A business plan helps you to establish your enterprise goals while defining the means to achieve them. It’s a document that can take many forms and serve multiple purposes, whether launching a startup, planning to expand an existing organization, or using it’s your business’s roadmap.
Knowing how to write a business plan amidst the rush of other organization-related things to do can appear intimidating, overwhelming, and time-consuming. That’s why you should start writing with examples showing you the components to include, where to place them, and common mistakes to avoid.
In this article, let’s explore some hypothetical and real-world business plan examples you can relate to, no matter your enterprise’s target market. These inspiring plans written by professional consultants consist of winning structures, details, and formats to help you secure critical funding or partnerships.
What’s a Business Plan, and Why Does Your Company Need One?
Your small business or startup must plan for development, profitability, and future success regarding the tasks and costs involved in bringing your offering to your target customers. Planning helps you determine the most profitable business model or identify new opportunities while mitigating risks.
Business plans are roadmaps that guide organizations in achieving their objectives while communicating an enterprise’s goals and viability to potential investors. You can determine your product or service is the right fit for the market through research and analysis while determining your competitive advantage.
Besides attracting funding, it helps qualified employees determine if your enterprise is the right home for them, assisting in talent retention. Over time, your business plan will keep your organization focused on its goals and tie concrete strategies to objective performance.
How Do You Start Writing a Business Plan with Examples?
Although there’s a need for detailed market research, revenue, and operating cost forecasting, your business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. That’s especially true if yours is a lean startup, as you can outline your enterprise concept, target customers, sales proposition, and how you’re offering gets to the market.
Writing a business plan requires defining your audience so that your proposal language resonates well with your ideas. You should, however, cover essential elements whether you’re writing a quick launch overview or an in-depth plan to attract investors, and these include;
- Your company’s vision or mission
- Offer and value proposition
- Idea customer or audience
- Sales channels, marketing, and revenue streams
- Suppliers, operations, and structure
- Financial forecasts
When writing a business plan, your structure will consist of an executive summary, company description, and market analysis sections. That’s before you can proceed into your business’s financials, operations or logistic plans, marketing, and unique product or service offering.
Executive Summary
Your business plan’s executive summary is the initial section, but you should write it last to condense ideas from the rest of the plan. Start writing this segment as a placeholder, laying out essential information about your organization precisely and concisely as a summarizing overview.
Your executive summary will describe your business, its financial information, market research, and competitive analysis. For instance, if you aim your business plan at investors, employees, or customers, focus on your enterprise’s unique selling points and value proposition.
As a jump-off point, and without rigidifying your framework, a problem and solution format will let you provide answers to questions that include;
- Who your business offering is intended for
- Why do you think they’re dissatisfied with the existing solutions
- Which essential customer problems does your product or services offer solutions to
- What differentiating features your offering has over the competing or existing solution
Example of a Business Plan Executive Summary
According to market research, Eco-friendly landscaping consumers are increasingly available in the Royal Heights area. These potential clients are seeking sustainable design based on architectural concepts of environmental conservation.
However, existing firms in this region aren’t shaping up to deliver premium landscaping services to consumers with love for nature and disposable incomes. Neither are there players in this profitable market certified as green organizations, and that’s where we come in.
The Company Description
Your business plan’s company description part will mention your company’s general business category, such as whether you’re a product retailer, wholesaler, or manufacturer. It’ll give background information for an existing enterprise or talk about your past experiences and how they enable you to fill a gap in the market.
Besides the industry sector your company operates in, your business plans and company description provide your organization structure. In this section, you must cover several aspects of your business, including your company’s mission statement, history, and objectives.
In this part of your business plan, you’ll also mention how your operation runs, whether there’s a team you rely on, or if contractors support your daily workflow. You can repurpose a boilerplate company description from other elements of your business that best describe your enterprise.
Example of a Business Plan Company Description
Our mission is to transform our city’s fascia through Eco-friendly and sustainable landscaping, helping you to create boast-worthy outdoor space. We started operating formally in 2022, but our team has a combined green-space architecture experience of over 20 years.
The team comprises five employees that work in shifts, having completed 15 projects for some of Royal Heights’ most prestigious businesses and influential community leaders. Our objectives for the next three years include the following;
- Exceeding our customers’ expectations by solidifying a glowing service-based business reputation that honors the environment.
- Generate referrals through word of mouth, promotions, and home show marketing to accomplish 30 projects in a year, 60 in two years, and 120 in year three.
- Increase revenue from $272,000 in financial year 2022 to $460,000 in FY2023 based on the 15 completed projects.
Market Analysis
In your business plan’s market analysis section, you’ll outline your enterprise’s ideal customer along with the market’s scope and size. The research’s persona-identifying demographics contain information surrounding your target customers’ location, income, age bracket, and gender.
To quantify your product supply and demand research, you may include your intended consumer’s profession, hobbies, and education. A market analysis will also include industry trends and the competitive landscape, identifying gaps for your business to exploit.
Stay specific to your industry niche or market segment to illustrate expertise and generate confidence, especially when estimating the market’s monetary value. Drill down to your business’s addressable market and total sectorial numbers, which will help map your customer’s journey.
Conclusion
You can start writing a business plan with examples that help clarify your enterprise’s objectives and how you plan to achieve them. Use such structures or formats to identify opportunities and understand market elements like customer behavior and demographics.
Business plan formats are flexible since technologies, markets, and audiences change, but you should aim at writing a living document that you can revisit, restructure and expand. Properly formatted plans communicate your enterprise’s value and can convince readers that you’ve consolidated and made your ideas viable.