Whether you're starting a new business or growing an established one, you'll need a solid business plan to get you where you want to go. Revised for today's rocky economic climate, this edition of the UK's bestselling business plan guide gives you what you need to map out your business strategy and stay on course – including a complete sample plan that you can easily adapt for your business!
Sort out your finances – construct a value chain, examine your cash flow and calculate a sensible budget
Read the tea leaves – learn to decipher changing cultural, political and technological trends and to alter your strategies as needed
Scope out the competition – find out who your competitors are and what it'll take to get your share of the market pie (and theirs)
Digital Evaluation Copy
Get to know your customers – learn the latest techniques for getting a better idea of who your customers are and what they want
Tips for seeing and seizing opportunities before the competition
Enter the Dragons' Den – convince bankers, investors, venture capitalists and other funding sources your business is a good investment
Include both the management team of the day-to-day aspects of your nonprofit as well as board members and mention those who may overlap between the two roles. Highlight their qualifications: titles, degrees, relevant past accomplishments, and designated responsibilities should be included in this section. It adds a personal touch to mention team members who are especially qualified because they’re close to the cause or have special first-hand experience with or knowledge of the population you’re serving.
There are probably some amazing, dedicated people with stellar qualifications on your team—this is the place to feature them (and don’t forget to include yourself!).
If you’re a private school, for example, you might think of your main target market as alumni who graduated during a certain year, at a certain income level. If you’re building a bequest program to build your endowment, your target market might be a specific population with interest in your cause who is at retirement age.
Your executive summary should provide a very brief overview of your organization’s mission. It should describe who you serve, how you provide the services that you offer, and how you fundraise.
Management team and company
And here’s an example of a positioning statement using the formula:
For example, if you think there’s a need for a children’s literacy program, maybe you surveyed teachers or parents in your area to verify the need. But because you haven’t launched the program yet, one of your unknowns might be whether the kids will actually show up.
But you probably are also taking some calculated risks. In this section, talk about the unknowns for your organization. If you name them, you can address them.
For [target market description] who [target market need], [this product] [how it meets the need]. Unlike [key competition], it [most important distinguishing feature].
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Now that you have break-even, what do you do with this information? You want to find the highest price you can sell the product at and still make a profit. See what happens when you change either fixed or variable costs to see what happens if you reduce them. Maybe you can increase the volume by finding new markets. What happens when output volume rises or falls. All of these can affect your business profits on this product.
Before you begin your break-even analysis, you'll need some information. Let's say you're dong an analysis for a potential new product. Make a list of all your costs and expenses relating to that product, including facilities, the cost of materials and supplies, machines or equipment, and costs for paying employees to make the product and prepare it to ship.
A break-even analysis is important in several different situations:
Break-even is one of those vital numbers that can mean success or failure to a small business. If you are breaking even your income is are equal to your costs. You have no profit or loss at this point. But, above the break-even point, every dollar of sales is pure profit.
5 Steps to Creating a Break-Even Analysis
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Break-even quantity = Fixed costs/(Sales price per unit –Variable cost per unit).
This formula is best expressed in a spreadsheet because variable cost changes. The spreadsheet shows you break-even for a range of costs and sales prices.
A lender or investor will probably want to see this information in the financial report section of your business plan.
You can use Excel or another spreadsheet to create a break-even analysis chart. SCORE has an Excel template, or you can use this one form Microsoft. You'll need someone who's familiar with Excel to tweak the spreadsheet to your specific situation.
Now that you have break-even, what do you do with this information? You want to find the highest price you can sell the product at and still make a profit. See what happens when you change either fixed or variable costs to see what happens if you reduce them. Maybe you can increase the volume by finding new markets. What happens when output volume rises or falls. All of these can affect your business profits on this product.
Before you begin your break-even analysis, you'll need some information. Let's say you're dong an analysis for a potential new product. Make a list of all your costs and expenses relating to that product, including facilities, the cost of materials and supplies, machines or equipment, and costs for paying employees to make the product and prepare it to ship.
A break-even analysis is important in several different situations:
Break-even is one of those vital numbers that can mean success or failure to a small business. If you are breaking even your income is are equal to your costs. You have no profit or loss at this point. But, above the break-even point, every dollar of sales is pure profit.
5 Steps to Creating a Break-Even Analysis
Break-even quantity = Fixed costs/(Sales price per unit –Variable cost per unit).
This formula is best expressed in a spreadsheet because variable cost changes. The spreadsheet shows you break-even for a range of costs and sales prices.
A lender or investor will probably want to see this information in the financial report section of your business plan.
You can use Excel or another spreadsheet to create a break-even analysis chart. SCORE has an Excel template, or you can use this one form Microsoft. You'll need someone who's familiar with Excel to tweak the spreadsheet to your specific situation.
This is your opening ‘statement’. It is a formal summary that sum ups the contents of your strategy.
- Make your team more productive
- Reduce operational costs
- Increase the number of generated sales
- Improve your customer coverage
- Improve working relationships between clients and managers
A sales plan is a pretty straightforward document. It doesn’t need to be written in a formal language or pass your compliance review. It just needs to outline your plans for the coming period, whether that’s a year, a quarter, or a month.
Lastly, a sales budget plan gives you a sales forecast for a given period based on factors that could impact revenue — like industry trends and entry to a new market segment. Similar to a traditional sales plan, they cover the staff, tools, marketing campaigns, and other resources needed to generate the target revenue.
3. Review of Past Performance
Smart sales goals should be actively focused on. If it helps, use goal-setting and planning frameworks such as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). Create goals that stretch your capabilities, but that seems doable based on your new strategy.
You need relevant statistics and trends in your niche, industry, and ideal customers. Remember, markets and customers are in a constant state of flux. There’s nothing worse than stubbornly chasing prospects who aren’t a good fit anymore while ignoring entire market segments that show a rising demand for your solutions.
This section provides a summary and describes the current state of all production inputs (human resources, tech software, specialized sales team, etc.,) required to process and close sales details.
If you’re like most people, it’s the annual sales plan or weekly sales plan — broad strategic and tactical documents mapping out the plan for everything sales-related.