You’re already investing time and energy in planning your small business—there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to formatting your plan. Instead, to help build a complete and effective plan, lean on time-tested structures created by entrepreneurs and startups who have come before you.
In our business plan template, each section includes an overview of the most important information to cover and guidelines on how to approach writing and researching each one.
A business plan can be as informal or formal as your situation calls for, but even if you’re a fan of the back-of-the-napkin approach to planning, there are some key benefits to starting your plan from an existing outline or template.
- Executive summary. A one-page summary of your whole plan, typically written after the rest of the plan is completed.
- Company description. An overview can include many potential sub-sections, from the basics (your type of business model) to the meaningful (your business’ vision and mission statement).
- Market analysis. Everything from estimated market size to your target markets. It’ll also include a competitive analysis of your industry to address competitors strengths and weaknesses.
- Products and services. What you sell and the most important features of your products or services. It’ll also include any plans for intellectual property, like patent filings or copyright. If you do market research for your products, it’ll show up in this section of your business plan.
- Marketing plan. How you intend to get the word out about your business, and what strategic decisions you’ve made about things like your pricing strategy.
- Logistics and operations plan. Everything that needs to happen to turn your raw materials into products and get them into the hands of your customers.
- Financial plan. It’s important to include a look at your financial projections. This section includes templates for three key financial statements: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement.
Free: Business Plan Template
- Evaluate your business ideas. Whether you’ve got one business idea or many, a business plan can make an idea more tangible, helping you see if it’s truly viable.
- Plan for your next phase. Whether your goal is to start a new business or scale an existing business to the next level, a business plan can help you understand what needs to happen and identify gaps to address.
- Clarify marketing strategy, goals, and tactics. Writing a business plan can show you the actionable next steps to take on a big, abstract idea. It can also help you narrow your strategy and identify clear-cut tactics that will support it.
- Scope the necessary work. Without a concrete plan, cost overruns and delays are all but certain. A business plan can help you see the full scope of work to be done and adjust your investment of time and money accordingly.
- Hire and build partnerships. When you need buy-in from potential employees and partners, especially in the early stages of your business, a clearly written business plan is one of the best tools at your disposal. A business plan provides a refined look at your goals for the business, letting partners judge for themselves whether or not they agree with your vision.
- Secure funds. Securing funding for your business, whether from venture capital or a bank, is one of the most common reasons to create a business plan.
It’s tempting to dive right into execution when you’re excited about a new business or side project, but taking the time to write a business plan and get your thoughts on paper allows you to do a number of beneficial things:
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This stands for “original equipment manufacturer.” If your product is sold to another company that then incorporates your product into their finished product, then you are using an OEM channel.
Now that you’ve completed the opportunity chapter, you’re going to move on to the execution chapter, which includes everything about how you’re actually going to make your business work. You’ll cover your marketing and sales plans, operations, how you’ll measure success, and the key milestones that you expect to achieve.
Business planning is a continuous process that can help you validate your idea, set goals, manage, and successfully pitch your business. If you’re not sure where to start, it can be very helpful to view some completed business plans as you go through the planning process.
The final section of your target market chapter should discuss key customers.
Retail distribution
You’ll also use this section of your business plan to demonstrate what sets your solution apart from others, and how you plan to expand your offerings in the future.
“Our patent-pending technology is a one-connection add-on to existing bCPAP setups. When attached to a bCPAP setup, our product provides non-invasive dual pressure ventilation.”
All entrepreneurs have a vision of where they want to take the business in the future if they are successful.
The first part of your marketing and sales plan is your positioning statement. Positioning is how you will try and present your company to your customers. Are you the low-price solution, or are you the premium, luxury brand in your market? Do you offer something that your competitors don’t offer?
This one-page template uses a Lean approach to develop your business plan. Use this customizable template to detail the crucial elements of your strategy, including a brief business and industry overview, your product or service offering, options from your competitors, and your competitive advantage. Plus, this template includes room to detail your marketing plan, success metrics, financial plan, and a visual timeline of milestones.
In addition to the steps provided above, you can save time and get started on your plan by downloading one of the templates provided on this page. You can also check out “Free Executive Summary Templates,” which can serve the same purpose as a one-page business plan.
Creating a one-page business plan benefits your organization in the following ways:
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One-Page Business Plan for a Product Business Template
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Use this one-page template to develop a strategic roadmap for your organization’s product offerings. This template provides space for you to include a business overview, a description of your target market, your competitive advantage, a list of marketing channels and materials you plan to utilize, as well as your pricing strategy, distribution channels, and success metrics. You can also use the visual timeline of milestones at the bottom to enter key dates and events.
Use this one-page small business plan template to outline the essential aspects of your business strategy. Provide details on your organization’s vision, mission, product or service offering, and management team. Then identify the target audience, market size, competitor offerings, and your competitive advantage. This plan also includes room to detail your marketing and sales strategy, key objectives, and financial plan.
Now, Eric Ries' Lean Startup movement revolves around skipping the step of developing a business plan and jumping directly into experimentation, and I absolutely agree with this.
7- Market Analysis
A market analysis is a review of the state and maturity of the market the venture intends to attack, as well as an assessment of the market size or market potential.
Summarize two or three core customer acquisition and growth strategies and a basic overview of how you plan to implement them.
One important thing to note here is that is NOT a fundraising document, so avoid adding fundraising or round information.
What is a Business Plan?
If you got here, it is likely that you are looking to start your own business and one of your investors, or bank, or accelerator program requested a business plan for your company. Worry not, you've come to the right place.
There is consensus over the concept of Business Plan representing a formal, written statement of the goals of a new venture, and an overview of the original strategy that will be followed to achieve them. There are several formats in which this document may be prepared. The traditional one you'll come across on the web is a text document, probably 20 to 40 pages long.
I have written a couple in my lifetime, for companies that I have started. In both cases, the reality of the business, the user base, and the market have made the plan irrelevant in a matter of months, if not weeks. This meant we spent 100 or so hours putting together a document that was destined to be obsolete.
If you plan to sell a commodity item and the key to your success lies in, say, competitive pricing, you probably don't need to provide significant product detail. Or if you plan to sell a commodity readily available in a variety of outlets, the key to your business may not be the commodity itself but your ability to market in a more cost-effective way than your competition.
Our location is also a key disadvantage where non-park rentals are concerned. We will overcome that issue by establishing a satellite location in Harrisonburg for enthusiasts who wish to rent bicycles to use in town or on other local trails.
Our nearest and only competition is the bike shops in Harrisonburg, VA. Our next closest competitor is located over 100 miles away.
After you complete your research you may feel a little overwhelmed. While data is good, and more data is great, sifting through and making sense of too much data can be daunting.
Thinking of starting a business? Here's the best step-by-step template for writing the perfect business plan for your startup.
The Sales and Marketing section for our cycling rental business could start something like this:
For many entrepreneurs, developing a business plan is the first step in the process of deciding whether to actually start a business. Determining if an idea fails on paper can help a prospective founder avoid wasting time and money on a business with no realistic hope of success.
Many business plans are fantasies. That's because many aspiring entrepreneurs see a business plan as simply a tool--filled with strategies and projections and hyperbole--that will convince lenders or investors the business makes sense.