plan functions: Externally, a road map is critical for securing funding from outside investors like angel investors . A business must demonstrate to investors that it has a solid business plan with achievable goals and a road map to success. 

What should a business plan include?

Typically, a business plan should include the following elements: 

• Executive summary. An executive summary highlights a business plan’s essential elements. Readers should be able to understand your business plan by reading your executive summary, even if they don’t read the rest of the document.
• Budget. A small business budget should include overall operational and personnel costs. Consider your payroll budget , marketing budget and other departmental budgets.
• Market analysis. A market analysis should include a thorough market assessment that identifies competitors, your target customer , customer buying habits, marketing demographics and what customers are willing to pay. A market analysis may include a competitive analysis that dives more deeply into direct and indirect competitors.
• Product analysis. A product analysis outlines decisions about optimal product pricing. While you want to sell as many products as possible, low prices can scare off customers and eat into your profit margins, while prices that are too high will have customers turning to your competitors. 
• Marketing strategy. Your marketing plan should outline how best to market the business and its products or services. Consider digital marketing targeted to specific online and social platforms, email marketing and local marketing. 

Business plans vary in length depending on your business’s size, industry and scope. An SMB typically has a shorter and more succinct business plan than a larger, established business that operates across industries. 

Questions every business plan should answer

We spoke with six business leaders who shared their thoughts on the crucial questions a business plan should answer. Consider these six essential questions to optimize your business plan.

1. What is the competitive advantage?

Scott Locke, chair of the intellectual property department at Dorf and Nelson LLP, advises thoroughly researching copyright infringement issues when determining your competitive advantage. 

“I always look for what will give the business a competitive advantage relative to businesses that want to offer the same or similar goods and services and an analysis of the competitive landscape,” Locke explained. “I pay particular attention as to whether there is valuable intellectual property, be it patents, trademarks, copyrights or trade secrets, that will serve as barriers to entry for competitors. Similarly, I like to see a discussion of the intellectual property of the most direct competitors and how the new business will avoid infringing on it.”

2. Is the business in a growth market?

Walter Recher, principal consultant at SmallBall Marketing, says your business plan should emphasize how you plan to grow your business . 

“The key to any successful business is to be a growing company in a growth market. A business plan should articulate how the entrepreneurs will enter the market, apply their investment to prepare them to grow quickly, and participate in the expansion of an industry that is thriving, with a better-than-average growth trajectory,” Recher said. “As I have spent my career working for hyper-growth companies in rapidly expanding markets, a founder of several small businesses and adjunct professor of a course on entrepreneurship, this has been the common denominator.”

3. Will customers pay for it?

Andi Gray, founder and president of Strategy Leaders, advises examining the risks of entrepreneurship and determining what and how customers will pay for their products and services. 

“When looking at business plans, I always want to know how the owners plan to get paying customers to engage at a fee and quantity that allows them, as owners, to be in business and sustain themselves,” Gray advised. “My frequently asked question is, ‘How do you plan to feed and clothe yourself, and where do you plan to sleep while you’re getting this venture off the ground?’ My hope is that it will cause the students to consider why they are planning to take the risks of entrepreneurship.” 

4. How will the business be staffed?

Larry Holfelder, senior consultant at DJL Insurance Services Inc., emphasizes the importance of staffing considerations. 

“In every business plan, I like to see the recognition of the need to cover and staff the production, sales and finance parts of the business. Roles should be established for the entity as if it were mature and successful,” Holfelder advised. “Multiple roles should be assigned at first, if necessary, and filled with the right people as the entity grows and the timing is right.” 

Holfelder says thoughtful staffing coverage shows that the business owners are realistic. “I like to see that type of thought process because it shows me they recognize that they won’t be able to do it all themselves and that business success revolves around collaboration and management,” Holfelder said. “It also shows that they recognize their own limitations, their ability to focus on their strengths, and the need to bring in others who know what they don’t in order to reach the goals they envision.”

5. Is the product innovative?

Irwin Glenn, chief identity scientist at Hunova, stresses the importance of innovation and inventiveness as well as the team’s level of inspiration. 

“Is the idea for the product or service innovative, a unique invention, or is the dream truly inspired? Glenn asked. “By innovative, I want to understand if the business plan is centered around a new twist on already-existing technology or services delivered in a new and compelling way. If inventive, can the idea be protected against new or existing competition? Finally, is the team assembled an excellent group that can’t be stopped from succeeding? Are they inspiring to me, each other, and their marketplace?”

6. Are the plans and goals realistic?

Charles North, former president and CEO of the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce, prioritizes a realistic business plan with reasonable expectations. 

“I look for it to be a realistic business plan, not something that is pie-in-the-sky. I want to see reasonable expectations,” North explained. “I tend to look more on the conservative side, since I feel that is the safest way to go. The idea doesn’t have to be reasonable; the plan does. The idea can be anything.”

North also emphasizes the importance of sales forecasts . “I always look for projections on what the business will do in the first year, second year, third year and fourth year showing sales, expenses [and the] bottom line as the business progresses. Those assumptions have to be reasonable.”

How planning for success pays off

A great business idea is no guarantee of success, but a solid business plan is a way to start a new business off the right foot and prepare your venture for a lucrative future. 

Business plans are a vital resource for businesses of all sizes. While business plans should, at minimum, lay out a series of goals and a road map for achieving them, a business plan should also help answer questions ranging from analyzing a business’ competitive advantages to considering if its goals are realistic. 

If you think through these questions while creating your business plan, your business will be in a better position to achieve its goals and weather any challenges it may face. 

David Mielach contributed to the reporting and writing in this article.

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Business plans might seem like an old-school stiff-collared practice, but they deserve a place in the startup realm, too. It’s probably not going to be the frame-worthy document you hang in the office—yet, it may one day be deserving of the privilege.

Whether you’re looking to win the heart of an angel investor or convince a bank to lend you money, you’ll need a business plan. And not just any ol’ notes and scribble on the back of a pizza box or napkin—you’ll need a professional, standardized report.

Bah. Sounds like homework, right?

Yes. Yes, it does.

However, just like bookkeeping, loan applications, and 404 redirects, business plans are an essential step in cementing your business foundation.

Don’t worry. We’ll show you how to write a business plan without boring you to tears. We’ve jam-packed this article with all the business plan examples, templates, and tips you need to take your non-existent proposal from concept to completion.

Table of Contents

What Is a Business Plan?

Tips to Make Your Small Business Plan Ironclad

How to Write a Business Plan in 6 Steps

Startup Business Plan Template

Business Plan Examples

Work on Making Your Business Plan

How to Write a Business Plan FAQs

What is a business plan why do you desperately need one.

A business plan is a roadmap that outlines:

• Who your business is, what it does, and who it serves
• Where your business is now
• Where you want it to go
• How you’re going to make it happen
• What might stop you from taking your business from Point A to Point B
• How you’ll overcome the predicted obstacles

While it’s not required when starting a business, having a business plan is helpful for a few reasons:

• Secure a Bank Loan: Before approving you for a business loan, banks will want to see that your business is legitimate and can repay the loan. They want to know how you’re going to use the loan and how you’ll make monthly payments on your debt. Lenders want to see a sound business strategy that doesn’t end in loan default.
• Win Over Investors: Like lenders, investors want to know they’re going to make a return on their investment. They need to see your business plan to have the confidence to hand you money.
• Stay Focused: It’s easy to get lost chasing the next big thing. Your business plan keeps you on track and focused on the big picture. Your business plan can prevent you from wasting time and resources on something that isn’t aligned with your business goals.

Beyond the reasoning, let’s look at what the data says:

• Simply writing a business plan can boost your average annual growth by 30%
• Entrepreneurs who create a formal business plan are 16% more likely to succeed than those who don’t
• A study looking at 65 fast-growth companies found that 71% had small business plans
• The process and output of creating a business plan have shown to improve business performance

Convinced yet? If those numbers and reasons don’t have you scrambling for pen and paper, who knows what will.

Don’t Skip: Business Startup Costs Checklist

Before we get into the nitty-gritty steps of how to write a business plan, let’s look at some high-level tips to get you started in the right direction:

Be Professional and Legit

You might be tempted to get cutesy or revolutionary with your business plan—resist the urge. While you should let your brand and creativity shine with everything you produce, business plans fall more into the realm of professional documents.

Think of your business plan the same way as your terms and conditions, employee contracts, or financial statements. You want your plan to be as uniform as possible so investors, lenders, partners, and prospective employees can find the information they need to make important decisions.

If you want to create a fun summary business plan for internal consumption, then, by all means, go right ahead. However, for the purpose of writing this external-facing document, keep it legit.

Know Your Audience

Your official business plan document is for lenders, investors, partners, and big-time prospective employees. Keep these names and faces in your mind as you draft your plan.

Think about what they might be interested in seeing, what questions they’ll ask, and what might convince (or scare) them. Cut the jargon and tailor your language so these individuals can understand.

Remember, these are busy people. They’re likely looking at hundreds of applicants and startup investments every month. Keep your business plan succinct and to the point. Include the most pertinent information and omit the sections that won’t impact their decision-making.

Invest Time Researching

You might not have answers to all the sections you should include in your business plan. Don’t skip over these!

Your audience will want:

• Detailed information about your customers
• Numbers and solid math to back up your financial claims and estimates
• Deep insights about your competitors and potential threats
• Data to support market opportunities and strategy

Your answers can’t be hypothetical or opinionated. You need research to back up your claims. If you don’t have that data yet, then invest time and money in collecting it. That information isn’t just critical for your business plan—it’s essential for owning, operating, and growing your company.

Stay Realistic

Your business may be ambitious, but reign in the enthusiasm just a teeny-tiny bit. The last thing you want to do is have an angel investor call BS and say “I’m out” before even giving you a chance.

The folks looking at your business and evaluating your plan have been around the block—they know a thing or two about fact and fiction. Your plan should be a blueprint for success. It should be the step-by-step roadmap for how you’re going from Point A to Point B.

How to Write a Business Plan—6 Essential Elements

Not every business plan looks the same, but most share a few common elements. Here’s what they typically include:

• Executive Summary
• Business Overview
• Products and Services
• Market Analysis
• Competitive Analysis
• Financial Strategy

Below, we’ll break down each of these sections in more detail.

1. Executive Summary

While your executive summary is the first page of your business plan, it’s the section you’ll write last. That’s because it summarizes your entire business plan into a succinct one-pager.

Begin with an executive summary that introduces the reader to your business and gives them an overview of what’s inside the business plan.

Your executive summary highlights key points of your plan. Consider this your elevator pitch. You want to put all your juiciest strengths and opportunities strategically in this section.

2. Business Overview

In this section, you can dive deeper into the elements of your business, including answering:

• What’s your business structure? Sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation, etc.
• Where is it located?
• Who owns the business? Does it have employees?
• What problem does it solve, and how?
• What’s your mission statement? Your mission statement briefly describes why you are in business. To write a proper mission statement, brainstorm your business’s core values and who you serve.

Don’t overlook your mission statement. This powerful sentence or paragraph could be the inspiration that drives an investor to take an interest in your business. Here are a few examples of powerful mission statements that just might give you the goosebumps:

• Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
• Tesla: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
• InvisionApp : Question Assumptions. Think Deeply. Iterate as a Lifestyle. Details, Details. Design is Everywhere. Integrity.
• TED : Spread ideas.
• Warby Parker : To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially conscious businesses.

3. Products and Services

As the owner, you know your business and the industry inside and out. However, whoever’s reading your document might not. You’re going to need to break down your products and services in minute detail.

For example, if you own a SaaS business, you’re going to need to explain how this business model works and what you’re selling.

You’ll need to include:

• What services you sell: Describe the services you provide and how these will help your target audience.
• What products you sell: Describe your products (and types if applicable) and how they will solve a need for your target and provide value.
• How much you charge: If you’re selling services, will you charge hourly, per project, retainer, or a mixture of all of these? If you’re selling products, what are the price ranges?

4. Market Analysis

Your market analysis essentially explains how your products and services address customer concerns and pain points. This section will include research and data on the state and direction of your industry and target market.

This research should reveal lucrative opportunities and how your business is uniquely positioned to seize the advantage. You’ll also want to touch on your marketing strategy and how it will (or does) work for your audience.

Include a detailed analysis of your target customers. This describes the people you serve and sell your product to. Be careful not to go too broad here—you don’t want to fall into the common entrepreneurial trap of trying to sell to everyone and thereby not differentiating yourself enough to survive the competition.

The market analysis section will include your unique value proposition. Your unique value proposition (UVP) is the thing that makes you stand out from your competitors. This is your key to success.

If you don’t have a UVP, you don’t have a way to take on competitors who are already in this space. Here’s an example of an ecommerce internet business plan outlining their competitive edge:

FireStarters’ competitive advantage is offering product lines that make a statement but won’t leave you broke. The major brands are expensive and not distinctive enough to satisfy the changing taste of our target customers. FireStarters offers products that are just ahead of the curve and so affordable that our customers will return to the website often to check out what’s new.

5. Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis examines the strengths and weaknesses of competing businesses in your market or industry. This will include direct and indirect competitors. It can also include threats and opportunities, like economic concerns or legal restraints.

The best way to sum up this section is with a classic SWOT analysis. This will explain your company’s position in relation to your competitors.

6. Financial Strategy

Your financial strategy will sum up your revenue, expenses, profit (or loss), and financial plan for the future. It’ll explain how you make money, where your cash flow goes, and how you’ll become profitable or stay profitable.

This is one of the most important sections for lenders and investors. Have you ever watched Shark Tank? They always ask about the company’s financial situation. How has it performed in the past? What’s the ongoing outlook moving forward? How does the business plan to make it happen?

Answer all of these questions in your financial strategy so that your audience doesn’t have to ask. Go ahead and include forecasts and graphs in your plan, too:

• Balance sheet: This includes your assets, liabilities, and equity.
• Profit & Loss (P&L) statement: This details your income and expenses over a given period.
• Cash flow statement: Similar to the P&L, this one will show all cash flowing into and out of the business each month.

It takes cash to change the world—lenders and investors get it. If you’re short on funding, explain how much money you’ll need and how you’ll use the capital. Where are you looking for financing? Are you looking to take out a business loan, or would you rather trade equity for capital instead?

Read More: 16 Financial Concepts Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know

Startup Business Plan Template (Copy/Paste Outline)

Ready to write your own business plan? Copy/paste the startup business plan template below and fill in the blanks.

Executive Summary Remember, do this last. Summarize who you are and your business plan in one page.

Business Overview Describe your business. What’s it do? Who owns it? How’s it structured? What’s the mission statement?

Products and Services Detail the products and services you offer. How do they work? What do you charge?

Market Analysis Write about the state of the market and opportunities. Use date. Describe your customers. Include your UVP.

Competitive Analysis Outline the competitors in your market and industry. Include threats and opportunities. Add a SWOT analysis of your business.

Financial Strategy Sum up your revenue, expenses, profit (or loss), and financial plan for the future. If you’re applying for a loan, include how you’ll use the funding to progress the business.

5 Frame-Worthy Business Plan Examples

Want to explore other templates and examples? We got you covered. Check out these 5 business plan examples you can use as inspiration when writing your plan:

• SBA Wooden Grain Toy Company
• SBA We Can Do It Consulting
• OrcaSmart Business Plan Sample
• Plum Business Plan Template
• PandaDoc Free Business Plan Templates

Get to Work on Making Your Business Plan

If you find you’re getting stuck on perfecting your document, opt for a simple one-page business plan —and then get to work. You can always polish up your official plan later as you learn more about your business and the industry.

Remember, business plans are not a requirement for starting a business—they’re only truly essential if a bank or investor is asking for it.

Ask others to review your business plan. Get feedback from other startups and successful business owners. They’ll likely be able to see holes in your planning or undetected opportunities—just make sure these individuals aren’t your competitors (or potential competitors).

Your business plan isn’t a one-and-done report—it’s a living, breathing document. You’ll make changes to it as you grow and evolve. When the market or your customers change, your plan will need to change to adapt.

That means when you’re finished with this exercise, it’s not time to print your plan out and stuff it in a file cabinet somewhere. No, it should sit on your desk as a day-to-day reference. Use it (and update it) as you make decisions about your product, customers, and financial plan.

Review your business plan frequently, update it routinely, and follow the path you’ve developed to the future you’re building.

Keep Learning: New Product Development Process in 8 Easy Steps

What financial information should be included in a business plan?

Be as detailed as you can without assuming too much. For example, include your expected revenue, expenses, profit, and growth for the future.

What are some common mistakes to avoid when writing a business plan?

The most common mistake is turning your business plan into a textbook. A business plan is an internal guide and an external pitching tool. Cut the fat and only include the most relevant information to start and run your business.

Who should review my business plan before I submit it?

Co-founders, investors, or a board of advisors. Otherwise, reach out to a trusted mentor, your local chamber of commerce, or someone you know that runs a business.

Ready to Write Your Business Plan?

Don’t let creating a business plan hold you back from starting your business. Writing documents might not be your thing—that doesn’t mean your business is a bad idea.

Let us help you get started.

Join our free training to learn how to start an online side hustle in 30 days or less. We’ll provide you with a proven roadmap for how to find, validate, and pursue a profitable business idea (even if you have zero entrepreneurial experience).

Stuck on the ideas part? No problem. When you attend the masterclass, we’ll send you a free ebook with 100 of the hottest side hustle trends right now. It’s chock full of brilliant business ideas to get you up and running in the right direction.

About Jesse Sumrak

Jesse Sumrak is a writing zealot focused on creating killer content. He’s spent almost a decade writing about startup, marketing, and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped business. A writer by day and a peak bagger by night (and early early morning), you can usually find Jesse preparing for the apocalypse on a precipitous peak somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

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How to Write a Business Plan, Step by Step

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What is a business plan?

1. write an executive summary, 2. describe your company, 3. state your business goals, 4. describe your products and services, 5. do your market research, 6. outline your marketing and sales plan, 7. perform a business financial analysis, 8. make financial projections, 9. summarize how your company operates, 10. add any additional information to an appendix, business plan tips and resources.

A business plan outlines your business’s financial goals and explains how you’ll achieve them over the next three to five years. Here’s a step-by-step guide to writing a business plan that will offer a strong, detailed road map for your business.

LLC Formation

A business plan is a document that explains what your business does, how it makes money and who its customers are. Internally, writing a business plan should help you clarify your vision and organize your operations. Externally, you can share it with potential lenders and investors to show them you’re on the right track.

Business plans are living documents; it’s OK for them to change over time. Startups may update their business plans often as they figure out who their customers are and what products and services fit them best. Mature companies might only revisit their business plan every few years. Regardless of your business’s age, brush up this document before you apply for a business loan .

» Need help writing? Learn about the best business plan software .

This is your elevator pitch. It should include a mission statement, a brief description of the products or services your business offers and a broad summary of your financial growth plans.

Though the executive summary is the first thing your investors will read, it can be easier to write it last. That way, you can highlight information you’ve identified while writing other sections that go into more detail.

» MORE: How to write an executive summary in 6 steps

Next up is your company description. This should contain basic information like:

Your business’s registered name.

Address of your business location .

Names of key people in the business. Make sure to highlight unique skills or technical expertise among members of your team.

Your company description should also define your business structure — such as a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation — and include the percent ownership that each owner has and the extent of each owner’s involvement in the company.

Lastly, write a little about the history of your company and the nature of your business now. This prepares the reader to learn about your goals in the next section.

» MORE: How to write a company overview for a business plan

The third part of a business plan is an objective statement. This section spells out what you’d like to accomplish, both in the near term and over the coming years.

If you’re looking for a business loan or outside investment, you can use this section to explain how the financing will help your business grow and how you plan to achieve those growth targets. The key is to provide a clear explanation of the opportunity your business presents to the lender.

For example, if your business is launching a second product line, you might explain how the loan will help your company launch that new product and how much you think sales will increase over the next three years as a result.

» MORE: How to write a successful business plan for a loan

In this section, go into detail about the products or services you offer or plan to offer.

You should include the following:

An explanation of how your product or service works.

The pricing model for your product or service.

The typical customers you serve.

Your supply chain and order fulfillment strategy.

You can also discuss current or pending trademarks and patents associated with your product or service.

Lenders and investors will want to know what sets your product apart from your competition. In your market analysis section , explain who your competitors are. Discuss what they do well, and point out what you can do better. If you’re serving a different or underserved market, explain that.

Here, you can address how you plan to persuade customers to buy your products or services, or how you will develop customer loyalty that will lead to repeat business.

Include details about your sales and distribution strategies, including the costs involved in selling each product .

» MORE: R e a d our complete guide to small business marketing

If you’re a startup, you may not have much information on your business financials yet. However, if you’re an existing business, you’ll want to include income or profit-and-loss statements, a balance sheet that lists your assets and debts, and a cash flow statement that shows how cash comes into and goes out of the company.

Accounting software may be able to generate these reports for you. It may also help you calculate metrics such as:

Net profit margin: the percentage of revenue you keep as net income.

Current ratio: the measurement of your liquidity and ability to repay debts.

Accounts receivable turnover ratio: a measurement of how frequently you collect on receivables per year.

This is a great place to include charts and graphs that make it easy for those reading your plan to understand the financial health of your business.

This is a critical part of your business plan if you’re seeking financing or investors. It outlines how your business will generate enough profit to repay the loan or how you will earn a decent return for investors.

Here, you’ll provide your business’s monthly or quarterly sales, expenses and profit estimates over at least a three-year period — with the future numbers assuming you’ve obtained a new loan.

Accuracy is key, so carefully analyze your past financial statements before giving projections. Your goals may be aggressive, but they should also be realistic.

NerdWallet’s picks for setting up your business finances:

The best business checking accounts .

The best business credit cards .

The best accounting software .

Before the end of your business plan, summarize how your business is structured and outline each team’s responsibilities. This will help your readers understand who performs each of the functions you’ve described above — making and selling your products or services — and how much each of those functions cost.

If any of your employees have exceptional skills, you may want to include their resumes to help explain the competitive advantage they give you.

Finally, attach any supporting information or additional materials that you couldn’t fit in elsewhere. That might include:

Licenses and permits.

Equipment leases.

Bank statements.

Details of your personal and business credit history, if you’re seeking financing.

If the appendix is long, you may want to consider adding a table of contents at the beginning of this section.

How much do you need?

with Fundera by NerdWallet

We’ll start with a brief questionnaire to better understand the unique needs of your business.

Once we uncover your personalized matches, our team will consult you on the process moving forward.

Here are some tips to write a detailed, convincing business plan:

Avoid over-optimism: If you’re applying for a business bank loan or professional investment, someone will be reading your business plan closely. Providing unreasonable sales estimates can hurt your chances of approval.

Proofread: Spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors can jump off the page and turn off lenders and prospective investors. If writing and editing aren't your strong suit, you may want to hire a professional business plan writer, copy editor or proofreader.

Use free resources: SCORE is a nonprofit association that offers a large network of volunteer business mentors and experts who can help you write or edit your business plan. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Development Centers , which provide free business consulting and help with business plan development, can also be a resource.

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Business Plan Questions: How To Set Yourself up for Success

• articles--table-of-contents#moveToHeadline" data-target="articles--table-of-contents.section">Why Having a Business Plan Is Critical
• articles--table-of-contents#moveToHeadline" data-target="articles--table-of-contents.section">What Are the Four Basic Business Questions?
• articles--table-of-contents#moveToHeadline" data-target="articles--table-of-contents.section">Additional Questions To Ask When Starting a Business Plan
• articles--table-of-contents#moveToHeadline" data-target="articles--table-of-contents.section">Business Plan Questions Checklist Help You Turn Your Idea Into Reality

“Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.” This is Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs and business school students. But between an idea and its execution is planning. That’s why it’s essential to have an effective business plan. How do you do that? With clear answers to business plan questions. Here we’ve put together an all-in-one roadmap to those planning questions.

Why Having a Business Plan Is Critical

Before we jump into questions a solid business plan should answer, let’s explain why you need business plans anyway.

• Your business plan is your company’s foundation and backbone. It’s your business model and should inform every aspect of your company’s operations.
• It’s your vision statement. Your business plan lays out your short and long-term objectives and guides you from one milestone to the next. It keeps you focused on what’s relevant, especially when establishing your presence in your industry.
• It proves you mean serious business, pun intended. This is important not only if you’re looking for investors or funding but also when hiring the right people. A good business plan gives you credibility and inspires confidence in your ability to implement business success.
• It helps you understand the competition. Crafting your business plan involves studying and understanding other players in the marketplace. This will put you in a better position within the competitive landscape.
• Whether you own small businesses or large corporations, business planning questions and business plans identify your target market. It points your market analysis in the right direction to cater to your target customer.
• It clarifies your financial needs. It lays out the complex numbers. How much capital do you need? How much does everything cost? When can you expect a return on your investment?
• It determines your brand’s position in the market. A successful plan shows what niche your company can occupy and how.

What Are the Four Basic Business Questions?

What are the four basic business questions your business plan should answer? They are:

• What do you do?
• What gap in the market do you fill?
• How will you make a profit?
• Who is your target customer?

Keep scrolling and see how we dive deeper into each of these inquiries. If you can answer these four, your growing company has the competitive advantage to attract potential customers.

1. Business Plan Questions: What Do You Do?

“What does your business do?”

This is a simple enough question, right? Anyone who wants to start a company has a product or service they want to sell.

But if you want to own a successful business, you need to go further than that. It’s not enough to just know what you want to provide; you need details. For example, say you want to own a restaurant. What kind of restaurant? What food do you serve, what is your service style, and why?

The “why” behind what your business does is crucial. It has to motivate you when presenting to financing partners. It has to keep you going when you’re struggling to attract clients. It has to push you to have a competitive advantage over your neighbors.

Do you need some help getting the juices flowing? Grab a pen and paper and start writing all details about your business and what it does.

2. What Gap in the Market Are You Filling?

What is your niche? How does your brand-new company differ from your competitors? In short, what gap in the market do you fill?

However great your idea is, someone else probably thought of it too. In this fast-paced world, it takes time to develop a new way of delivering a unique product or service.

Successful business plans and models create new ways to solve old problems. You need to find which part of the market other folks overlook and figure out how to fill it. Do that, and you’ll increase your chances of getting more money and funding.

No matter your industry, you’ll face competition that’s been in the game longer than you. They’ll already have a loyal following. You need to offer something different, so customers take notice.

So how do you find your niche? Do tons of research — this time, on the competition. See what others do and identify how to set yourself apart from the crowd.

This could be by presenting your product/service differently or adding something small but special. Or mastering new technology and online marketing tools. Whatever you choose, create a distinct identity for your business and emphasize it from the get-go.

In your plan, describe what makes you different and how you will assert this advantage.

3. Business Plan Questions: How Will You Earn Money?

Money, finance, costs. These (sometimes scary) words are a big part of any effective business plan. That’s why one of the most crucial business plan questions you must answer is: how will you earn money?

And your answer needs to go further than “By selling this product/service, of course.” How your business makes money involves multiple approaches.

How are you going to sell your products/services? Where are you going to sell them? How much do your products and services cost? What unexpected expenses might you have to pay for? Do you need additional funding to cover these costs? How will you pay your workers?

Your business plan should answer all of these questions.

That way, you’ll know if your business is sustainable in terms of your financial projections. Plus, you’ll see how and where you can adjust to achieve your goals in a realistic period. Next, you’ll better understand the necessary financial risks to get your business off the ground.

Lastly, you’ll understand what funding you need to secure and what research you need to do to get there. That way, working out the maximum profitability of your venue or business won’t be such a mystery.

4. Who Is Your Target Customer?

Last on our list of the four essential business planning questions: who is your target customer?

We can talk about sales, financial projections, bright ideas, and marketing all day. But there’s only a point if you know who you’re selling to.

Apart from understanding your goal client’s purchasing decisions, you need to know as much as possible about their demographic. You need to identify their age, gender status, geographic location, education, employment status, marital status, etc.

First, identify your initial demographic. Start-up businesses and businesses that have been in the game for years have different audiences. In general, you want to begin with a specific demographic.

Get as detailed as you can. This way, you set your company up for success with folks who are the most interested in what you’re selling. As time passes, you can expand that radius to reach more people.

The best way to conduct this market analysis is through (you guessed it) research. For example, look at your competitors and see who shops at their establishment or buys their services.

Additional Questions To Ask When Starting a Business Plan

With those four business planning questions, you’ve got the start of a solid business plan. Of course, you can’t just leave it at that. Successful businesses know they must go above and beyond the bare minimum.

With that in mind, we’ve come up with more critical things to focus on if you want to succeed. Here are our top additional questions to ask when starting a business plan.

Business Planning Questions: What Is Your Marketing Strategy?

However tremendous or unique your business model, if you don’t know how to market it effectively, it will fail. Even if you add your business to Google Maps , you won’t rank high on local searches without solid marketing.

That’s why we recommend creating a firm marketing strategy outline addressing your goals and challenges. Base your strategy on your product or service, your niche, your budget, and what your competitors do.

Why do we emphasize competitor research so much? Because it shows you what works and what doesn’t.

Of course, you want to avoid copying whatever they do. (Honest business practices are the best practices.) But you should use them as inspiration for your objectives.

What Do You Need To Turn Your Dreams Into Action?

How do you turn your dreams into reality? In short, how do you go from brainstorming to doing? Say you’re a restaurateur. It’s one thing to figure out how to open a restaurant versus how to win a Michelin star .

Answering this fundamental question for a business plan should give your potential investors a clear picture of the bottom line. That way, they can decide if your business is feasible.

You need initial capital and resources to start. You should identify your starting line and understand that it varies from industry to industry. (For example, the profit that successful bars make is different than what a hotel makes.) Then, provide the details of what you need to spend from this starting line when you craft your business plan.

How much revolving capital will you need for the initial run of your business? Do you need to hire people or purchase/rent equipment? What’s the price of the equipment?

How many costs can you cover out of pocket, and which require additional support? How long will it take before you can circulate your initial capital? Include all these questions and answers in your business outline, and you’ll succeed.

What Are Your Short and Long-term Goals?

Last but not least, for our business plan questions, let’s talk about your goals. No matter your services or products, you need a timeline for short and long-term goals.

Short-term goals are ideally achieved within a startup’s first two years. Long-term goals go beyond the first two years after your business is finally experiencing its initial ROI. (Return on Investment.) Make you have realistic goals and timelines. Here are critical business goals you may want to manage:

• Reduce business overhead
• Increase productivity
• Reach a specific number of followers on social media through organic growth.
• Reach a specific number of social media followers through paid advertising
• Develop a new product or services
• Launch your new product
• Open another store

Business Plan Questions Checklist Help You Turn Your Idea Into Reality

We hope this business plan questions checklist and article help you manage your company successfully.

With this, you can craft an impressive plan for potential investors and guide your business from point to point. Remember: your first business plan will evolve as you adapt to new opportunities, challenges, and trends.

Setting yourself apart as a startup should involve giving your customers the best experience at every opportunity. This is how you build a loyal customer base. If you have a physical store, make your customers feel valued with guest WiFi privileges they’ll enjoy.

Connect, capture, and keep more customers with Beambox, an all-in-one WiFi marketing platform that delivers an enhanced guest WiFi experience. Here’s what you can do with Beambox:

• Delight your customers with WiFi that remembers and welcomes them whenever they visit.
• Build a loyal following on your social media via a customized captive portal login. Folks looking for free ways to support small businesses can do so via your social channels.
• Understand your clients with innovative proximity marketing tools set up with your existing WiFi .
• Establish a perfect online reputation with customer reviews.

How to offer guests WiFi is the easiest of the business plan questions. Beambox is an all-in-one WiFi solution that accomplishes all of the above. Accelerate your business growth — start your Beambox free trial today !

Start a 30 day free trial with Beambox and start building your own email list, every time someone logs on to your property WiFi.

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Top 15 Startup Questions Before Starting a Business

15 min. read

Updated November 3, 2023

• 1. What kind of person makes a successful entrepreneur?

Research of successful entrepreneurs has documented that successful small business people have certain common characteristics. This checklist cannot predict success, but it can give you an idea of whether you will have a head start or a handicap with which to work.

How do you measure up? Ask yourself these questions:

• Can I persevere through tough times?
• Do I have a strong desire to be my own boss?
• Do the judgments I make in life regularly turn out well?
• Do I have an ability to conceptualize the whole of a business?
• Do I possess the high level of energy that is sustainable over long hours?
• Do I have significant specialized business experience?

While not every successful business owner starts with a “yes” answer to all these questions, three or four “no” responses and undecided answers should make you think twice about going at it alone right now. But, don’t be discouraged. Seek extra training and support, and enlist the help from a skilled team of business advisors such as accountants, bankers, attorneys and SCORE counselors.

• 2. How do I determine whether I am capable of starting a business?

Small business owners have many things in common. Below are some of the qualities you will need to be successful.

• Willingness to sacrifice— If you enjoy working the nine to five, do not go into business for yourself. Entrepreneurship often requires many more hours beyond the forty-hour work week.
• Interpersonal skills— You will be required to interact with a host of people other than customers, such as lawyers, employees, and salespeople. If you do not like talking to people you do not know, it might be better to keep your day job.
• Leadership ability— You will be the one everyone turns to for the answers. Are you ready to call the shots?
• Optimism— Being able to hang in there when business gets tough is an important quality in small business owners.

Compare your skills and expertise with others who are successful in similar businesses. Can you duplicate and surpass the capability of other successful businesses? What unique skills or “edge” can you provide to obtain a sufficient share of total market?

Review business journals, trade magazines and other comparative studies that identify the requirements to operate the business. From that information, derive a formula for the skills and traits you plan to incorporate into the business operation.

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• 3. Why is a business plan important and who should write it?

A business plan is important because it summarizes both your vision for the company and your blueprint for the company’s operating success. The business plan is a written guide that details the startup and the future direction of your company.Who should write the plan? You, the entrepreneur. No one else knows your business idea and goals better. Yes, there are services that can do the work for you, however, you are the one who must present this business idea to bankers or other investors. Therefore, it is best if you are very familiar and comfortable with the plan.

Although there’s no set format, a good business plan typically includes:

• Cover page— Identifies your business
• Table of contents— Organizes information for the reader
• Executive summary— Provides a “big picture” view of the plan, highlighting the factors that will lead to success
• Business background— If it is a brand-new business, include your background and skills
• Marketing plan— Relates the business’s marketing strategy
• Action plan— Summarizes how you will create and deliver your product or service
• Financial statements and projections— Illustrates how the business will perform financially based on the plan’s assumptions
• Appendix— Includes statistical analyses, marketing materials, and résumés.
• 4. If I am not planning to apply for a bank loan, why do I need a business plan?

The fact that a bank or lending institution requires a well-executed business plan is a secondary consideration. The primary purpose of the business plan is to guide the owner or manager in successfully operating the business. Preparing the plan forces the writer to consider all aspects of the business and to confront any problems the plan highlights. For example, a monthly compilation of all known costs, over time, will indicate the revenue necessary to support these costs, plus a profit. This leads to the question of whether or not this revenue number is reasonable. If not, it may cast doubt on the viability of the venture itself. The business plan is a vital management tool that enables the manager to anticipate situations before they become problems — or worse yet, emergencies.

• 5. How do I determine my startup costs and other expenses?

It is wise to find out what startup costs you will incur before starting the business. Many a budding entrepreneur takes his or her life savings, or will borrow on the equity on their home before figuring these financial factors, only to find that they don’t have enough money. There are many web sites and other resources (including SCORE offices and Business Information Centers) that provide guidelines and worksheets to help determine costs for your business. Each item on your proposed budget sheet should be researched. Closely estimated costs can be obtained from utility companies, trade associations, and networking with other business people who may have already gone through this experience. Do not start buying until the investigation shows this venture is viable and you have all the information needed.

• 6. What do I need to know about financial statements?

First, you need to know which financial statements are important. They are:

• Balance Sheet—shows the financial conditions of your business at a point in time
• Statement of Operations (Profit and Loss Statement)—shows whether you made a profit during a specific period of time
• Cash Flow Statement—shows what happened to your cash position during a specific period of time

You should have a basic understanding of each of these statements. When compared with statements from prior periods, you can determine whether something is happening in your business that needs your special attention.

Your accountant can prepare these statements for you from the business data that you supply. There are also a number of computer software programs that will help you generate these statements from your input of regular transactions—such as sales, collections, purchases, payments and payroll.

A SCORE counselor can help you understand these statements and may be able to direct you to a workshop on this subject. In addition, most community and business colleges teach courses in financial statement analysis.

• 7. Why is it important to do a monthly cash flow analysis?

Your businesses cash-flow cycle may differ substantially from the income statement projections. Even if the projected income statement shows a profit, it is possible that the cash flow for the same period is actually negative.The analysis of monthly cash flow can indicate whether your business will collect sufficient cash to pay operating expenses. It will point out specific months during the year when the business may experience operating cash shortfalls and, therefore, either require additional capital or excess cash reserves for payment of expenses. It will also show when you may be able to make debt reductions and when there is excess cash to make major purchases or expand operations. By developing a monthly cash flow projection, you can time cash needs and quantify the amount needed. The cash flow projection is an important management tool and must be developed with very realistic expectations. Sufficient cash is critical for a business to pay its expenses and to enable it to expand. If your monthly cash flow projections indicate frequent cash shortfalls, you should review the type of products and services that you offer, the mix of sales, the pricing and terms of the sale, and your short-term borrowing needs.

• 8. How can I obtain cash to maintain and grow my business?

Develop a positive business relationship with your bank. Seek your banker’s advice even at times where you are not seeking funds. You may find that every time you go to your bank you speak to a different loan officer, so you should know them all.When the loan officer gets a promotion, you must start all over again with another person. If you want the bank to take an interest in your business, then you have to take an interest in theirs. How?

• Know your banker— Take an interest in your banker as a person. Ask your banker to hold on to your account if he or she is promoted. When you go to see your banker, have your business plan and financial papers ready. Make it easy for your banker to see what you want and why. The bank wants to minimize its risk with regard to you and your business. This is where you have to sell yourself.
• Know your bank— Know and understand your bank’s annual report. Know your bank’s business direction and plan. Know the bank’s lines of authority. Get on the bank’s mailing list. It’s an easy way to keep up with bank news.
• Go to a bank-sponsored seminar— Go to your bank’s seminars on commercial lending. This will teach you how your bank operates in terms of lending policies. By doing this, you also prove that you have an interest in what the bank is doing. Finally, it affords you the opportunity to meet and make an impression on the loan committee.
• 9. Why is location the most important aspect of my business?

A good location can make the difference between a profitable and a bankrupt business. There are many questions to consider when choosing a business site. Use the questions below as a checklist for potential locations and then compare several sites.

• Are there parking facilities?
• Is transportation available and convenient?
• Is the quality of police and fire service adequate?
• Will it be a quality site for the future—not just five years from now, but in 10, or 25 years?
• Is nearby housing readily available for management and employees?
• Is there nearby competition? Are those sites better or worse than yours?
• What is the general business climate in the area? Is this a prosperous market?
• Are merchandise and raw materials available? Are your suppliers easily accessible?
• How is the traffic flow—can your customers reach you quickly and inexpensively?
• Is your building suitable to your kind of business—will it need any major renovations?
• Is there an adequate community infrastructure for utilities (sewer, water, power, gas, etc.)?
• What is the tax burden—town, city, county, state? Will this impede your business and growth?
• What are the costs of operation in this location—will it be too high to offer you an adequate profit?
• 10. Why is competition important?

No business operates without direct competition. There also may be indirect competition, which has a significant impact on customer’s buying decisions in your market. Direct and non-direct competitors try to convince customers to buy their products or services instead of yours. It is in your best interest to learn more about the companies that are trying to reduce your take-home pay. List the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor. Talk with friends, visit your competition, call for information about their products and analyze how they advertise. Next, take a sheet of paper and list the major competitors. Give each a rating, on a scale of one to 10, for product quality, process, advertising, price and customer satisfaction. You can add other ratings that you feel are important.Your business can become more profitable by adopting practices you admire in competitor operations and by avoiding their mistakes. Some of your competitors have been in business successfully for many years. Certainly, as a new or relatively new business, you can learn a lot from them.

• 11. How can I better market my business?

To market your business, you must define your customer. To maintain consistent sales growth, you must become knowledgeable about your market. Develop an outline of your “typical” consumer:

• What exactly is your market?
• Where do the consumers come from (i.e. city centers, suburbs, tourists, international)?
• What are customers buying patterns?
• Why should they buy from you? Factors could include convenience, price, quality, service, etc.
• Should you try to appeal to a niche market segment or the entire market?
• Have you missed a new customer segment or special market?
• How large is the potential target market (in units or dollars)? Is it growing, stable or decreasing? What percentage of the market do you have?

Research will provide answers that are not available from your business records and a financial analysis. Conduct research through trade associations, your local chamber of commerce, libraries or even ask for the help of a SCORE counselor. Pay attention to how competitors market to their customers. Perhaps, some of their marketing strategies can be adopted for your business, or you may find examples of what not to do.

• 12. What makes a successful marketing strategy?

When creating a marketing strategy, keep in mind the four P’s of marketing:

• Product— What good or service will your business offer? How is that product better than those offered by competitors? Why will people buy/want it?
• Price— How much can you charge? How do you find the balance between sales volume and price to maximize income?
• Promotion— How will your product or service be positioned in the marketplace? Will your product carry a premium image with a price to match? Will it be an inexpensive, no-frills alternative to similar offerings from other businesses? What kinds of advertising and packaging will you use?
• Place— Which sales channels will you use? Will you sell by telephone, or will your product be carried in retail outlets? Which channel will economically reach your market?

The marketing strategy should summarize your findings about the key target buyer description, market segments the company will compete in, the unique positioning of the company and its products compared to the competition, the reasons why it is unique or compelling to buyers, etc.

• 13. What do I need to know before creating a marketing brochure?

A marketing brochure can be long-lasting or short-term. It can represent your business to potential customers and it can be a referral piece for existing customers. Decide the purpose of and goals for the marketing brochure before you begin to design and write. Remember, this brochure represents you and your business, so be sure its look and feel complements your business.

Here are few tips for when you are ready to begin:

• State your message up front—T he selling message should appear on the cover of the brochure. For instance, “The XYZ Company—Consultants on Doing Business Overseas.”
• Include artwork— If you have space limitations, one large photograph or graphic is better than several small images that might not clearly portray your services or products.
• Photo captions— Photo captions are read twice as often as the main copy.
• Create a keeper— Make your brochure worth keeping. Include a calendar of events in your specific industry or some data that will be useful to potential clients in the future.
• Quality is key— Your publications reflect you and your business. Using one to four colors in the brochure will make it stand out over one that is black and white. A good quality paper stock is also important (and comes in many colors and shades if you choose to use black ink). Remember to consider the weight of the paper stock in relationship to mailing costs.

It is wise to have your brochure professionally designed. Even if you have computer graphic skills, design is best left to professionals.

• 14. How can I improve customer service in my business?

Develop a strategy that puts the customer first. Customers will receive the best possible service when employees are empowered to make this happen. This is not to say that you should be lenient with your policies, but have a degree of flexibility. Just remember, a lost customer could spread the word of their discontent, resulting in more lost customers.Review the most common reasons for poor customer service. Use these insights as a way to improve your customer service:

• Too many rules— Employees lack creativity in problem solving. Rules are followed and good solutions are not developed because employees do not want to jeopardize their jobs.
• Lip service, not customer service— Customer service is really only a name for customer complaints. Time is spent trying to fix problems rather than preventing them from occurring in the first place.
• Unempowered employees— Approval is needed by a manager for small problems that can easily be solved by a good employee. This problem leads to long lines and time-consuming waits by the customer, who then refuses to come back-business operations turns a small problem into a large one.
• Unmotivated employees— Personnel are not encouraged to please the customer because there is no merit in it for them.
• Bad communication— Coordination of functions does not exist-one person may write an order while another picks it off a warehouse shelf and someone else delivers it to the customer. This can result in miscommunication, incorrect goods or services, and time delays.
• Arbitrary policies— Policies that are followed blindly without room for situational allowances may result in angry customers. For example, a store’s return policy of 30 days prevents a customer who, with good reason, could not get back to the store in time from receiving a refund. That customer will refuse to do business there anymore.
• 15. Is there anyone who can answer questions specific to my business?

SCORE “Counselors to America’s Small Business” provides free and confidential business advice and mentoring services to entrepreneurs nationwide. SCORE is a nonprofit association consisting of 10,500 business counselors who donate their time and business expertise to guide small businesses via face-to-face mentoring or online counseling.SCORE, a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), has assisted millions of start-up and growing businesses since 1964.

SCORE "Counselors to America's Small Business" is America's premier source of free and confidential small business advice for entrepreneurs. Formed in 1964, SCORE provides a public service to America by offering small business advice and training.

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Business Plan Questionnaire

Successful business plans clearly explain a company’s business model, objectives, strategies, and competitive advantages. Use our business plan questionnaire below for a list of the questions you should answer in each section of your business plan to ensure clarity and understanding of your business’s hopes and mission. 

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

What Questions Should Be Asked in a Business Plan?

The business plan questionnaire can help you with how to write your business plan . It will give you a concrete set of directions for the future and allow you to further examine and learn about the market you are entering. Be sure to provide answers to the following questions in each key section of your business plan.

Executive Summary Questions

You may ask yourself:

• What is the issue your business is addressing?
• How are you solving it?
• What are your business’s strengths?
• Why should an investor be interested in your business?

Company Analysis Questions

Ask yourself the following:

• What is your business’ mission?
• What is your history?
• What are some of your past achievements?
• What is your business’ legal structure?
• Where is your business located?
• Why did you start the business?
• How do you measure your business success?

Industry Analysis Questions

Include the answers to the following questions:

• What is the size of the market?
• What are the characteristics of the market: growth trends, units sold, employment? 
• What factors are influencing growth or decline in the market?
• Are there any barriers to entering the market? 
• Are there any government regulations that affect the market? 

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Customer analysis questions.

Be sure to include the following in your analysis:

• What is the size of the target customer market?
• Where are these prospective customers located?
• What are their desires and needs, and how will your business meet those needs?
• In descriptive terms, who is your target market? (what motivates them to purchase, what influences their purchasing decisions) 
• Why will your target customers seek out your business?
• What trends/purchasing shifts could occur in the market?
• How will you monitor customer satisfaction? (e.g., surveys, reviews, etc.)

Competitive Analysis Questions

First, simply focus on your competition and what they are up to.

Address the following:

• Who are your direct competitors? (e.g., other businesses in your genre) What percentage of market share do they occupy?
• Who are your indirect competitors? (e.g., other companies that may not be specified in your business’s genre, but provide similar results to that of your business) 
• What are your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses?
• What are their products and pricing like?

Then, look into your business’ competitive advantage to describe how your business will be better.

• Will you offer more or better features?
• Will you ensure better results for your users?
• Will you offer better pricing?
• Will your customer service be more efficient?
• Will you offer a better overall customer experience?

Marketing Plan Questions

A complete plan will include the following marketing plan sections:

• How will you communicate to your target customers about your product or service?
• Why are you choosing these specific avenues (e.g., website, Social Media, etc.)?
• What materials do you have or need, and what will be the cost of this?
• What do you plan to spend on marketing per prospect and per client?
• How will you retain existing customers?
• How will your business attract publicity?
• What media will you target?
• How will your product or service be delivered to the market?
• How might future changes impact your marketing?
• How will you price your product relative to others in the market to be competitive yet profitable?
• What type of payment will you accept?
• Overall, how will your marketing strategy be effective to your target customers?

Operations Plan Questions

Consider the following:

• What equipment is needed, and what is the cost?
• What are your hours of operation and number of shifts?
• How many employees will you have?
• What are the skill sets required when looking to hire new employees?
• What are your practices for scheduling, managing, and hiring personnel?
• What are the processes you will use to produce and sell your product or service?
• What is your purchasing process?
• How will finished goods be distributed?
• How will quality be measured and improved over time?
• What will your procedures to keep track of inventory look like?

Management Team Questions

In this section, answer the following:

• Who are your founding members and what is their background?
• Who are your support team members and what are their responsibilities? (include position title, person’s name, and role)
• Do you offer any ownership options to attract key management?
• Do you have any Board of Directors?
• Do you have any outside consultants that will work with your business as it grows?
• What is your business’ organizational structure? 

Financial Plan Questions

Your financial plan should include:

• Profit & Loss statement 
• Cash flow statement
• Balance sheet
• Sales volume forecast
• Personnel plan
• Break-even analysis

Here, you must gather data and convey just how much money your business will need and how much income you will earn, as well as when your business will be profitable. 

Be sure to consider the following:

• How were your numbers calculated?
• Why are the salaries and office expenses you have calculated reasonable to your business?
• Why are your expense estimates realistic?
• How have you budgeted for unexpected costs?
• Is there any debt the business currently has?
• What is the amount of equity the owners and stockholders have? 
• What is your annual interest expense?
• What is the percentage of sales issued for returns? 
• What is your average daily inventory value?
• Are you using a fixed or variable inventory method?
• What is the limit on your line of credit and the average interest rate?
• What is your minimum checking account balance to have at all times?

Your financial plan should prove that you are informed and knowledgeable on the numbers around your business. It should prove that you are aware of all potential unexpected costs or other out-of-the-blue setbacks. 

Appendix Questions

Appendices may be anywhere from just a few pages to a hundred or more.

Your appendix can include:

• Resumes of key management, blurbs on other management members
• Job descriptions/titles
• Copies of any agreements having bearing on the business plan
• Copies of licenses
• Personal and business tax returns (if applying for a loan)
• Marketing materials 
• Photos or sketches of the building, property, equipment, products 
• Industry studies or other information supporting industry trends
• Summaries of secondary market studies

Business Plan Questionnaire Conclusion

The above sample survey questionnaire for a business plan should be a guide for you to use as an outline and checklist of items that will need to be addressed in your company’s business plan. Growthink’s fill in the blank business plan includes each of these key elements and more to help your business succeed.

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With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

How to Write a Business Plan (Plus Examples & Templates)

Have you ever wondered how to write a business plan step by step? Mike Andes, told us: 

This guide will help you write a business plan to impress investors.

Throughout this process, we’ll get information from Mike Andes, who started Augusta Lawn Care Services when he was 12 and turned it into a franchise with over 90 locations. He has gone on to help others learn how to write business plans and start businesses.  He knows a thing or two about writing  business plans!

We’ll start by discussing the definition of a business plan. Then we’ll discuss how to come up with the idea, how to do the market research, and then the important elements in the business plan format. Keep reading to start your journey!

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is simply a road map of what you are trying to achieve with your business and how you will go about achieving it. It should cover all elements of your business including: 

• Finding customers
• Plans for developing a team
•  Competition
• Legal structures
• Key milestones you are pursuing

If you aren’t quite ready to create a business plan, consider starting by reading our business startup guide .

Get a Business Idea

Before you can write a business plan, you have to have a business idea. You may see a problem that needs to be solved and have an idea how to solve it, or you might start by evaluating your interests and skills. 

Mike told us, “The three things I suggest asking yourself when thinking about starting a business are:

• What am I good at?
• What would I enjoy doing?
• What can I get paid for?”

If all three of these questions don’t lead to at least one common answer, it will probably be a much harder road to success. Either there is not much market for it, you won’t be good at it, or you won’t enjoy doing it. 

As Mike told us, “There’s enough stress starting and running a business that if you don’t like it or aren’t good at it, it’s hard to succeed.”

If you’d like to hear more about Mike’s approach to starting a business, check out our YouTube video

Conduct Market Analysis

Market analysis is focused on establishing if there is a target market for your products and services, how large the target market is, and identifying the demographics of people or businesses that would be interested in the product or service. The goal here is to establish how much money your business concept can make.

Product and Service Demand

A search engine is your best friend when trying to figure out if there is demand for your products and services. Personally, I love using presearch.org because it lets you directly search on a ton of different platforms including Google, Youtube, Twitter, and more. Check out the screenshot for the full list of search options.

With quick web searches, you can find out how many competitors you have, look through their reviews, and see if there are common complaints about the competitors. Bad reviews are a great place to find opportunities to offer better products or services. 

If there are no similar products or services, you may have stumbled upon something new, or there may just be no demand for it. To find out, go talk to your most honest friend about the idea and see what they think. If they tell you it’s dumb or stare at you vacantly, there’s probably no market for it.

You can also conduct a survey through social media to get public opinion on your idea. Using Facebook Business Manager , you could get a feel for who would be interested in your product or service.

 I ran a quick test of how many people between 18-65  you could reach in the U.S. during a week. It returned an estimated 700-2,000 for the total number of leads, which is enough to do a fairly accurate statistical analysis.

Identify Demographics of Target Market

Depending on what type of business you want to run, your target market will be different. The narrower the demographic, the fewer potential customers you’ll have. If you did a survey, you’ll be able to use that data to help define your target audience. Some considerations you’ll want to consider are:

• Other Interests
• Marital Status
• Do they have kids?

Once you have this information, it can help you narrow down your options for location and help define your marketing further. One resource that Mike recommended using is the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts Map . He told us,  

“It helps you quickly evaluate what the best areas are for your business to be located.”

How to Write a Business Plan

Now that you’ve developed your idea a little and established there is a market for it, you can begin writing a business plan. Getting started is easier with the business plan template we created for you to download. I strongly recommend using it as it is updated to make it easier to create an action plan. 

Each of the following should be a section of your business plan:

• Business Plan Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Description of Products and Services

SWOT Analysis

• Competitor Data
• Competitive Analysis
• Marketing Expenses Strategy 

Pricing Strategy

• Distribution Channel Assessment
• Operational Plan
• Management and Organizational Strategy
• Financial Statements and/or Financial Projections

We’ll look into each of these. Don’t forget to download our free business plan template (mentioned just above) so you can follow along as we go. 

How to Write a Business Plan Step 1. Create a Cover Page

The first thing investors will see is the cover page for your business plan. Make sure it looks professional. A great cover page shows that you think about first impressions.

A good business plan should have the following elements on a cover page:

• Professionally designed logo
• Company name
• Mission or Vision Statement
• Contact Info

Basically, think of a cover page for your business plan like a giant business card. It is meant to capture people’s attention but be quickly processed.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 2. Create a Table of Contents

Most people are busy enough that they don’t have a lot of time. Providing a table of contents makes it easy for them to find the pages of your plan that are meaningful to them.

A table of contents will be immediately after the cover page, but you can include it after the executive summary. Including the table of contents immediately after the executive summary will help investors know what section of your business plan they want to review more thoroughly.

Check out Canva’s article about creating a  table of contents . It has a ton of great information about creating easy access to each section of your business plan. Just remember that you’ll want to use different strategies for digital and hard copy business plans.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 3. Write an Executive Summary

An executive summary is where your business plan should catch the readers interest.  It doesn’t need to be long, but should be quick and easy to read.

Mike told us,

How long should an executive summary bein an informal business plan?

For casual use, an executive summary should be similar to an elevator pitch, no more than 150-160 words, just enough to get them interested and wanting more. Indeed has a great article on elevator pitches .  This can also be used for the content of emails to get readers’ attention.

It consists of three basic parts:

• An introduction to you and your business.
• What your business is about.
• A call to action

Example of an informal executive summary 

One of the best elevator pitches I’ve used is:

So far that pitch has achieved a 100% success rate in getting partnerships for the business.

What should I include in an executive summary for investors?

Investors are going to need a more detailed executive summary if you want to secure financing or sell equity. The executive summary should be a brief overview of your entire business plan and include:

• Introduction of yourself and company.
• An origin story (Recognition of a problem and how you came to solution)
• An introduction to your products or services.
• Your unique value proposition. Make sure to include intellectual property.
• Where you are in the business life cycle
• Request and why you need it.

Successful business plan examples

The owner of Urbanity told us he spent 2 months writing a 75-page business plan and received a $250,000 loan from the bank when he was 23. Make your business plan as detailed as possible when looking for financing. We’ve provided a template to help you prepare the portions of a business plan that banks expect.

Here’s the interview with the owner of Urbanity:

When to write an executive summary?

Even though the summary is near the beginning of a business plan, you should write it after you complete the rest of a business plan. You can’t talk about revenue, profits, and expected expenditures if you haven’t done the market research and created a financial plan.

What mistakes do people make when writing an executive summary?

Business owners commonly go into too much detail about the following items in an executive summary:

• Marketing and sales processes
• Financial statements
• Organizational structure
• Market analysis

These are things that people will want to know later, but they don’t hook the reader. They won’t spark interest in your small business, but they’ll close the deal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 4. Company Description

Every business plan should include a company description. A great business plan will include the following elements while describing the company:

• Mission statement
• Philosophy and vision
• Company goals

Target market

• Legal structure

Let’s take a look at what each section includes in a good business plan.

Mission Statement

A mission statement is a brief explanation of why you started the company and what the company’s main focus is. It should be no more than one or two sentences. Check out HubSpot’s article 27 Inspiring Mission Statement for a great read on informative and inspiring mission and vision statements. 

Company Philosophy and Vision

The company philosophy is what drives your company. You’ll normally hear them called core values.  These are the building blocks that make your company different. You want to communicate your values to customers, business owners, and investors as often as possible to build a company culture, but make sure to back them up.

What makes your company different?

Each company is different. Your new business should rise above the standard company lines of honesty, integrity, fun, innovation, and community when communicating your business values. The standard answers are corporate jargon and lack authenticity. 

Examples of core values

One of my clients decided to add a core values page to their website. As a tech company they emphasized the values:

•  Prioritize communication.
•  Never stop learning.
•  Be transparent.
•  Start small and grow incrementally.

These values communicate how the owner and the rest of the company operate. They also show a value proposition and competitive advantage because they specifically focus on delivering business value from the start. These values also genuinely show what the company is about and customers recognize the sincerity. Indeed has a great blog about how to identify your core values .

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement communicate the long lasting change a business pursues. The vision helps investors and customers understand what your company is trying to accomplish. The vision statement goes beyond a mission statement to provide something meaningful to the community, customer’s lives, or even the world.

Example vision statements

The Alzheimer’s Association is a great example of a vision statement:

A world without Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.

It clearly tells how they want to change the world. A world without Alzheimers might be unachievable, but that means they always have room for improvement.

Business Goals

You have to measure success against goals for a business plan to be meaningful. A business plan helps guide a company similar to how your GPS provides a road map to your favorite travel destination. A goal to make as much money as possible is not inspirational and sounds greedy.

Sure, business owners want to increase their profits and improve customer service, but they need to present an overview of what they consider success. The goals should help everyone prioritize their work.

How far in advance should a business plan?

Business planning should be done at least one year in advance, but many banks and investors prefer three to five year business plans. Longer plans show investors that the management team  understands the market and knows the business is operating in a constantly shifting market. In addition, a plan helps businesses to adjust to changes because they have already considered how to handle them.

Example of great business goals

My all time-favorite long-term company goals are included in Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux . These goals were written in 2016 and drive the company’s decisions through 2026. They are the reason that investors are so forgiving when Elon Musk continually fails to meet his quarterly and annual goals.

If the progress aligns with the business plan investors are likely to continue to believe in the company. Just make sure the goals are reasonable or you’ll be discredited (unless you’re Elon Musk).

You did target market research before creating a business plan. Now it’s time to add it to the plan so others understand what your ideal customer looks like. As a new business owner, you may not be considered an expert in your field yet, so document everything. Make sure the references you use are from respectable sources. 

Use information from the specific lender when you are applying for lending. Most lenders provide industry research reports and using their data can strengthen the position of your business plan.

A small business plan should include a section on the external environment. Understanding the industry is crucial because we don’t plan a business in a vacuum. Make sure to research the industry trends, competitors, and forecasts. I personally prefer IBIS World for my business research. Make sure to answer questions like:

• What is the industry outlook long-term and short-term?
• How will your business take advantage of projected industry changes and trends?
• What might happen to your competitors and how will your business successfully compete?

Industry resources

Some helpful resources to help you establish more about your industry are:

• Trade Associations
• Federal Reserve
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

Legal Structure

There are five basic types of legal structures that most people will utilize:

• Sole proprietorships
• Limited Liability Companies (LLC)

Partnerships

Corporations.

• Franchises.

Each business structure has their pros and cons. An LLC is the most common legal structure due to its protection of personal assets and ease of setting up. Make sure to specify how ownership is divided and what roles each owner plays when you have more than one business owner.

You’ll have to decide which structure is best for you, but we’ve gathered information on each to make it easier.

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship is the easiest legal structure to set up but doesn’t protect the owner’s personal assets from legal issues. That means if something goes wrong, you could lose both your company and your home.

To start a sole proprietorship, fill out a special tax form called a  Schedule C . Sole proprietors can also join the American Independent Business Alliance .

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

An LLC is the most common business structure used in the United States because an LLC protects the owner’s personal assets. It’s similar to partnerships and corporations, but can be a single-member LLC in most states. An LLC requires a document called an operating agreement.

Each state has different requirements. Here’s a link to find your state’s requirements . Delaware and Nevada are common states to file an LLC because they are really business-friendly. Here’s a blog on the top 10 states to get an LLC.

Partnerships are typically for legal firms. If you choose to use a partnership choose a Limited Liability Partnership. Alternatively, you can just use an LLC.

Corporations are typically for massive organizations. Corporations have taxes on both corporate and income tax so unless you plan on selling stock, you are better off considering an LLC with S-Corp status . Investopedia has good information corporations here .

There are several opportunities to purchase successful franchises. TopFranchise.com has a list of companies in a variety of industries that offer franchise opportunities. This makes it where an entrepreneur can benefit from the reputation of an established business that has already worked out many of the kinks of starting from scratch.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 5. Products and Services

This section of the business plan should focus on what you sell, how you source it, and how you sell it. You should include:

• Unique features that differentiate your business products from competitors
• Intellectual property
• Your supply chain
• Cost and pricing structure 

Questions to answer about your products and services

Mike gave us a list  of the most important questions to answer about your product and services:

• How will you be selling the product? (in person, ecommerce, wholesale, direct to consumer)?
• How do you let them know they need a product?
• How do you communicate the message?
• How will you do transactions?
• How much will you be selling it for?
• How many do you think you’ll sell and why?

Make sure to use the worksheet on our business plan template .

How to Write a Business Plan Step 6. Sales and Marketing Plan

The marketing and sales plan is focused on the strategy to bring awareness to your company and guides how you will get the product to the consumer.  It should contain the following sections:

SWOT Analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not only do you want to identify them, but you also want to document how the business plans to deal with them.

Business owners need to do a thorough job documenting how their service or product stacks up against the competition.

If proper research isn’t done, investors will be able to tell that the owner hasn’t researched the competition and is less likely to believe that the team can protect its service from threats by the more well-established competition. This is one of the most common parts of a presentation that trips up business owners presenting on Shark Tank .

SWOT Examples

Examples of strengths and weaknesses could be things like the lack of cash flow, intellectual property ownership, high costs of suppliers, and customers’ expectations on shipping times.

Opportunities could be ways to capitalize on your strengths or improve your weaknesses, but may also be gaps in the industry. This includes:

• Adding offerings that fit with your current small business
• Increase sales to current customers
• Reducing costs through bulk ordering
• Finding ways to reduce inventory
•  And other areas you can improve

Threats will normally come from outside of the company but could also be things like losing a key member of the team. Threats normally come from competition, regulations, taxes, and unforeseen events.

The management team should use the SWOT analysis to guide other areas of business planning, but it absolutely has to be done before a business owner starts marketing. 

Include Competitor Data in Your Business Plan

When you plan a business, taking into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to navigating the field. Providing an overview of your competition and where they are headed shows that you are invested in understanding the industry.

For smaller businesses, you’ll want to search both the company and the owners names to see what they are working on. For publicly held corporations, you can find their quarterly and annual reports on the SEC website .

What another business plans to do can impact your business. Make sure to include things that might make it attractive for bigger companies to outsource to a small business.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing and sales part of business plans should be focused on how you are going to make potential customers aware of your business and then sell to them.

If you haven’t already included it, Mike recommends:

“They’ll want to know about Demographics, ages, and wealth of your target market.”

Make sure to include the Total addressable market .  The term refers to the value if you captured 100% of the market.

Advertising Strategy

You’ll explain what formats of advertising you’ll be using. Some possibilities are:

• Online: Facebook and Google are the big names to work with here.
• Print : Print can be used to reach broad groups or targeted markets. Check out this for tips .
• Radio : iHeartMedia is one of the best ways to advertise on the radio
• Cable television : High priced, hard to measure ROI, but here’s an explanation of the process
• Billboards: Attracting customers with billboards can be beneficial in high traffic areas.

You’ll want to define how you’ll be using each including frequency, duration, and cost. If you have the materials already created, including pictures or links to the marketing to show creative assets.

Mike told us “Most businesses are marketing digitally now due to Covid, but that’s not always the right answer.”

Make sure the marketing strategy will help team members or external marketing agencies stay within the brand guidelines .

This section of a business plan should be focused on pricing. There are a ton of pricing strategies that may work for different business plans. Which one will work for you depends on what kind of a business you run.

Some common pricing strategies are:

• Value-based pricing – Commonly used with home buying and selling or other products that are status symbols.
• Skimming pricing – Commonly seen in video game consoles, price starts off high to recoup expenses quickly, then reduces over time.
• Competition-based pricing – Pricing based on competitors’ pricing is commonly seen at gas stations.
• Freemium services –  Commonly used for software, where there is a free plan, then purchase options for more functionality.

HubSpot has a great calculator and blog on pricing strategies.

Beyond explaining what strategy your business plans to use, you should include references for how you came to this pricing strategy and how it will impact your cash flow.

Distribution Plan

This part of a business plan is focused on how the product or service is going to go through the supply chain. These may include multiple divisions or multiple companies. Make sure to include any parts of the workflow that are automated so investors can see where cost savings are expected and when.

Supply Chain Examples

For instance, lawn care companies  would need to cover aspects such as:

• Suppliers for lawn care equipment and tools
• Any chemicals or treatments needed
• Repair parts for sprinkler systems
• Vehicles to transport equipment and employees
• Insurance to protect the company vehicles and people.

Examples of Supply Chains

These are fairly flat supply chains compared to something like a clothing designer where the clothes would go through multiple vendors. A clothing company might have the following supply chain:

• Raw materials
• Shipping of raw materials
• Converting of raw materials to thread
• Shipping thread to produce garments
• Garment producer
• Shipping to company
• Company storage
• Shipping to retail stores

There have been advances such as print on demand that eliminate many of these steps. If you are designing completely custom clothing, all of this would need to be planned to keep from having business disruptions.

The main thing to include in the business plan is the list of suppliers, the path the supply chain follows, the time from order to the customer’s home, and the costs associated with each step of the process.

According to BizPlanReview , a business plan without this information is likely to get rejected because they have failed to research the key elements necessary to make sales to the customer.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 7. Company Organization and Operational Plan

This part of the business plan is focused on how the business model will function while serving customers.  The business plan should provide an overview of  how the team will manage the following aspects:

Quality Control

• Legal environment

Let’s look at each for some insight.

Production has already been discussed in previous sections so I won’t go into it much. When writing a business plan for investors, try to avoid repetition as it creates a more simple business plan.

If the organizational plan will be used by the team as an overview of how to perform the best services for the customer, then redundancy makes more sense as it communicates what is important to the business.

Quality control policies help to keep the team focused on how to verify that the company adheres to the business plan and meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Quality control can be anything from a standard that says “all labels on shirts can be no more than 1/16″ off center” to a defined checklist of steps that should be performed and filled out for every customer.

There are a variety of organizations that help define quality control including:

• International Organization for Standardization – Quality standards for energy, technology, food, production environments, and cybersecurity
• AICPA – Standard defined for accounting.
• The Joint Commission – Healthcare
• ASHRAE – HVAC best practices

You can find lists of the organizations that contribute most to the government regulation of industries on Open Secrets . Research what the leaders in your field are doing. Follow their example and implement it in your quality control plan.

For location, you should use information from the market research to establish where the location will be. Make sure to include the following in the location documentation.

• The size of your location
• The type of building (retail, industrial, commercial, etc.)
• Zoning restrictions – Urban Wire has a good map on how zoning works in each state
• Accessibility – Does it meet ADA requirements?
• Costs including rent, maintenance, utilities, insurance and any buildout or remodeling costs
• Utilities – b.e.f. has a good energy calculator .

Legal Environment

The legal requirement section is focused on defining how to meet the legal requirements for your industry. A good business plan should include all of the following:

• Any licenses and/or permits that are needed and whether you’ve obtained them
• Any trademarks, copyrights, or patents that you have or are in the process of applying for
• The insurance coverage your business requires and how much it costs
• Any environmental, health, or workplace regulations affecting your business
• Any special regulations affecting your industry
• Bonding requirements, if applicable

Your local SBA office can help you establish requirements in your area. I strongly recommend using them. They are a great resource.

Your business plan should include a plan for company organization and hiring. While you may be the only person with the company right now, down the road you’ll need more people. Make sure to consider and document the answers to the following questions:

• What is the current leadership structure and what will it look like in the future?
• What types of employees will you have? Are there any licensing or educational requirements?
• How many employees will you need?
• Will you ever hire freelancers or independent contractors?
• What is each position’s job description?
• What is the pay structure (hourly, salaried, base plus commission, etc.)?
• How do you plan to find qualified employees and contractors?

One of the most crucial parts of a business plan is the organizational chart. This simply shows the positions the company will need, who is in charge of them and the relationship of each of them. It will look similar to this:

Our small business plan template has a much more in-depth organizational chart you can edit to include when you include the organizational chart in your business plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 8. Financial Statements 

No business plan is complete without financial statements or financial projections. The business plan format will be different based on whether you are writing a business plan to expand a business or a startup business plan. Let’s dig deeper into each.

Provide All Financial Income from an Existing Business

An existing business should use their past financial documents including the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to find trends to estimate the next 3-5 years.

You can create easy trendlines in excel to predict future revenue, profit and loss, cash flow, and other changes in year-over-year performance. This will show your expected performance assuming business continues as normal.

If you are seeking an investment, then the business is probably not going to continue as normal. Depending on the financial plan and the purpose of getting financing, adjustments may be needed to the following:

• Higher Revenue if expanding business
• Lower Cost of Goods Sold if purchasing inventory with bulk discounts
• Adding interest if utilizing financing (not equity deal)
• Changes in expenses
• Addition of financing information to the cash flow statement
• Changes in Earnings per Share on the balance sheet

Financial modeling is a challenging subject, but there are plenty of low-cost courses on the subject. If you need help planning your business financial documentation take some time to watch some of them.

Make it a point to document how you calculated all the changes to the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in your business plan so that key team members or investors can verify your research.

Financial Projections For A Startup Business Plan

Unlike an existing business, a startup doesn’t have previous success to model its future performance. In this scenario, you need to focus on how to make a business plan realistic through the use of industry research and averages.

Mike gave the following advice in his interview:

Financial Forecasting Mistakes

One of the things a lot of inexperienced people use is the argument, “If I get one percent of the market, it is worth $100 million.” If you use this, investors are likely to file the document under bad business plan examples.

Let’s use custom t-shirts as an example.

Credence Research estimated in 2018 there were 11,334,800,000 custom t-shirts sold for a total of $206.12 Billion, with a 6% compound annual growth rate.

With that data,  you can calculate that the industry will grow to $270 Billion in 2023 and that the average shirt sold creates $18.18 in revenue.

Combine that with an IBIS World estimate of 11,094 custom screen printers and that means even if you become an average seller, you’ll get .009% of the market.

Here’s a table for easier viewing of that information.

The point here is to make sure your business proposal examples make sense.

You’ll need to know industry averages such as cost of customer acquisition, revenue per customer, the average cost of goods sold, and admin costs to be able to create accurate estimates.

Our simple business plan templates walk you through most of these processes. If you follow them you’ll have a good idea of how to write a business proposal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 9. Business Plan Example of Funding Requests

What is a business plan without a plan on how to obtain funding?

The Small Business Administration has an example for a pizza restaurant that theoretically needed nearly $20k to make it through their first month.

In our video, How to Start a $500K/Year T-Shirt Business (Pt. 1 ), Sanford Booth told us he needed about $200,000 to start his franchise and broke even after 4 months.

Freshbooks estimates it takes on average 2-3 years for a business to be profitable, which means the fictitious pizza company from the SBA could need up to $330k to make it through that time and still pay their bills for their home and pizza shop.

Not every business needs that much to start, but realistically it’s a good idea to assume that you need a fairly large cushion.

Ways to get funding for a small business

There are a variety of ways to cover this. the most common are:

• Bootstrapping – Using your savings without external funding.
• Taking out debt – loans, credit cards
• Equity, Seed Funding – Ownership of a percentage of the company in exchange for current funds
• Crowdsourcing – Promising a good for funding to create the product

Keep reading for more tips on how to write a business plan.

How funding will be used

When asking for business financing make sure to include:

• How much to get started?
• What is the minimum viable product and how soon can you make money?
• How will the money be spent?

Mike emphasized two aspects that should be included in every plan, 

How to Write a Business Plan Resources

Here are some links to a business plan sample and business plan outline. 

• Sample plan

It’s also helpful to follow some of the leading influencers in the business plan writing community. Here’s a list:

• Wise Plans –  Shares a lot of information on starting businesses and is a business plan writing company.
• Optimus Business Plans –  Another business plan writing company.
• Venture Capital – A venture capital thread that can help give you ideas.

How to Write a Business Plan: What’s Next?

We hope this guide about how to write a simple business plan step by step has been helpful. We’ve covered:

• The definition of a business plan
• Coming up with a business idea
• Performing market research
• The critical components of a business plan
• An example business plan

In addition, we provided you with a simple business plan template to assist you in the process of writing your startup business plan. The startup business plan template also includes a business model template that will be the key to your success.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our business hub .

Have you written a business plan before? How did it impact your ability to achieve your goals?

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How to Prepare and Write the Perfect Business Plan for Your Company Here's how to write a business plan that will formalize your company's goals and optimize your organization.

By Matthew McCreary May 5, 2021

Are you preparing to start your own business but uncertain about how to get started? A business plan ought to be one of the first steps in your entrepreneurial journey because it will organize the ideas that have been spinning around in your brain and prepare you to seek funding, partners and more.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a detailed document that outlines a company's goals and how the business, well, plans to achieve those goals over the next three or more years. It helps define expected profits and challenges, providing a road map that will help you avoid bumps in the road.

Stever Robbins writes in an Entrepreneur article titled, "Why You Must Have a Business Plan," that a business plan "is a tool for understanding how your business is put together…. Writing out your business plan forces you to review everything at once: your value proposition, marketing assumptions, operations plan, financial plan and staffing plan." But, a business plan is about more than just reviewing the past state of your business or even what your business looks like today.

Robbins writes that a well-written business plan will help you drive the future by "laying out targets in all major areas: sales, expense items, hiring positions and financing goals. Once laid out, the targets become performance goals."

The business plan can help your company attract talent and funding, because when prospects ask about your business, you already have an articulated overview to offer them. How they react can allow you to quickly understand how others see your business and pivot if necessary.

What should you do before you write your business plan?

It might sound redundant, but you actually need to plan your business plan. Business plans can be complicated, and you'll be held accountable for the goals you set. For example, if you plan to open five locations of your business within the first two years, your investors might get angry if you only manage to open two.

That's why it's essential that, before writing your business plan, you spend some time determining exactly which objectives are essential to your business. If you're struggling to come up with a list of goals on your own, Entrepreneur article "Plan Your Business Plan" offers some questions you can ask yourself to spark some inspiration.

How determined am I to see this venture succeed?

Am I willing to invest my own money and work long hours for no pay, sacrificing personal time and lifestyle, maybe for years?

What's going to happen to me if this venture doesn't work out?

If it does succeed, how many employees will this company eventually have?

What will be the business's annual revenue in a year? What about in five years?

What will be the company's market share in that amount of time?

Will the business have a niche market, or will it sell a broad spectrum of goods and services?

What are my plans for geographic expansion? Should it be local or national? Can it be global?

Am I going to be a hands-on manager, or will I delegate a large proportion of tasks to others?

If I delegate, what sorts of tasks will I share? Will it be sales, technical work or something else?

How comfortable am I taking direction from others? Can I work with partners or investors who demand input into the company's management?

Is the business going to remain independent and privately owned, or will it eventually be acquired or go public?

It's also essential to consider your financial goals. Your business might not require a massive financial commitment upfront, but it probably will if you're envisioning rapid growth. Unless you're making your product or service from scratch, you'll have to pay your suppliers before your customers can pay you, and as "Plan Your Business Plan" points out, "this cash flow conundrum is the reason so many fast-growing companies have to seek bank financing or equity sales to finance their growth. They are literally growing faster than they can afford."

How much financing will you need to start your business? What will you be willing to accept? If you're desperate for that first influx of cash, you might be tempted to accept any offer, but doing so might force you to either surrender too much control or ask investors for a number that's not quite right for either side.

These eight questions can help you determine a few financial aspects of your planning stages:

What initial investment will the business require?

How much control of the business are you willing to relinquish to investors?

When will the business turn a profit?

When can investors, including you, expect a return on investment?

What are the business's projected profits over time?

Will you be able to devote yourself full-time to the business?

What kind of salary or profit distribution can you expect to take home?

What are the chances the business will fail, and what will happen if it does?

You should also consider who, primarily, is going to be reading your business plan, and how you plan to use it. Is it a means of raising money or attracting employees? Will suppliers see it?

Lastly, you need to assess the likelihood of whether you actually have the time and resources to see your plan through. It might hurt to realize the assumptions you've made so far don't actually make a successful business, but it's best to know early on, before you make further commitments.

Related: Need a Business Plan Template? Here Is Apple's 1981 Plan for the Mac.

How to Write a Business Plan

Once you've worked out all the questions above and you know exactly what goals you have for your business plan, the next step is to actually write the darn thing. A typical business plan runs 15 to 20 pages but can be longer or shorter, depending on the complexity of the business and the needs of your venture. Regardless of whether you intend to use the business plan for self-evaluation or to seek a seven-figure investment, it should include nine key components, many of which are outlined in Entrepreneur 's introduction to business plans:

1. Title page and contents

Presentation is important, and a business plan should be presented in a binder with a cover that lists the business's name, the principals' names and other relevant information like a working address, phone number, email and web address and date. Write the information in a font that's easy to read and include it on the title page inside, too. Add in the company logo and a table of contents that follows the executive summary.

2. Executive summary

Think of the executive summary as the SparkNotes version of your business plan . It should tell the reader in as few words as possible what your business wants and why. The executive summary should address these nine things:

The business idea and why it is necessary. (What problem does it solve?)

How much will it cost, and how much financing are you seeking?

What will the return be to the investor? Over what length of time?

What is the perceived risk level?

Where does your idea fit into the marketplace?

What is the management team?

What are the product and competitive strategies?

What is your marketing plan?

What is your exit strategy?

When writing the executive summary, remember that it should be somewhere between one-half page to a full page. Anything longer, and you risk losing your reader's attention before they can dig into your business plan. Try to answer each of the questions above in two or three sentences, and you'll wind up with an executive summary that's about the right length.

Related: First Steps: Writing the Executive Summary of Your Business Plan

3. Business description

You can fill anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages when writing your business description, but try again to keep it short, with the understanding that more sections will follow. The business description typically starts with a short explanation of your chosen industry, including its present outlook and future possibilities. Use data and sources (with proper footnotes) to explain the markets the industry offers, along with the developments that will affect your business. That way, everyone who reads the business description, particularly investors, will see that they can trust the various information contained within your business plan.

When you pivot to speaking of your business, start with its structure. How does your business work? Is it retail, service-oriented or wholesale? Is the business new or established? Is the company a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation? Who are the principals and who are your customers? What do the distribution channels look like, and how can you support sales?

Next, break down your business's offerings. Are you selling a physical product, SaaS or a service? Explain it in a way that a reader knows what you're planning to sell and how it differentiates itself from the competition (investors call this a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, and it's important that you find yours). Whether it's a trade secret or a patent, you should be specific about your competitive advantage and why your business is going to be profitable. If you plan to use your business plan for fundraising, you can use the business description section to explain why new investments will help make the business even more profitable.

This, like everything else, can be brief, but you can tell the reader about your business's efficiency or workflow. You can write about other key people within the business or cite industry experts' support of your idea, as well as your base of operations and reasons for starting in the first place.

4. Market strategies

Paint a picture about your market by remembering the four Ps: product, price, place and promotion.

Start this section by defining the market's size, structure and sales potential. What are the market's growth prospects? What do the demographics and trends look like right now?

Next, outline the frequency at which your product or service will be purchased by the target market and the potential annual purchase. What market share can you possibly expect to win? Try to be realistic here, and keep in mind that even a number like 25% might be a dominant share.

Next, break down your business's plan for positioning, which relates to the market niche your product or service can fill. Who is your target market, how will you reach them and what are they buying from you? Who are your competitors, and what is your USP?

The positioning statement within your business plan should be short and to the point, but make sure you answer each of those questions before you move on to, perhaps, the most difficult and important aspect of your market strategy: pricing.

In fact, settling on a price for your product or service is one of the most important decisions you have to make in the entire business plan. Pricing will directly determine essential aspects of your business, like profit margin and sales volume. It will influence all sorts of areas, too, from marketing to target consumer.

There are two primary ways to determine your price: The first is to look inward, adding up the costs of offering your product or service, and then adding in a profit margin to find your number. The second is called competitive pricing, and it involves research into how your competitors will either price their products or services now or in the future. The difficult aspect of this second pricing method is that it often sets a ceiling on pricing, which, in turn, could force you to adjust your costs.

Then, pivot the market strategies section toward your distribution process and how it relates to your competitors' channels. How, exactly, are you going to get your offerings from one place to the next? Walk the reader step by step through your process. Do you want to use the same strategy or something else that might give you an advantage?

Last, explain your promotion strategy. How are you going to communicate with your potential customers? This part should talk about not only marketing or advertising, but also packaging, public relations and sales promotions.

Related: Creating a Winning Startup Business Plan

5. Competitive analysis

The next section in your business plan should be the competitive analysis, which helps explain the differences between you and your competitors … and how you can keep it that way. If you can start with an honest evaluation of your competitors' strengths and weaknesses within the marketplace, you can also provide the reader with clear analysis about your advantage and the barriers that either already exist or can be developed to keep your business ahead of the pack. Are there weaknesses within the marketplace, and if so, how can you exploit them?

Remember to consider both your direct competition and your indirect competition, with both a short-term and long-term view.

6. Design and development plan

If you plan to sell a product, it's smart to add a design and development section to your business plan. This part should help your readers understand the background of that product. How have the production, marketing and company developed over time? What is your developmental budget?

For the sake of organization, consider these three aspects of the design and development plan:

Product development

Market development

Organizational development

Start by establishing your development goals, which should logically follow your evaluation of the market and your competition. Make these goals feasible and quantifiable, and be sure to establish timelines that allow your readers to see your vision. The goals should address both technical and marketing aspects.

Once the reader has a clear idea of your development goals, explain the procedures you'll develop to reach them. How will you allocate your resources, and who is in charge of accomplishing each goal?

The Entrepreneur guide to design and development plans offers this example on the steps of producing a recipe for a premium lager beer:

Gather ingredients.

Determine optimum malting process.

Gauge mashing temperature.

Boil wort and evaluate which hops provide the best flavor.

Determine yeast amounts and fermentation period.

Determine aging period.

Carbonate the beer.

Decide whether or not to pasteurize the beer.

Make sure to also talk about scheduling. What checkpoints will the product need to pass to reach a customer? Establish timeframes for each step of the process. Create a chart with a column for each task, how long that task will take and when the task will start and end.

Next, consider the costs of developing your product, breaking down the costs of these aspects:

General and administrative (G&A) costs

Marketing and sales

Professional services, like lawyers or accountants

Miscellaneous costs

Necessary equipment

The next section should be about the personnel you either have or plan to hire for that development. If you already have the right person in place, this part should be easy. If not, then this part of the business plan can help you create a detailed description of exactly what you need. This process can also help you formalize the hierarchy of your team's positions so that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities.

Finish the development and design section of your business plan by addressing the risks in developing the product and how you're going to address those risks. Could there be technical difficulties? Are you having trouble finding the right person to lead the development? Does your financial situation limit your ability to develop the product? Being honest about your problems and solutions can help answer some of your readers' questions before they ask them.

Related: The Essential Guide to Writing a Business Plan

7. Operations and management plan

Want to learn everything you'll ever need to know about the operations and management section of your business plan, and read a real, actual web article from 1997? Check out our guide titled, "Writing A Business Plan: Operations And Management."

Here, we'll more briefly summarize the two areas that need to be covered within your operations and management plan: the organizational structure is first, and the capital requirement for the operation are second.

The organizational structure detailed within your business plan will establish the basis for your operating expenses, which will provide essential information for the next part of the business plan: your financial statements. Investors will look closely at the financial statements, so it's important to start with a solid foundation and a realistic framework. You can start by dividing your organizational structure into these four sections:

Marketing and sales (including customer relations and service)

Production (including quality assurance)

Research and development

Administration

After you've broken down the organization's operations within your business plan, you can look at the expenses, or overhead. Divide them into fixed expenses, which typically remain constant, and variable, which will change according to the volume of business. Here are some of the examples of overhead expenses:

Maintenance and repair

Equipment leases

Advertising and promotion

Packaging and shipping

Payroll taxes and benefits

Uncollectible receivables

Professional services

Loan payments

Depreciation

Having difficulty calculating what some of those expenses might be for your business? Try using the simple formulas in "Writing A Business Plan: Operations And Management."

8. Financial factors

The last piece of the business plan that you definitely need to have covers the business's finances. Specifically, three financial statements will form the backbone of your business plan: the income statement, the cash-flow statement and balance sheet . Let's go through them one by one.

The income statement explains how the business can make money in a simple way. It draws on financial models already developed and discussed throughout the business plan (revenue, expenses, capital and cost of goods) and combines those numbers with when sales are made and when expenses are incurred. When the reader finishes going through your income statement, they should understand how much money your company makes or loses by subtracting your costs from your revenue, showing either a loss or a profit. If you like, you or a CPA can add a very short analysis at the end to emphasize some important aspects of the statement.

Second is the cash-flow statement, which explains how much cash your business needs to meet its obligations, as well as when you're going to need it and how you're going to get it. This section shows a profit or loss at the end of each month or year that rolls over to the next time period, which can create a cycle. If your business plan shows that you're consistently operating at a loss that gets bigger as time goes on, this can be a major red flag for both you and potential investors. This part of the business plan should be prepared monthly during your first year in business, quarterly in your second year and annually after that.

Our guide on cash-flow statements includes 17 items you'll need to add to your cash-flow statement.

Cash. Cash on hand in the business.

Cash sales . Income from sales paid for by cash.

Receivables. Income from collecting money owed to the business due to sales.

Other income. The liquidation of assets, interest on extended loans or income from investments are examples.

Total income. The sum of the four items above (total cash, cash sales, receivables, other income).

Material/merchandise . This will depend on the structure of your business. If you're manufacturing, this will include your raw materials. If you're in retail, count your inventory of merchandise. If you offer a service, consider which supplies are necessary.

Direct labor . What sort of labor do you need to make your product or complete your service?

Overhead . This includes both the variable expenses and fixed expenses for business operations.

Marketing/sales . All salaries, commissions and other direct costs associated with the marketing and sales departments.

Research and development . Specifically, the labor expenses required for research and development.

General and administrative expenses. Like the research and development costs, this centers on the labor for G&A functions of the business.

Taxes . This excludes payroll taxes but includes everything else.

Capital. Required capital for necessary equipment.

Loan payments. The total of all payments made to reduce any long-term debts.

Total expenses. The sum of items six through 14 (material/merchandise, direct labor, overhead, marketing/sales, research and development, general and administrative expenses, taxes, capital and loan payments).

Cash flow. Subtract total expenses from total income. This is how much cash will roll over to the next period.

Cumulative cash flow . Subtract the previous period's cash flow from your current cash flow.

Just like with the income statement, it's a good idea to briefly summarize the figures at the end. Again, consulting with a CPA is probably a good idea.

The last financial statement is the balance sheet. A balance sheet is, as our encyclopedia says, "a financial statement that lists the assets, liabilities and equity of a company at a specific point in time and is used to calculate the net worth of a business." If you've already started the business, use the balance sheet from your last reporting period. If the business plan you wrote is for a business you hope to start, do your best to project your assets and liabilities over time. If you want to earn investors, you'll also need to include a personal financial statement. Then, as with the other two sections, add a short analysis that hits the main points.

9. Supporting documents

If you have other documents that your readers need to see, like important contracts, letters of reference, a copy of your lease or legal documents, you should add them in this section.

Related: 7 Steps to a Perfectly Written Business Plan

What do I do with my business plan after I've written it?

The simplest reason to create a business plan is to help people unfamiliar with your business understand it quickly. While the most obvious use for a document like this is for financing purposes, a business plan can also help you attract talented employees — and, if you share the business plan internally, help your existing employees understand their roles.

But it's also important to do for your own edification, too. It's like the old saying goes, "The best way to learn something is to teach it." Writing down your plans, your goals and the state of your finances helps clarify the thoughts in your own mind. From there, you can more easily lead your business because you'll know whether the business is reaching the checkpoints you set out to begin with. You'll be able to foresee difficulties before they pop up and be able to pivot quickly.

That's why you should continue to update your business plan when the conditions change, either within your business (you might be entering a new period or undergoing a change in management) or within your market (like a new competitor popping up). The key is to keep your business plan ready so that you don't have to get it ready when opportunity strikes.

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18 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Published: July 01, 2024

I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

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As you explore business plan examples from real companies and brands, it’s easier for you to learn how to write a good one.

So what does a good business plan look like? And how do you write one that’s both viable and convincing? I’ll walk you through the ideal business plan format along with some examples to help you get started.

Table of Contents

Business Plan Types

Business plan format, sample business plan: section by section, sample business plan templates, top business plan examples.

Ultimately, the format of your business plan will vary based on your goals for that plan. I’ve added this quick review of different business plan types that achieve differing goals.

For a more detailed exploration of business plan types, you can check out this post .

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1. Startups

Startup business plans are for proposing new business ideas. If you’re planning to start a small business, preparing a business plan is crucial. The plan should include all the major factors of your business.

You can check out this guide for more detailed business plan inspiration .

2. Feasibility Studies

Feasibility business plans focus on that business's product or service. Feasibility plans are sometimes added to startup business plans. They can also be a new business plan for an already thriving organization.

3. Internal Use

You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals.

4. Strategic Initiatives

A strategic business plan is another business plan that's often shared internally. This plan covers long-term business objectives that might not have been included in the startup business plan.

5. Business Acquisition or Repositioning

When a business is moving forward with an acquisition or repositioning, it may need extra structure and support. These types of business plans expand on a company's acquisition or repositioning strategy.

Growth sometimes just happens as a business continues operations. But more often, a business needs to create a structure with specific targets to meet set goals for expansion. This business plan type can help a business focus on short-term growth goals and align resources with those goals.

I’m going to focus on a startup business plan that needs to be detailed and research-backed as well as compelling enough to convince investors to offer funding. In my experience, the most comprehensive and convincing business plans contain the following sections.

Executive Summary

This all-important introduction to your business plan sets the tone and includes the company description as well as what you will be exchanging for money — whether that’s product lines, services, or product-service hybrids.

Market Opportunity

Information about gaps in your industry’s market and how you plan to fill them, focused on demand and potential for growth.

Competitive Landscape Analysis

An overview of your competitors that includes consideration of their strengths and how you’ll manage them, their weaknesses and how you’ll capitalize on them, and how you can differentiate your offerings in the industry.

Target Audience

Descriptions of your ideal customers, their various problems that you can solve, and your customer acquisition strategy.

Marketing Strategy

This section details how you will market your brand to achieve specific goals, the channels and tactics you’ll utilize to reach those goals, and the metrics you’ll be using to measure your progress.

Key Features and Benefits

This is where you’ll use plain language to emphasize the value of your product/service, how it solves the problems of your target audiences, and how you’ll scale up over time.

Pricing and Revenue

This section describes your pricing strategy and plans for building revenue streams that fit your audiences while achieving your business goals.

This is the final section, communicating with investors that your business idea is worth investing in via profit/loss statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets to prove viability.

Okay, so now that we have a format established, I’ll give you more specific details about each section along with examples. Truthfully, I wish I’d had this resource to help me flesh out those first business plans long ago.

1. Executive Summary

I’d say the executive summary is the most important section of the entire business plan. It is essentially an overview of and introduction to your entire project.

Write this in such a way that it grabs your readers' attention and guides them through the rest of the business plan. This is important because a business plan can be dozens or hundreds of pages long.

There are two main elements I’d recommend including in your executive summary: your company description and your products and services.

Company Description

This is the perfect space to highlight your company’s mission statement and goals, a brief overview of your history and leadership, and your top accomplishments as a business.

Tell potential investors who you are and why what you do matters. Naturally, they’re going to want to know who they’re getting into business with up front. This is a great opportunity to showcase your impact.

Need some extra help firming up your business goals? I’d recommend HubSpot Academy’s free course to help you set meaningful goals that matter most for your business.

Products and Services

Here, you will incorporate an overview of your offerings. This doesn’t have to be extensive, as it is just a chance to introduce your industry and overall purpose as a business. I recommend including snippets of information about your financial projections and competitive advantage here as well.

Keep in mind that you'll cover many of these topics in more detail later on in the business plan. The executive summary should be clear and brief, only including the most important takeaways.

Executive Summary Business Plan Examples

This example was created with HubSpot’s business plan template . What makes this executive summary good is that it tells potential investors a short story while still covering all of the most important details.

Our Mission

Maria’s Gluten Free Bagels offers gluten-free bagels, along with various toppings, other gluten-free breakfast sandwich items, and coffee. The facility is entirely gluten free. Our team expects to catch the interest of gluten-free, celiac, or health-conscious community members who are seeking an enjoyable cafe to socialize. Due to a lack of gluten-free bagel products in the food industry currently, we expect mild competition and are confident we will be able to build a strong market position.

The Company and Management

Maria’s Gluten Free Bagels was founded in 2010 by Maria Jones, who first began selling her gluten-free bagels online from her home, using social media to spread the word. In 2012 she bought a retail location in Hamilton, MA, which now employs four full-time employees and six part-time employees. Prior to her bagel shop, Maria was a chef in New York and has extensive experience in the food industry.

Along with Maria Jones, Gluten Free Bagel Shop has a board of advisors. The advisors are:

• Jeni King, partner at Winding Communications, Ltd.
• Henry Wilson, president of Blue Robin, LLP.

Our Product

We offer gluten-free products ranging from bagels and cream cheese to blueberry muffins, coffee, and pastries. Our customers are health-conscious, community-oriented people who enjoy gluten-free products. We will create a welcoming, warm environment with opportunities for open mic nights, poetry readings, and other community functions. We will focus on creating an environment in which someone feels comfortable meeting a friend for lunch, or working remotely.

Our Competitive Advantages

While there are other coffee shops and cafes in the North Shore region, there are none that offer purely gluten-free options. This restricts those suffering from gluten-free illnesses or simply those with a gluten-free preference. This will be our primary selling point. Additionally, our market research [see Section 3] has shown a demand for a community-oriented coffee and bagel shop in the town of Hamilton, MA.

Financial Considerations

Our sales projections for the first year are $400,000. We project a 15% growth rate over the next two years. By year three, we project 61% gross margins.

We will have four full-time employees. The salary for each employee will be $50,000.

Start-up Financing Requirements

We are seeking to raise $125,000 in startup to finance year one. The owner has invested $50,000 to meet working capital requirements, and will use a loan of $100,000 to supplement the rest.

Example 2 :

Marianne and Keith Bean have been involved with the food industry for several years. They opened their first restaurant in Antlers, Oklahoma in 1981, and their second in Hugo in 1988. Although praised for the quality of many of the items on their menu, they have attained a special notoriety for their desserts. After years of requests for their flavored whipped cream toppings, they have decided to pursue marketing these products separately from the restaurants.

Marianne and Keith Bean have developed several recipes for flavored whipped cream topping. They include chocolate, raspberry, cinnamon almond, and strawberry. These flavored dessert toppings have been used in the setting of their two restaurants over the past 18 years, and have been produced in large quantities. The estimated shelf life of the product is 21 days at refrigeration temperatures and up to six months when frozen. The Beans intend to market this product in its frozen state in 8 and 12-ounce plastic tubs. They also intend to have the products available in six ounce pressurized cans. Special attention has been given to developing an attractive label that will stress the gourmet/specialty nature of the products.

Distribution of Fancy's Foods Whipped Dream product will begin in the local southeastern Oklahoma area. The Beans have an established name and reputation in this area, and product introduction should encounter little resistance.

Financial analyses show that the company will have both a positive cash flow and profit in the first year. The expected return on equity in the first year is 10.88%

Tips for Writing Your Executive Summary

• Start with a strong introduction of your company that showcases your mission and impact, then outline the products and services you provide.
• Clearly define a problem, explain how your product solves that problem, and show why the market needs your business.
• Be sure to highlight your value proposition, market opportunity, and growth potential.
• Keep it concise and support ideas with data.
• Customize your summary to your audience. For example, you might emphasize finances and return on investment for venture capitalists, whereas you might emphasize community benefits and minimal environmental impact for progressive nonprofits.

For more guidance, check out our tips for writing an effective executive summary .

2. Market Opportunity

This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market. Ask and answer: Where is the gap in the current industry, and how will my product fill that gap?

To get a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, you'll want to conduct a TAM, SAM, SOM analysis , a SWOT analysis , and perform market research on your industry to get some insights for this section. More specifically, here’s what I’d include.

• The size of the market
• Current or potential market share
• Trends in the industry and consumer behavior
• Where the gap is
• What caused the gap
• How you intend to fill it

Market Opportunity Business Plan Example

I like this example because it uses critical data to underline the size of the potential market and what part of that market this service hopes to capture.

Example: The market for Doggie Pause is all of the dog owners in the metropolitan area and surrounding areas of the city. We believe that this is going to be 2/3 of the population, and we have a goal of gaining a 50% market share. We have a target of a 20% yearly profit increase as the business continues.

Tips for Writing Your Market Opportunity Section

• Focus on demand and potential for growth.
• Use market research, surveys, and industry trend data to support your market forecast and projections.
• Add a review of regulation shifts, tech advances, and consumer behavior changes.
• Refer to reliable sources.
• Showcase how your business can make the most of this opportunity.

3. Competitive Landscape Analysis

Since we’re already speaking of market share, you‘ll also need to create a section that shares details on who the top competitors are. After all, your customers likely have more than one brand to choose from, and you’ll want to understand exactly why they might choose one over another.

My favorite part of performing a competitive analysis is that it can help you uncover the following:

• Industry trends that other brands may not be utilizing.
• Strengths in your competition that may be obstacles to handle.
• Weaknesses in your competition that may help you develop selling points.
• The unique proposition you bring to the market that may resonate with customers.

Competitive Landscape Business Plan Example

I like how the competitive landscape section of this business plan shows a clear outline of who the top competitors are. It also highlights specific industry knowledge and the importance of location. This demonstrates useful experience in the industry, helping to build trust in your ability to execute your business plan.

Competitive Environment

Currently, there are four primary competitors in the Greater Omaha Area: Pinot’s Palette Lakeside (franchise partner), Village Canvas and Cabernet, The Corky Canvas, and Twisted Vine Collective. The first three competitors are in Omaha and the fourth is located in Papillion.

Despite the competition, all locations have both public and private events. Each location has a few sold-out painting events each month. The Omaha locations are in new, popular retail locations, while the existing Papillion location is in a downtown business district.

There is an opportunity to take advantage of the environment and open a studio in a well-traveled or growing area. Pinot’s Palette La Vista will differentiate itself from its competitors by offering a premium experience in a high-growth, influential location.

Tips for Writing Your Competitive Landscape

• Complete in-depth research, then emphasize your most important findings.
• Compare your unique selling proposition (USP) to your direct and indirect competitors.
• Show a clear and realistic plan for product and brand differentiation.
• Look for specific advantages and barriers in the competitive landscape. Then, highlight how that information could impact your business.
• Outline growth opportunities from a competitive perspective.
• Add customer feedback and insights to support your competitive analysis.

4. Target Audience

Use this section to describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience? I’d recommend building a buyer persona to get in the mindset of your ideal customers and be clear about why you're targeting them. Here are some questions I’d ask myself:

• What demographics will most likely need/buy your product or service?
• What are the psychographics of this audience? (Desires, triggering events, etc.)
• Why are your offerings valuable to them?

Target Audience Business Plan Example

I like the example below because it uses in-depth research to draw conclusions about audience priorities. It also analyzes how to create the right content for this audience.

The Audience

Recognize that audiences are often already aware of important issues. Outreach materials should:

• Emphasize a pollution-prevention practice
• Tell audience a little about how to prevent pollution
• Tell audience where they can obtain information about prevention.

Message Content

• Focus the content for outreach materials on cost savings, such as when and where pollution prevention is as cheap as or cheaper than traditional techniques. Include facts and figures.
• Emphasize how easy it is to do the right thing and the impacts of not engaging in pollution prevention.
• Stress benefits such as efficiency or better relations with government, for businesses not primarily concerned with public image.

Tips for Writing Your Target Audience Section

• Include details on the size and growth potential of your target audience.
• Figure out and refine the pain points for your target audience , then show why your product is a useful solution.
• Describe your targeted customer acquisition strategy in detail.
• Share anticipated challenges your business may face in acquiring customers and how you plan to address them.
• Add case studies, testimonials, and other data to support your target audience ideas.
• Remember to consider niche audiences and segments of your target audience in your business plan.

5. Marketing Strategy

Here, you‘ll discuss how you’ll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy. I think it’s helpful to have a marketing plan built out in advance to make this part of your business plan easier. I’d suggest including these details:

• Your brand positioning vision and how you'll cultivate it.
• The goal targets you aim to achieve.
• The metrics you'll use to measure success.
• The channels and distribution tactics you'll use.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

This business plan example includes the marketing strategy for the town of Gawler. In my opinion, it works because it offers a comprehensive picture of how they plan to use digital marketing to promote the community.

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

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Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.

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How to use a Business Plan?

Business Plan Template

• Vinay Kevadia
• September 6, 2024

15 Min Read

If you’re entering the entrepreneurial world, you’ve likely been told to start with a business plan.

However, simply creating a business plan isn’t enough. The true powers of a business plan unravel when you use it actively to drive your business forward.

Whether you’re launching a business, securing funding, evaluating growth opportunities, or guiding your team— a business plan is more than just a document. It’s a versatile tool that can support almost every aspect of your business when used consistently.

Want to learn how?

Well, in this blog post, we’ll dive into more details about how to use a business plan . But before that.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is an important document, whether you use it for formal or internal use.

Here are a few reasons why this document is important:

• Gives you a roadmap to achieve your business goals.
• Offers a framework for making strategic decisions.
• Outlines the business goals and sets benchmarks for tracking business performance.
• Secures funding for your business by demonstrating financial sustainability.
• Helps overcome the challenges by developing mitigation strategies.
• Aligns the team members and stakeholders by facilitating clear communication.

Now, let’s understand the different use cases of a business plan to launch, grow, and fund your business.

How to use a business plan to start a business

A business plan is a quintessential document that can help you plan and launch your business. Whether you need to validate a business idea, establish your goals, or equip yourself with the understanding of a target market—a business plan helps with it all.

Here’s a more detailed overview of how a business plan can help start a business.

1. Validate your business idea

Before investing money in a business venture, you need to test the viability of your business idea.

You need answers to questions such as:

• Should I pursue this business venture?
• Who will be the target audience for my solution?
• How much sales will it make?
• What is the scope of scaling my business idea?
• How is my idea different from that of existing competitors?

A business plan can help you find answers to these critical questions.

Whether it’s the market, competitors, product offerings, expected sales, business objectives, or your finances—a business plan helps you assess each aspect of your business idea to test its overall feasibility.

Evaluating your business idea using a business plan forces you to address the gaps in your business idea.

This validation step ensures you don’t invest time and resources in an idea that may not succeed.

2. Establish business goals and mission

A business plan offers a strategic framework to transform vague business aspirations into concrete goals. It makes it easier for you to communicate what your business stands for and what it aims to achieve with a clearly defined mission statement.

A business plan helps you align the short-term goals of your business with its ultimate mission. It guides you in setting clear KPIs to help you track the progress and success of your goals.

With a well-defined mission, objectives, and value proposition, businesses tend to stay on their path.

3. Navigate market entry

Writing a business plan nudges you to understand the market space in which you will operate. It helps you determine your unique brand position and guides you to target the right set of people for your business.

A business plan details the exact steps of how you will introduce your business to the market. Whether it’s the position of your product, identifying your go-to-market strategy, strategizing the pricing, or securing the distribution channels—a business plan guides you to perfect your market launch.

To summarize, a business plan minimizes the risks associated with a new market by strategizing your market entry.

4. Plan the operations

A business plan turns your vision into an operational roadmap to help you optimize your business operations.

It helps you find answers to questions like these.

• What will be the SOP (standard operating procedure) of a business function, i.e., manufacturing, marketing, and hiring?
• Who would look after particular processes?
• How many people will you require to fulfill a task?
• Where will you perform the business activity?
• How will you ensure the quality of your services?

An operational plan outlines everything, helping you allocate the resources and establish clear workflows.

A business plan is further used to identify the gaps and bottlenecks in your operations. A regularly reviewed business plan accommodates the changing market conditions by introducing timely changes to your operations.

In short, an operational plan ensures that the business runs smoothly and is prepared to scale optimally.

5. Identify professional gaps

Even if you’re starting a business as a solopreneur, you will require the expertise of professionals to fulfill your business objectives. This is where a business plan can be of help.

Writing a business plan helps you identify the gaps in your current capacity. With this knowledge, you can determine the skills and people essential to execute your business strategy.

This can be an accountant, product developer, marketing specialist, legal head, or financial expert.

Once you identify a professional gap, a business plan can assist in onboarding the right type of people for your business. It offers you a detailed hiring and training plan to ensure everyone on the team remains aligned to a common goal.

6. Build strategic a. alliances

Entrepreneurs need to build relationships with suppliers, vendors, and other strategic partners early on to accelerate their market growth.

A business plan can help identify potential partners for your business. Besides, it can help you build valuable relationships with your potential partners by outlining the benefits and goals of the partnership for them.

When you approach someone for a partnership, they will have questions about growth, finances, business goals, and your outlook. Having a business plan handy will help you answer them confidently.

Moreover, a business plan will help evaluate the favorable terms of a strategic alliance. This knowledge can be used to guide the negotiations and get a contract that favors your business.

This excerpt by Jonathan Goldberg , the CEO of Kimberfire , demonstrates how they used a business plan to get a significant partner on board.

“ Kimberfire acquired a partnership with the World’s largest diamond manufacturer using a business plan. By clearly outlining our market strategy and growth projections we were able to demonstrate the value of a partnership that offered direct access to high-quality diamonds at competitive prices. This partnership not only bolstered our inventory but also allowed us to pass on significant savings to our customers, thereby enhancing our competitive edge.”

7. Forecast the capital requirement

Lastly, a business plan can help you understand capital requirements for your company. It helps determine the costs to start and run your business.

Such information guides you in evaluating your funding options.

By referring to your startup costs , you would know whether bootstrapping would be enough or if you would need loans and funding from investors.

These are just a few ways in which one can use a business plan to start a business. However, the use cases can be exhaustive depending on the details put into your plan.

How to use a business plan to secure funding

Most businesses may require funding from external sources to launch or grow their business.

Now, it doesn’t matter whether they secure funding through investors, banks, or grants. What’s important is that they have a business plan to prove the financial sustainability of their business.

Here’s how one can use a business plan to secure funding and convince investors:

8. Define funding needs

A business plan can help you determine the funding essential for your business. Moreover, it can also help evaluate the funding source that’s better suited for your business.

By building detailed projections for costs, expenses, sales, and cash flow, your plan helps determine the capital essential to launch or grow your business.

Additionally, a business plan can be used to justify your funding demands. A clear funding plan explains how you intend to use the investor’s money, i.e., buy new machinery, hire new staff, or expand the business operations.

This clarity demonstrates careful financial planning and builds investors’ confidence in your venture.

9. Manage fundings

Your funding plan already includes details about where you intend to use the money. However, you can now use it to create a detailed roadmap.

A well-planned business plan demonstrates how you should delegate the funding to different business departments. Additionally, it guides you in managing the secured funds efficiently by helping you set budgets, financial controls, and performance trackers.

This detailed approach assures investors that their funding is used responsibly and efficiently.

Further, as you update the plan, identify if your execution strategy requires change. If so, you can make the necessary changes and update the investors, keeping them in the loop. This will help them trust you more.

10. Support the loan application

A business plan is compulsory for everyone submitting an SBA loan application. Even private lending firms would require a business plan to make their funding decision.

A well-detailed business plan is sufficient to support your loan application. It demonstrates that you have conducted essential planning to make your business idea viable and sustainable.

A business plan answers all the questions that a lender might have to assess your creditworthiness and repayment capacity.

Questions such as:

• What will be the profitability of your business?
• What are the major cost drivers of your business?
• What will the debt-to-equity ratio be if you approach investors?
• How stable is your cash flow?
• What will the ROI and the payback period be?

Lenders can trust you more when they get essential answers backed with data.

That said, let’s understand how a business plan can drive enterprise growth.

How to use a business plan to grow your business

A business plan can be instrumental in testing different scenarios, evaluating growth opportunities, and making strategic decisions. All these help you grow your business and face the challenges efficiently.

Here’s how:

11. Guide strategic decisions

A business plan can help you make strategic decisions that align with your ultimate growth objectives.

Whether you want to launch a business at a new location, invest in new machinery, introduce a new product line, hire new employees, or onboard new technology—a business plan can help.

A business plan provides a framework to assess the risks, opportunities, and financial impact of a strategic decision on your business. It helps determine the right time to launch your growth initiative and demonstrates whether making a particular decision will be fruitful or not.

This way you won’t make a decision that can put you off your long-term goals.

12. Monitor business performance

Once you make a strategic decision, use your business plan to clarify the strategy and outline your execution plan.

A business plan can additionally assist in measuring business performance against set KPIs and performance benchmarks. Regularly evaluating these metrics allows you to identify areas that may need improvement or adjustments.

By using the business plan as a performance management tool, you can make data-driven adjustments to your approach and grow your business sustainability.

13. Adapt to market changes

A business plan isn’t set in stone. It’s a living document that adapts to changing market conditions.

It can be used to adapt your strategies based on new market data and shifts in customer preferences. Such regular updates help you remain competitive and agile in the face of changing market conditions.

Additionally, a business plan can help you develop a response to an emergency crisis.

A business plan accommodates all your strategies, milestones, metrics, tactics, and projections in one place. By using the plan as a performance dashboard, you can anticipate the changes and adjust the priorities to deal with the crisis.

Mark McShane offers a practical example of how he used a business plan to meet contingencies in his company, Cupid PR .

 “When we hit cash flow problems, we followed the financial contingency section of our plan to manage expenses and short-term funding. We were able to quickly implement the cost-saving strategies and secure a bridge loan to stabilize our finances without sacrificing growth. Business plan made it possible to respond to this challenge efficiently which gave us a 40% revenue increase the next year.”

14. Test different scenarios

A business plan can be used as a tool for scenario analysis.

As the regulatory, economic, and competitive landscape of a business evolves, you need to test and plan for different scenarios, like:

• Entry of a new competitor
• Regulatory changes
• Technological advancement
• Market demand shifts
• Natural disaster

Businesses can evaluate the financial and operational impact of these scenarios using a business plan. By using business plan forecasts as a base, they can prepare for various worst- and best-case scenarios.

Preparing for different scenarios helps you leverage the opportunities and mitigate the risks whenever they arise.

Those are quite a few ways in which a business plan can assist or facilitate growth. Entrepreneurs can find more ways to use a business plan depending on the depth that their plan covers.

How to use a business plan internally

One of the most essential uses of business plans is to guide your operations, management, and team toward the goal.

Here’s how.

15. Align team and stakeholders

A business plan is an excellent tool for aligning your team and stakeholders toward a common mission.

A well-crafted business plan documents the company’s goals, mission, KPIs, and milestones. With the basics clearly articulated, it gets easier to bring your internal team and stakeholders on the same page.

Now, you don’t need a detailed plan to convey your goals. A simple list of goals and how they contribute to your ultimate objectives is enough for internal use.

This quote from our conversation with Shawn Plummer , the CEO at the Annuity Expert , shows how he used a business plan to drive a 50% revenue increase in 2 years:

“By breaking down our growth strategy into clear, measurable goals, the business plan became more than just a document; it was a tool for uniting our team. Everyone, from marketing to operations, understood how their efforts related to our overall goals. This connection was critical to our success, resulting in a 50% revenue rise in just two years.”

16. Streamline business operations

A business plan can streamline business operations by outlining the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for different business processes. It’s further used to define the responsibilities, resource allocation, and hiring plans for your organization.

Remember, a well-crafted operations plan acts as a guidebook for your business. It details every process, responsibility, and resource essential for running a smooth operation. Referring to it can help increase efficiency, reduce waste, and enhance productivity.

Now if you’re writing a traditional plan, you’ll have a detailed section on business operations. However, if you’re writing a lean plan, we recommend building a separate internal operations plan to guide your business operations.

Simply list the business processes, create an outline, and use ChatGPT to write a business plan . Your internal use operations plan doesn’t need to follow a specific format or structure. It should just distill clarity.

17. Efficient performance reviews

A business plan outlines the KPIs and goals, offering you a benchmark to evaluate the individual performance of team members. These metrics can be used to track actual results and take appropriate actions.

A business plan helps foster the environment for continuous development by linking performance to strategic goals.

That’s a few definite ways to use business plans for internal growth and management. Internal business plans can follow any structure or format, as long as they get the task done.

How to keep your business plan relevant

As we discussed, a business plan is a living document that requires frequent updates and changes to maintain relevancy.

Ideally, one should update their business plan at least once a year to keep it useful. However, businesses in highly volatile or competitive markets should consider reviewing it quarterly.

A business plan must represent accurate market conditions. If that’s not the case, a review should incorporate new market trends into the strategy, adjust the operational realities, and revise the financials. This ensures that your plan remains relevant and realistic to help you achieve your business objectives.

Include your team members in the review process to ensure the strategies address their key concerns and align with the entire organization.

All in all, adopt a flexible planning approach to keep your plan relevant to the dynamic world.

By now, you have a thorough understanding of the different uses of a business plan. However, these use cases are only relevant if you have a realistic and actionable business plan offering a true overview of your business. Only then can you use a business plan to launch, grow, and fund your business.

Now, draft a quick business plan using the Upmetrics business planning app . Its AI planning features, business plan templates, financial forecasting assistance, and detailed guides will help you prepare a reliable business plan in no time.

Build your Business Plan Faster

with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most common use of a business plan.

A business plan is most commonly used to secure investments from investors. Additionally, organizations use it to define strategic goals, guide business operations, and evaluate the company’s performance.

How do you use a business plan for a small business?

A business plan offers crucial help to small businesses in the following ways:

• Idea validation
• Navigating market entry
• Planning business operations
• Building strategic alliances
• Forecasting the capital requirements

How do I use a business plan to attract investors?

A business plan can be used to prove the financial sustainability of a business idea. Investors can evaluate whether their investment would offer enough ROI, profitability, and growth by referring to your in-depth business plan. When they see that you’re well-prepared to face real market situations, they feel convinced of your ability to run a business.

How often should a business plan be updated?

Ideally, you should update a business plan at least once a year. However, businesses operating in dynamic, competitive markets need more frequent reviews. This can be monthly or quarterly.

Why is it important to review a business plan over time?

A business plan offers a roadmap to achieve your business objectives. But, if not updated often, your plan won’t reflect the current market. This will make your plan irrelevant and distant from your goals. To avoid such situations, it’s important to review your plan regularly.

About the Author

Vinay Kevadiya

Vinay Kevadiya is the founder and CEO of Upmetrics, the #1 business planning software. His ultimate goal with Upmetrics is to revolutionize how entrepreneurs create, manage, and execute their business plans. He enjoys sharing his insights on business planning and other relevant topics through his articles and blog posts. Read more

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10 questions to ask before hiring a business plan writer.

In This Article

Working with a business plan writer is a great alternative to writing your business plan on your own.

It can benefit busy entrepreneurs who don’t consider themselves natural writers. A good business plan writer may have written hundreds of business plans. Experienced plan writers know what works with lenders and investors and what doesn’t. They know how to do good market research and capture the ins and outs of putting together a solid financial forecast.

With a good business plan writer, you save time and gain access to expertise that you may not have yourself. With the time you save, you can spend more energy focusing on getting your business up and running.

But how do you know if you’re hiring a good business plan writer? Here are 10 key questions you should ask when interviewing a business plan writer or a business plan writing company.

1. Who is going to write your plan?

When shopping for someone to write your business plan, you’ll mostly talk to business plan writing companies, not individuals. If that’s the case, you’ll likely talk to a salesperson or project manager who will manage your business plan writing process. Not the person who will write your business plan.

So, it’s essential to ask about the expertise of the person writing your plan. Get as many details about the person or team who will write your business plan as possible. You should be able to get details on their experience, the types of plans they’ve written, the business plan templates they use, and their business background.

This information is essential when you trust your business plan to a professional writer. Say you’re starting a restaurant and seeking help writing your business plan. You wouldn’t want to hand your plan over to a writer who has only written business plans for tech startups because they might not have the expertise to know what’s essential for a plan in your industry.

2. Is your plan writer based in your region?

Sometimes, time zone differences and language barriers can lead to communication breakdowns when working with people remotely. As you search for plan writers, you’ll want to be sensitive to that and find someone whose schedule and communication style are compatible with your own.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be in the same geographic region as you. But make sure that you’re able to communicate clearly and efficiently with plan writers as you evaluate plan writers. Otherwise, unnecessary delays can slow you down.

3. How will my writer and I share information?

During the plan writing process, you will certainly be sharing much information about your business with your plan writer. What is the plan for sharing that information? Will you be submitting forms, making phone calls, sending emails, etc? You’ll want to know how your plan writer expects to communicate with you so you can come to meetings prepared.

Understanding how information will be exchanged in advance will help keep the plan writing process moving forward since you’ll be submitting information to your writer in the format they’re expecting.

4. Will your plan include market research for your specific industry and location?

Market research is a vital part of any business plan. It supports a plan by revealing the size of the market opportunity, what customers expect from a business in that industry, what competitors are offering, and more.

Lenders and investors will look for this section of your business plan and expect to find solid data here. So, you should clarify with your plan writer that they will be incorporating legitimate, relevant market research in your plan. That means finding data that are as specific to your business’s actual market as possible.

5. How many rounds of revisions will your plan writer do for you?

The first pass of any document is rarely perfect. And business plans in particular are an iterative process, meant to be refined over time.

Find out if your plan writer will offer revisions, and what type of edits will be covered when they do. It’s not uncommon for a business plan to go through several rounds of edits between the plan writer and the business owner as they work to tailor it to the owner’s specific needs. So you’ll want to know how many revisions are provided, what the process is like, and if any additional charges will be incurred.

6. What format will your plan be delivered in?

When your plan is finished, what format will you receive it in? Will it be in an editable, formatted text document? A flattened PDF? Can it be easily shared with other business partners and lenders? Do you have a say in the format you get?

If your plan is delivered as a PDF that you can’t easily edit, you’ll want to know what the process will be like to request any changes from your business plan writer. Or if it’s possible to have access to multiple document formats.

7. Can you make your own edits to the plan after it is delivered to you?

Echoing the point above, having some versatility in your final product can be crucial. Think about getting your business plan, receiving a bank loan, and then realizing you need to pivot part of your business to capitalize on a new market opportunity. In this case, it would be extremely beneficial to have a business plan in a format that you can open up and make a few changes to, without having to go back and have the entire plan rewritten.

Things can change quickly as your business moves forward, so you’ll want to be certain that your plan is delivered in a format that can be adapted over time.

8. How much will future changes to your plan or financial model cost?

Say your business has changed enough since receiving your plan that you need to update several sections. Or, perhaps the bank you submitted your plan to approved you for a smaller loan amount than you asked for, resulting in a request for an updated copy of your plan. You would need to make some adjustments in that case to reflect your use of the new, lower amount of funds.

If you can’t make edits to your financial model yourself, you’ll want to know the cost of any changes, and if there will be a way for you to make your own changes going forward.

9. Is business planning software included?

Business plans are living, breathing documents, and should be able to help you start, run, and expand your business. Some plan writing services provide you with a finalized business plan document — but not the next steps or the tools to update it as your business changes and grows. Other plan writers will provide you with software or other tools to make it easy to update your own plan and track your progress as your business grows.

Discovering what extra features or services you might receive as part of your contract with a plan writer can help influence who you choose to work with.

10. Will you be provided with tools to track your progress against your plan?

Keeping your plan up to date and adjusting your goals is an important part of running a successful business. Are you staying on budget and meeting your sales goals?

Once you’re up and running, and are tracking your sales and expenses in your accounting software , you should regularly compare your actual results to what you said you would do in your business plan. Having access to the kinds of tools to do that upfront is invaluable. You’ll want to know if that’s included with your plan, or if you’ll need to purchase it yourself.

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7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Selling Your Business

Ask yourself these questions to make sure you're ready to move on..

As someone who has sold a business and worked with numerous companies, leaders, and CEOs on business growth challenges , I understand the complexity and emotional weight of the process. It's a financial transaction and a significant life event that can impact your professional trajectory and personal life. Here are seven crucial factors you should consider before making this critical decision .

1. Why are you selling the business?

Before anything else, understand your motivations for selling. Are you looking to retire, pursue a new venture, or alleviate stress? Clarifying your reasons will guide your decision-making and help you focus on your goals. For example, if retirement is your goal, you might prioritize a buyer who can maintain the company's legacy, whereas, for a new venture, maximizing the sale price might be more critical.

2. What are non-negotiable terms?

Identify your deal-breakers early on. Whether it's the sale price, keeping certain employees, or maintaining company culture, knowing your non-negotiables helps in negotiations and ensures you don't compromise on your core values. For instance, if preserving the company culture is paramount, you may prefer a buyer who promises to keep the existing management team in place.

3. How much money do you really need?

Assess your financial needs versus wants. Calculate the amount required to achieve your post-sale goals, secure your financial future, and maintain your lifestyle. This clarity will inform your pricing and deal structure. For example, if your goal is financial security for retirement, determine your "number" that covers all expenses and leaves a cushion for unexpected costs.

4. How will this affect your employees?

Consider the impact on your team. Communicate transparently and ensure their job security, benefits, and morale are addressed. A smooth transition benefits both the buyer and your employees. For instance, providing severance packages or job placement assistance can mitigate employee anxiety and demonstrate your commitment to their well-being.

5. How will it affect your family?

Discuss the sale with your family. Understand their concerns and expectations. The decision will impact their lives, too, so ensure they are supportive and aligned with your plans. For example, if selling the business means relocating, it's crucial to address how this change will affect your family's daily life and future plans.

6. What are you going to do afterward?

Plan your post-sale life. Whether starting a new business, traveling, or spending time with family, having a clear vision for the future prevents post-sale regret and motivates the sale process. For instance, business owners who sell their company to travel the world are likely to find that having a well-defined travel plan can help them transition smoothly and enjoy their newfound freedom.

7. What type of deal are you willing to consider?

Determine your preferred deal structure. Options include all-cash, roll-over equity, earn-out agreements, or an executive position in the new company. Each has different implications for your involvement and financial outcome. For instance, an earn-out deal might provide higher overall value but requires you to stay involved in the business for a certain period, which could be a benefit or a burden, depending on your plans.

Selling your business is a complex process that involves more than just financial considerations. It's a major professional and personal decision that will impact many aspects of your life and those around you. These factors will help you make a well-informed decision and ensure a successful transition.

The Daily Digest for Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders

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Wyomingites Have Lots Of Questions About USPS Rural Mail Plan, Get Few Answers

The U.S. Postal Service’s public forum on Thursday was long on questions and short on answers. Wyomingites showed up in force to complain about a proposal that likely means longer delivery times across much, if not all, of the state.

September 05, 2024 11 min read

Yellow means faster mail delivery. Blue means slower.

On a map showing where Wyoming lands in the U.S. Postal Service’s future plans, the entire state is blue.

Wyomingites turned out in force to voice their complaints about the idea of slower statewide mail delivery. But they didn’t get as many answers as they had questions.

Doreen Garrison, postmaster of Bairoil, Wyoming, promised her customers she would relay their concerns with the U.S. Postal Service’s proposals for Wyoming, which would move all of the Cowboy State’s large processing centers to other states and will chop $3 billion in costs by sacrificing rural mail delivery.

She was in the online-only meeting Thursday afternoon keeping her promise, in spite of feeling that it was just a “dog-and-pony show.”

“I’m not going to reiterate all the other comments that have been made because it’s silly,” she said. “I know this is a dog-and-pony show, and no matter what we say, it isn’t going to matter. But I promised my customers here at the Bairoil Post Office that I would be on this Zoom meeting.”

Garrison did take issue with one of the claims Postal Service officials made during the meeting that medications will still get to their destinations in a timely fashion.

“You’re saying medical is not going to be affected, but it already is,” she said. “I’ve had several customers who get their medication from the pharmacies in Rawlins that is 40 miles away, and that medication goes all the way to Denver. It gets circulated from Denver, and it often winds up in different places in Denver, like Aurora, before it even comes back here to Wyoming.”

Garrison also suggested Express Mail, too, will be negatively affected by the USPS proposal, before signing off.

There was no response from USPS officials to Garrison’s comments.

One of the most important questions that was answered was where people who didn’t get to participate in what the USPS billed as a public forum can send their comments.

Those comments may be sent to Alexandra Reams at [email protected].

“There are other mechanisms to submit your comments through this regulatory process,” Reams added. “But this is just another way for you to offer your feedback.”

What’s In The USPS Proposal

Many questions remained unanswered during the four-hour session, but one thing that was pretty clear is that the original plan to move all of Wyoming’s large processing capabilities to other states is definitely not off the table.

A map showed the future locations of all of the large processing centers, which are called Regional Processing and Distribution Centers, in yellow. On that map, Wyoming is 100% blue, meaning no part of the state is within 50 miles of an RPDC in the proposed new postal service system.

That includes Cheyenne, the state’s capital city, as well as its second largest city, Casper.

Both of those are presently home to large processing centers. That functionality will move to Denver and Billings, but the centers won’t be closing altogether, Cowboy State Daily was told in response to its question about what being an all-blue state will mean for mail delivery in its urban and rural areas.

“Regarding the map, the map of the blue and yellow is not rural versus urban,” an unidentified postal service official said. “The map of the blue and yellow was any ZIP code within 50 miles of the approximately 60 RPDCs in yellow. Any ZIP code not within 50 miles of the approximate 60 RPDCs was in blue. It’s not a distinction between urban and rural.”

The postal service employee went on to say that the map did not show the 190 additional local processing centers, which is what both Casper and Cheyenne are slated to become under the Delivering for America proposal.

“Just because there may not be a facility on the map there does not mean that there is no processing facility in that location,” the official said.

No opportunity for additional questions was given during the forum and Cowboy State Daily’s questions about the future viability of rural mail delivery if the proposed changes cause businesses to move from blue areas to yellow, and how the new system would affect absentee ballots in future elections beyond 2024 went unanswered as well.

Wyomingites Showed Up

Although the USPS did publicize Thursday’s meeting, it didn’t widely publicize that there was a Tuesday deadline to sign up to comment and attend. It also didn’t publicize that its public meeting would not be livestreamed for people to watch, and that the only way to see the meeting was to have signed up by noon on Tuesday.

Wyoming was still well-represented throughout the forum, with several Cowboy State residents among those commenting and raising concerns.

Candy Moulton, who also is a Cowboy State Daily columnist but attended the meeting as a Wyoming resident, chastised the Postal Service for its handling of the Thursday meeting, questioning why more transparent notice wasn’t given.

“I know of more than three dozen people who tried to register for this meeting and could not,” she said.

Among those was Secretary of State Chuck Gray .

“As far as I know, the deadline was also not advertised,” she added. “I’d like you to address that.”

Moulton also asked whether there would be another meeting at a more appropriate time of day, instead of the middle of the day when people are working, and whether the plan is to just push through with removing all of the Cowboy State’s large processing units, in spite of all opposition in the state to that idea.

Her questions were not answered.

The only question of Moulton’s that was answered dealt with cut-off times for rural post offices, and whether the current proposal would mean an additional day being added to mail delivery times for rural post offices such as the one Moulton uses in Encampment, where the current cutoff time for mail pickup is 2 p.m.

“It would be very similar to if volume was entered after the 2 p.m. cutoff, that volume would not go out until the next morning,” an unidentified postal official said. “That volume would not go out until the next morning.

“So, we are suggesting the same thing. We would essentially have a 5 p.m. cutoff time, or whatever that office’s closing time is, and then that volume would be collected at the same time that the next day’s volume is being delivered to that post office. So, it would be an increment of one day, if that office is impacted by RTO (Regional Transportation Optimization).”

The RTO designation refers to the plans to consolidate more routes and pickup times in outlying areas to favor efficiency and faster mail delivery for areas within the 50-mile radius of an RPDC.

Discrimination Against Rural Areas

Ricci Roberts, branch president of the Cheyenne mail handling unit, suggested the Postal Service’s plans unconstitutionally favor urban areas at the expense of rural communities.

“Delaying the mail is a federal crime,” she said. “I understand you guys are moving the goal posts to pretend like it’s not delaying the mail, but here in Wyoming, we used to process our mail and deliver next day. Now we’re talking about a two-day delivery, best-case scenario.”

That best-case scenario doesn’t consider weather or road closures or any other problems, Ricci added.

“The other thing I’d like to bring up is that you guys are waiting for full trucks,” she said. “Wyoming does not fill trucks. We will never be profitable to fill an entire truck. So, we will be delaying all of that mail.”

An unidentified USPS employee replied that the agency is well aware of its statutory obligations.

“We are required by law to provide precise, reliable, efficient universal postal services in a financially sustainable manner,” he said. “We are not doing so right now. So, the purpose of this proposal is to allow us to actually achieve the mission that Congress has set out for us.”

The individual also said he disagrees that the proposal violates Section 403, which prohibits singling out rural areas.

A different unidentified official said the point of the proposal is to address the situation that Roberts mentioned, where Wyoming isn’t able to fill a truck.

“This would allow us the opportunity to aggregate those volumes into those originating RPDCs, so that we can build trucks that have greater utilizations,” he said. “Without that, we’ll be in the status quo we do today, forced to dispatch some trucks underutilized.”

New Plan Isn’t Good Business

Keneth Hoffman from Wyoming’s Weston County told postal officials that their plans don’t make good business sense.

“Recently, I sent a priority package, medium-sized box, from Newcastle, Wyoming, to Monterey, California,” he said. “It left here on Monday on the mail truck and arrived at Monterey on the following Saturday.”

Adding a day to delivery times would push delivery of that package into the next business week, he said.

“Add two days, and it’s the same thing, just later in the week,” he said. “So, it’s typical bureaucratic hubris to think that lowering your standards will increase your revenue. Because, on your chart, you said one of the goals is to increase revenue.”

Poorer service is going to do the opposite, Hoffman suggested.

“Like one of the other commenters said, you have to improve your performance if you really want to increase revenue,” he said. “That’s my comment. Please consider that, I know it’s a complicated thing …“

“Thank you very much sir,” the moderator cut in. “We appreciate you being here with us today.”

Ditto from Wyoming resident Melinda Bobo, who said one of the reasons Wyoming is “wound up” about the proposal is that when they hear things like reducing “unique transportation legs” they know it applies to the entire state.

“We know, when anybody does that, our service is going to degrade,” she said. “So that needs to be explicitly explained what that means.”

Wyoming also has a low population density, she pointed out, like many Western states.

“We can argue about how you’re defining rural versus urban,” she said. “But low population density is all of the Rocky Mountains, so we know that’s going to hammer us.”

About Those Medications

Postal Clerk Kelsey Worley, who works in rural Wyoming, told USPS officials that in addition to delivering many VA medications, she’s also the wife of a disabled veteran.

“The majority of the time, the Sheridan VA center sends these medications to Casper and then these medications are back up to the west side of the Bighorn Mountain within a couple of days,” she said. “I know you said that the medications would not be influenced with this new proposal, but I would like to know if DeJoy closes down the Casper Distribution Center and the Cheyenne Distribution Center, what happens when our veterans, our Wyoming veterans, can’t get their medications in time?”

She suggested the stress of not getting medications on time could lead to terrible outcomes, including some who end their lives.

“What does he plan to tell the families and loved ones of these veterans who end their life?” Worley asked.

An unidentified postal official told Worley that most facilities won’t close, but will be “renovated and uplifted” so that they are better places to work.

“They’ll have the right equipment, the right lighting, the appropriate conditions to work in,” he said.

He added there would be no career layoffs as a result of the changes to the Casper and Cheyenne locations, and that they are following all collective bargaining agreements where they apply.

An individual whose first name was given as Sharon said that the intention is to provide better service, not worse, that is more predictable.

“That especially goes for veterans and their medicine,” she said. “We have looked at where current pharmaceuticals ship from and our expectation is the number of days it will take for veterans to receive their medicine will be the same or faster. So, this is in no way aimed at harming our veterans ability to get medicine in a timely manner.”

Renée Jean can be reached at [email protected] .

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Fmr. Pres. Trump Remarks at the Economic Club of New York

Fmr. President Donald Trump outlines his economic plans at the Economic Club of New York.

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Highlights: Harris outlines small business plans; Trump admits he lost the 2020 race

Coverage on this live blog has ended. Follow the latest updates here .

What's happening today on the campaign trail

• Vice President Kamala Harris discussed her plans to boost small-business growth at a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this afternoon.
• Former President Donald Trump is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, tonight for a town hall moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity.
• Harris and Trump both commented on today's mass shooting at a high school in Georgia. Harris said it was a "senseless tragedy," while Trump called the suspected shooter "a sick and deranged monster."
• Both nominees have also agreed to the rules for next week's debate after protracted jockeying over the conditions.
• Trump 's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, delivered campaign remarks in Mesa, Arizona, at an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action.

Cost of living, abortion and border security shape the fight for House control

Bridget Bowman

The opening arguments in the closely fought battle for the House are heavy on the cost of living, abortion and the U.S.-Mexico border, with those issues dominating the TV airwaves — and Trump and Harris going largely unmentioned — as those down-ballot campaigns heat up.

A number of campaigns and outside groups launched new TV ads yesterday in the country’s most competitive House districts, kicking off the two-month sprint to Election Day. While the presidential campaign has been raging for months, fueled by tsunamis of online donations on both sides, many House campaigns save their resources for the final stretch before unloading their money on the issues that they most want to highlight.

Democrats need to net just four seats to take over the chamber, while Republicans are eager to expand a thin majority,   and the fight for the House will help determine if the next president will face a combative or cooperative Congress as they seek to address those key issues.

Read the full story here

Here’s how the economy is doing in the handful of counties that could decide the election

Like the nation as a whole, the economic fortunes of the counties poised to decide November’s election are starting to show early signs of distress.  

From Reno, Nevada, to the Midwest to the suburbs of Atlanta, unemployment rates that were recently at all-time lows have begun to creep back up. Meanwhile, housing costs have exploded in these regions, creating divides between homeowners and renters.    

In other words, these seven counties — part of  NBC News’ “The Deciders” project  — are microcosms of the U.S. economy writ large.

Former Joint Chiefs chairman says politics has 'no place in our national cemeteries'

Megan Lebowitz

Adm. Mike Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, weighed in on Trump's recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, saying it's no place for politics.

"I was sorry to see that happen and never want to see it happen again," Mullen said in an op-ed published by The Washington Post today, referring to how Trump's visit to Section 60 became "a political event." Service members killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are buried in this area.

"Politics has no place in the ranks. And it absolutely has no place in our national cemeteries," Mullen said. "That goes double for Section 60."

The opinion piece did not mention Trump by name. Instead, Mullen referred to "the visitor."

Bringing politics to Arlington "may lead others to think less of those sacrifices, to view them as smaller than they actually were," Mullen said. "And that’s a travesty, no matter what the visitor may have intended."

Trump's lawyers request pause of judge's order rejecting a hush money case move

Trump's lawyers moved tonight to request a pause of a judge's order from yesterday that rejected the former president's efforts to transfer his New York hush money case to federal court.

The request to pause U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein's order comes as Trump's legal team seeks to appeal the order. Trump's lawyers started that pr o cess late last night.

The former president is set to be sentenced in the case on Sept. 18. His lawyers have requested that date be pushed back until until after the Nov. 5 election.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott attacks Harris for busing migrants, then brags about his own busing program

Reporting from Mesa, Arizona

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday, while campaigning for former President Donald Trump, criticized Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration for busing migrants to other parts of the country. Minutes later, he bragged about doing the same thing. 

“When you saw 5,000 people a day crossing into a town like Eagle Pass, Texas, you could see that that was on your TV. You knew what was going on in America,” Abbott told a crowd of about 50 people gathered at a wedding venue in a Phoenix suburb. “What Harris wanted to do was to silence the critics, and they could silence the critics by making this problem go invisible.” 

Read the full story here.

Without evidence, Trump accuses ABC News of voter suppression during town hall

Trump reiterated his criticism of ABC News during a Wednesday Fox News town hall.

The former president called ABC News unfair, arguing that the network is the "meanest" and "nastiest." He also criticized George Stephanopoulos' interview with Biden after the previous debate, calling it a soft interview.

But he also criticized an October 2020 Washington Post-ABC News poll, which showed that Biden led Trump by 17 points, arguing without evidence that the poll artificially inflated Biden's lead to discourage Trump voters. Biden ultimately beat Trump by less than one percentage point.

ABC News is set to host the debate between Trump and Harris on Sept. 10.

Trump campaign threatens to fire staff who leak to the press

Katherine Doyle

Trump’s co-campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, warned staff in an internal email this evening not to leak to reporters or risk losing their jobs.

In the email obtained by NBC News, LaCivita and Wiles write: “We have done a great job of preventing leaks, and that has been because everyone knows what the policy is and what we expect from everyone. Information is power — and the press doesn’t give a damn if you lose your job because you spoke out of school.

As this team moves forward with only 61 days left until victory, please do not deviate from this policy. Success requires buy-in from everyone.

If just one of us goes off course, it jeopardizes not only the team, but also President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot.”

Vance bashes Liz Cheney after she endorses Harris

Zoë Richards

Vance criticized former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., tonight when asked about her endorsement of Harris during a moderated discussion with the conservative group Turning Point Action in Mesa, Arizona.

“A very good thing that I could say about the next presidency of Donald J. Trump is that he’s going to make sure people like Liz Cheney are laughed out of the Oval Office instead of rewarded,” Vance told moderator Charlie Kirk, who had suggested that warmongers had backed Harris while peacemakers stood behind Trump. "I think it's the best thing in the world that she's supporting Kamala Harris."

Cheney, who represented Wyoming in Congress for six years before she lost in the GOP primary in 2022 to a Trump-backed candidate, was among a handful of Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. She sharply criticized the former president over his actions in connection with the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 — remarks that cost her the No. 3 post in House GOP leadership.

Russian money was funneled to right-wing creators through a pro-Trump media outlet: prosecutors

Ryan J. Reilly

Brandy Zadrozny

David Ingram

Employees of the Russia-backed media network RT funded and directed a scheme that sent millions of dollars to prominent right-wing commentators through a media company that appears to match the description of Tenet Media, a leading platform for pro-Trump voices, according to an NBC News review of charging documents, business records and social media profiles.

The indictment  today of two RT employees, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, includes allegations that the duo implemented a nearly $10 million plan to fund an unnamed Tennessee-based company as one of their “covert projects” to influence American politics by posting videos to TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.

The company’s description matches that of Tenet Media, according to a review by NBC News of details included in the indictment. Prosecutors said that the website of “Company-1” describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues,” the exact same language used by Tenet Media on its website and social media channels. The indictment also states that Company-1 is registered in Tennessee and changed its name on or about May 22, 2023. Tennessee Secretary of State records found by NBC News show that Tenet Media entered its new assumed name on the same date: May 22, 2023.

Trump and Harris campaigns agree to rules for ABC debate

Kelly O'Donnell

Yamiche Alcindor

Gabe Gutierrez

Dareh Gregorian

Vice President  Kamala Harris  and former President  Donald Trump  are set to debate each other next week for the first time after their campaigns on Wednesday agreed to the ground rules set by host network ABC.

The Sept. 10 event in Philadelphia will use the  same rules and format   as the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden.

Both campaigns had  previously agreed  to hold the debate on that date, but the agreement appeared to be in jeopardy after Trump suggested he  might back out  and Harris’ team   sought to change  the rule on muted microphones.

The state of the economy in key counties across the country could have major impacts on the 2024 presidential race. NBC News’ Christine Romans looks deeper at the economic statistics in certain states that could impact the 2024 election.

Trump campaign says the former president believes ‘anyone convicted of a crime’ should be jailed

From  Donald Trump ’s perspective, his upcoming sentencing in the New York hush money case should include jail time.

A spokesperson for his  2024 campaign  commented this week on reports of a Trump clemency recipient being convicted of a domestic violence-related charge by saying, “President Trump believes anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars.”

Liz Cheney endorses Harris for president

Reporting from Washington, D.C.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., on Wednesday endorsed Vice President  Kamala Harris  for president, the latest high-profile Republican endorsement for Democrats.

Cheney’s comments took place during an appearance at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

Muscly monsters and galloping horses could let people know you voted

Alex Seitz-Wald

New "I voted" stickers may be coming to a polling place — or Instagram post —near you this fall, after officials in at least two states let citizens have a hand in updating the familiar red, white and blue designs that are often featured in selfies posted by Americans after they cast their ballot.

Election officials in Michigan and Kentucky each held their first-ever open design contests this year, inviting grade-school students and the general public to submit fresh ideas.

In Michigan, the secretary of state's office today announced nine new contest-winning options that local election clerks can order and offer to voters at polling places this year.

The designs are irreverent and homespun, with a Midwest-themed “Ope, I voted” and a more whimsical portrayal, submitted by an elementary school student, of a muscly monster ripping off its shirt, perhaps in ecstasy over civic participation.

In Kentucky, home to horse racing's biggest event , the state's winning design belongs to a middle schooler, who drew a galloping horse in front of an American Flag (it narrowly edged out a "Lizard Man").

Rep. Mike Collins' congressional campaign ad featuring a gun resurfaces after shooting in his district

Annemarie Bonner

Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., who represents Barrow County, displayed a gun in his ad when he was running for his seat in Congress. The ad is now resurfacing after the shooting today .

In the video, Collins did not address gun rights, but at the end of the video, he can be seen firing the gun at a target. This is one of several ads from Collins that displays a gun.

Vance to speak at event hosted in part by pastor with history of homophobic remarks

Alec Hernández

As Vance heads out west through the weekend for a mix of campaigning and fundraising, his first stop of the multi-day swing features remarks with conservative media personality Charlie Kirk as a part of Turning Point Action’s “Chase the Vote at the Church” event. 

The gathering is set to take place at the Generation Church in Mesa, Arizona, where lead pastor, Ryan Visconti, has a history of anti-gay comments on social media. 

In one post on his X account from July of this year, Visconti wrote that in order for “America to be ‘great again,’ we need to go back to opposing the abomination of gay mirage [sic] & abortion as we did before.” A separate post from the fall of 2023 features Visconti saying that in “God’s eyes, there’s no such thing as ‘gay marriage,’ and argued in a lengthy thread posted earlier that year that “God wants homosexuals to repent and change.”

In a post on Instagram last week, Visconti wrote that he is “honored” to host Vance as a part of the Turning Point event.

“Senator Vance supports every American’s right to freely practice their religion,” Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder said in a statement provided to NBC News. “It’s a shame the media is attacking a pastor over his religious beliefs simply because he is hosting an event at his church,” he continued. 

Vance, for his part, said in a debate during a run for the US Senate in 2022 that marriage equality is “the law of the land in this country, and I’m not trying to do anything to change that.” 

Representatives for Turning Point Action did not respond to a request for comment. 

Republican House panel subpoenas Walz in investigation of Minnesota nonprofit that ran a Covid aid scheme

Kyle Stewart

Reporting from Washington

The House Education and Workforce Committee issued subpoenas today to Walz, the Minnesota Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for how they responded to what federal prosecutors have called the largest pandemic  fraud schemes  in the country.

The subpoenas, obtained first by NBC News, demand that Walz, Minnesota Commissioner of Education Willie Jett, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis Fong turn over documents concerning oversight of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which is alleged to have  misused millions of dollars  intended to feed children during the pandemic.

Walz’s record has faced new scrutiny since Harris tapped him as her running mate last month, though this new request by the Republican-led committee is part of an investigative effort that goes back to 2022.

Menendez co-defendant Fred Daibes to plead guilty to bank fraud

Jonathan Dienst

Fred Daibes — the man convicted of bribing now-former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., with gold bars and cash — is expected to plead guilty in federal court tomorrow to separate bank fraud charges, his attorney Larry Lustberg told NBC News.

Daibes, a N.J. developer, and Menendez were convicted in July as part of a wide-ranging bribery scheme in a case prosecuted in New York’s Southern District.

One part of the bribery scheme was an attempt by Daibes to pay Menendez cash and gold bars and in exchange, prosecutors said, Menendez tried to use his power to interfere with the New Jersey U.S. Attorney and that office’s separate bank fraud case against Daibes.

Daibes was originally offered probation in the bank fraud case that had 16 separate criminal counts. Justice Department officials say the senator’s attempts to improperly impact the outcome of that bank fraud case played no role in the decision by federal prosecutors to offer Daibes probation for bank fraud.

After the separate "gold bar" bribery indictment was announced in New York, New Jersey Judge Susan Wigeton in October 2023 threw out the original Daibes bank fraud plea deal and the Justice Department's proposed sentence of probation.

Tomorrow, the court is expected to have a new bank fraud plea — and a possibly a new sentencing recommendation by the Justice Department.

Menendez and Daibes are scheduled to be sentenced in New York on Oct. 29 for their bribery convictions. Menendez resigned from the Senate last month.

Trump, previously opposed to mail-in ballots, urges people to vote by any method

Jake Traylor

In a TikTok posted last night, Trump encouraged people to vote by any means despite his previous, long-held opposition to mail-in ballots.

"It’s time to start thinking about let’s vote," he said. "So important. This will be the most important election in the history of our country. So whether it’s mail in ballots, early voting, voting on the day, you gotta get out and vote. We want to save our country. We’re the only ones going to save it. That other group of people, they’re going to destroy our country."

This is a shift for Trump, his allies and many Republican Party leaders, who falsely claimed that fraudulent voting by such means resulted in Trump's 2020 loss. After his defeat, some GOP states, like Texas and Georgia, tightened their requirements on absentee voting.

Trump calls suspect in Georgia shooting 'a sick and deranged monster'

In a post to Truth Social , Trump weighed in on today's mass shooting at a Georgia high school.

"Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA," he wrote. "These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster."

His post came shortly after Harris commented on the shooting, calling it a "senseless tragedy."

Trump campaign confirms Barron Trump is attending NYU

The Trump campaign today confirmed a Daily Mail report that the former president's son Barron Trump is attending New York University. The elder Trump told the news outlet that his son had been accepted to several colleges, but he landed on the Stern School of Business.

“He’s a very high aptitude child, but he’s no longer a child," Trump said. "He’s just passed into something beyond child-dom. He’s doing great.”

Trump also said his son had been considering the former president's alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, but added: "We didn't do that. We went for Stern."

In a first-of-its-kind survey, NBC News polled Gen Z voters ahead of the 2024 election and the results were surprising. The poll explored voter sentiments and issues surrounding the election. NBC News’ Savannah Sellers spoke with some young voters about the 2024 election and their views on the Harris campaign.

Harris: Georgia shooting was a 'senseless tragedy'

Alexandra Marquez

During remarks in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Harris addressed the school shooting in Georgia, telling attendees, "Our hearts are with the students, the teachers and their families, of course."

She called the incident a "senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies" and called it "outrageous" that "everyday in our country ... parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive."

The vice president also said that "we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in this country once and for all ... it doesn't have to be this way."

John Kirby: RT is no longer 'just a propaganda arm' for the Kremlin

Following the announcement of new sanctions targeting what the Biden administration describes as Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that "RT is no longer just a propaganda arm of the Kremlin; it’s being used to advance covert Russian influence actions."

Kirby said that the RT network was being used "to funnel disinformation through outlets and social media influencers that a certain number of Americans find credible. We will not stand for that."

He added that the U.S. government believes Russian officials, as high as Russian President Vladimir Putin, were weighing in on RT's operation.

Biden calls on GOP to pass 'common-sense gun safety legislation' after Georgia school shooting

President Joe Biden criticized Republicans’ stance on gun control and said that the White House was closely working with state, local and national law enforcement after a mass shooting at a high school in Georgia.

“After decades of inaction, Republicans in Congress must finally say ‘enough is enough’ and work with Democrats to pass common-sense gun safety legislation," the president said in a statement. "We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks, and end immunity for gun manufacturers.”

Speaker Mike Johnson praises law enforcement response in Georgia shooting

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., praised law enforcement for their response in today's Georgia high school shooting.

"Our prayers go out today for the Apalachee High School community, and especially the victims and their families who have endured this terrible tragedy," he wrote in a post on X. "The officers of the Winder Police Department are commended for their quick action in apprehending the suspect. May justice here be swift."

Walz says he's been briefed on the Georgia high school shooting

During a campaign stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Walz addressed the high school shooting in Georgia.

"We don’t know any of the details on it yet, but it’s a situation that’s all too common, and our hearts are out there right now," he said, adding that "work" should be focused on how to "prevent these in the future."

Attorney General Merrick Garland addresses shooting, says FBI and ATF are on scene

Ahead of his news conference on election threats, Attorney General Merrick Garland addressed the shooting at a high school in Winder, Georgia. He said the FBI and ATF are on scene to assist local law enforcement.

"I'm devastated for the families who have been affected by this terrible tragedy," he said. "The Justice Department stands ready to provide any resources or support that the Winder community needs."

Rep. Lucy McBath, whose son was killed in 2012: 'No family should have to go through this'

Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., who lost her son Jordan Davis to gun violence in 2012, said in a post o n X : "I am praying for the students of Apalachee High School and the community of Winder. I am praying for families across our state and entire country. Too many continue to experience the pain of gun violence. No family should have to go through this."

McBath became active in efforts to curb gun violence after her son's killing and made the issue a main thrust of her campaign for Congress in 2018.

Georgia governor says he's directed state resources to deal with high school shooting

Monica Alba

Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement on X that he has ordered the state to aid in the response to the shooting at a high school in Winder, Georgia .

"I have directed all available state resources to respond to the incident at Apalachee High School and urge all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state," he wrote.

Biden has also been briefed by his homeland security adviser, Liz Sherwood-Randall, as his administration coordinates with state and local partners, a White House official said.

Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia, who represents Barrow County, also posted about the incident.

"We extend our gratitude to law enforcement for their swift action to secure the school and get the shooter in custody," he wrote. "I have spoken with Sheriff Smith and told him my team and I are available to assist in any way necessary. We will continue to monitor and provide updates as prudent."

Trump acknowledges he lost the 2020 election ‘by a whisker’

Trump publicly acknowledged that he did not win the 2020 presidential election,  telling podcaster Lex Fridman that he “lost by a whisker.”

Fridman asked Trump about his expectations for his debate next week against Harris, in a podcast episode released yesterday.

Trump initially answered, “I’ve done a lot of debating ... I’ve done well with debates,” before embarking on a tangent about the number of votes he received in 2020, saying: “I became president. Then the second time I got millions more votes than I got the first time.”

“I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, ‘You would win. You can’t not win.’ And I got millions more votes than that and lost by a whisker,” Trump added.

The latest hiccup in Trump’s crypto launch: Deleted posts and a hacking claim

MacKenzie Sigalos, CNBC

The X accounts of two family members of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared to have been hacked on Tuesday in order to promote a scam aimed at cashing in on the Trump family’s nascent crypto venture .

The hacks come as the former president prepares to release his crypto policy platform and his campaign wrestles with the fallout of a foreign cyberattack .

Shortly after 8:15 p.m. ET, the X account belonging to Trump’s daughter-in-law, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, appeared to announce that the digital currency project, dubbed World Liberty Financial, had been launched.

The account provided several links to Trump’s 1.7 million followers to a coin and websites claiming to be “the only official channels of World Liberty Financial.” 

Biden administration to hit Russia with sanctions over efforts to manipulate U.S. opinion ahead of the election

Ken Dilanian

Rebecca Shabad

The Biden administration will announce a series of actions Wednesday targeting what it says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election, two senior officials told NBC News.

Some of the alleged manipulation has been through RT, a Russian-backed media network, the sources said. The expected moves include Treasury sanctions and a law enforcement action by the Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to speak publicly Wednesday afternoon about the announcement.

U.S. intelligence agencies have previously assessed that Russia wants to interfere in the 2024 election and flagged RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and required it to register as a foreign agent.

Trump is dismissing national polls that show Harris is outperforming him, within the margin of error. It comes as the vice president is set to propose a series of new benefits for small-business owners in an effort to support the creation of millions of new businesses and bolster her economic policies. NBC News’ Peter Alexander reports for "TODAY."

Trump downplays debate prep ahead of face-off with Harris

As Harris hits the campaign trail in New Hampshire today, Trump interviewed with a local media outlet and said there's not much preparation he can do ahead of the debate on Tuesday.

"You have to know your subject. You’re living with your subject. I live with my subject. I live with all of these, these horrible problems that they’ve caused because we’ve got to straighten them out," he said. "We’re going to make America great again. So, you know, I do, I have meetings on it. We talk about it, but there’s not a lot you can do. Either know your subject or not, either have good policy or not."

Trump's nephew recounts 'grotesque' comment former president made about his disabled son

Trump's nephew Fred Trump III said in an interview this morning on CNN that last year, when he called this uncle asking for financial help for his disabled son William, the former president told him, "'He doesn't recognize you. Let him die and move down to Florida.'"

"Now I don't know how anyone could say that about any other human being, but to say it about your grandnephew is pretty grotesque," said Trump's nephew, the son of Fred Trump Jr., the former president's brother who battled alcoholism and died of a heart attack in 1981.

William has the genetic variant KCNQ2 and suffers from seizures.

Fred Trump, 61, explained that he believes the former president and other family members kicked him out of his grandfather's will years ago, and later on, he said the former president and his aunt agreed to set up a fund to help with William's care. He said the money "never really materialized" and last year, when he called the former president to ask for financial assistance for William's therapeutic care, his uncle made the comment to him.

"I said, 'No, he does recognize me,'" said Fred Trump, who recently published a book about his experience in the Trump family. His sister, Mary Trump, previously published a similar book and has been a longtime critic of their uncle.

When reached for comment, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said the former president's nephew's story was "completely fabricated and total fake news of the highest order."

"It is appalling a lie so blatantly disgusting can be printed in media," Cheung said. "Anyone who knows President Trump knows he would never use such language, and false stories like this have been thoroughly debunked. This is nothing more than a cheap shot to sell copies of a book that belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section. ”

The former president's nephew said he believes in Vice President Kamala Harris' policies and would be willing to campaign for her, including in key battleground states where he has ties.

"If I'm asked, I will campaign on behalf of the Harris campaign and get the word out. My mom was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I'd love to go to Michigan," he said. "I went to Lehigh University, as did my dad, as did my son, Cristopher. Andrew went to school in Philadelphia. I have family in Pennsylvania, very important state, and I say I'm a different kind of Trump. I think I can fit in with any group of people."

NBC News has also reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.

House GOP leaders weigh options as Trump pushes for a government shutdown fight

Sahil Kapur

Trump is pressuring Republicans to shut down the government at the end of this month if Congress doesn’t pass a GOP-backed proposal to establish new election rules nationwide.

Trump has called on Republicans in Congress to link funding the government with the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote — in a bid to target noncitizen voting, which is already illegal. And House Republican leaders are considering adopting the strategy and picking a fight with Democrats.

Trump repeats attacks on Jewish political leaders and voters as battle for key group heats up

Allan Smith

As Trump tries to win over Jewish voters in the 2024 election, he’s made a point of attacking Jewish Democrats — targeting the faith of three of the most prominent Jewish Americans in politics and criticizing any Jew who backs Democrats as an “absolute fool” who needs “their head examined.”

Those attacks have increasingly colored the background of a pivotal fight for potential swing voters: Jewish Americans in critical battleground states, a group that has consistently supported Democrats in past elections and, this year, is increasingly concerned about issues including rising antisemitism at home, U.S. support for Israel in its war in Gaza , and the hostages held by Hamas — six of whom, including one American, were recently killed in Hamas captivity .

A number of Jewish advocates, quick to note Jewish voters are voting on an array of issues beyond Israel, say Trump’s attacks are blatantly antisemitic and lean on age-old tropes suggesting “dual loyalty” for American Jews between the U.S. and the Jewish state. Even some of Trump’s allies on the right view the comments as increasingly unhelpful in the broader effort to win over a small but meaningful number of Jewish voters in a close election.

What is Vance doing today?

Vance will deliver campaign remarks in Mesa, Arizona, tonight. The event is hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action.

The Harris and Trump campaigns are hitting Pennsylvania and other key battleground states this week with just over two months to go before the election. The candidates were also preparing for their first debate next week. NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez reports.

Where is Walz today?

Walz is headed to Pennsylvania for a pair of campaign events: one in Lancaster, the other in Pittsburgh.

Young voters harbor deep worries about inflation, debt, housing

Stephanie Perry

Marc Trussler

Three in 10 voters under 30 years old say that inflation and the cost of living is the most important problem currently facing the country — three times more than the share calling “threats to democracy” their most important issue, which was the next highest issue among young voters.

That category came in at 11% in the new NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z poll  powered by SurveyMonkey .

Abortion is the third most selected issue at 9%, followed by the Israel-Hamas war and “crime and safety” — both of which were selected by only 8% of young voters.

Trump continues to deny any confrontation at Arlington National Cemetery

Trump said in a phone interview on Sean Hannity's show yesterday that there was "no conflict" when he visited Arlington National Cemetery last week despite cemetery officials saying there was an "incident" and the Army confirming one took place in a statement.

"What happened is so horrible. If you look at just the records, there was no conflict, there was no fight, there was no anything," Trump said.

Trump said he got home that night and his staffer said that there was a story in the press about what happened.

"The nice thing, the beautiful thing, was all the parents and relatives got together and they said, ‘That’s a false story.’ It was totally false. I get enough publicity. Believe me, I’d like to get less publicity," Trump added.

The Army said in a statement last week that a Trump aide had " abruptly pushed aside " an employee working at the cemetery who was trying to prevent Trump's team from taking photos and videos at Section 60 where recent Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are buried.

Harris slammed Trump over the situation Saturday, saying the former president "disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt."

“If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude,” she wrote.

Poll: Half of Gen Z voters support Harris, one-third back Trump

Half of Gen Z voters say they’ll vote for Harris in November, while one-third say they’ll vote for Trump — a bigger gap for the Democratic nominee than some other polls this year but not quite at 2020 levels for the party, according to a new survey of registered voters under 30.

The results of the NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z Poll ,  powered by SurveyMonkey , come as young voters grapple with new economic and cultural challenges in 2024, including rising costs and concerns about debt that are prompting delays to some critical life events.

Another 1 in 10 respondents to the poll said they will not vote in the presidential election.

What Trump is doing today

Trump will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a town hall tonight. The event will moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Here's what Harris is doing today

Nnamdi Egwuonwu

Harris is expected to deliver remarks at a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this afternoon, where she will discuss her plan to boost small businesses, including expanding tax deductions for startup expenses. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan and Rep. Chris Pappas also are expected to speak. 

Harris did not hold any campaign events yesterday.