3 Ways to Get Help Writing a Business Plan, help writing business plan.

If you're thinking of starting a company, or if you have a start-up but no business plan in place, these three categories of resources can provide you with invaluable help.

Thinking of starting a business? Working for yourself is awesome, but it can also be a risky prospect: Your income depends upon your success, and many small businesses fail.

While your best option may be to search for templates in the form you prefer, there are also plenty of general tools out there to suit any business. These include:

These suggested tools are free or very-low-cost. There are also apps and programs that cost hundreds of dollars. Compare features and reviews before deciding which app or tool is right for you.

The resources are (almost) all free.

Today, there's an app for everything -- including creating a business plan. In fact, there is a wide range of different programs for your mobile devices or computer that walk you through the business planning process. Options include:

• The Small Business Administration's business-plan template: You can download and fill in this 33-page PDF template to create a comprehensive business plan that will provide a roadmap for your company's success.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs' guide to writing a business plan: This basic PDF guide details why you want to write a business plan, gives guidelines for the plan, and discusses common mistakes. It also walks you through what each page of your business plan should contain.
• The Maine Small Business Development Centers' sample business plan: This PDF explains each of the sections of a small-business plan and provides a sample to inspire you.

• The Small Business Administration's tool to build a business plan: This will guide you step-by-step through the process of creating a plan to cover three to five years of business operations. You can save your plan online and update it at any time.
• Kentucky's Business Plan Wizard: Made available through the state's One Stop Business Portal, the Wizard walks you through every step of the process of creating a completed business plan.
• Enloop: You can create a simple business plan for free, or upgrade to create multiple plans or plans containing images. This tool makes planning easy: Simply add your business information and it will generate financial forecasts and business-plan text for you.
• Business Plan Premier: This $9.99 iOS app was touted by Entrepreneur as a full-featured app that writes a detailed business plan. Creating your plan is easy, as the app leads you through the process. Plus, you can download the finished document as a Word doc.

Reviewing the business plan can also help you see what goals have been accomplished, what changes need to be made, or what new directions your company's growth should take.

Writing a business plan is the best way—other than going out and doing it—to test whether an idea for starting a business is feasible. In this sense, the business plan is your safety net. If working through a business plan reveals that your business idea is untenable, it will save you a great deal of time and money.

The exercise of budgeting and market planning will help you define your target market, your unique selling proposition, optimum pricing strategies, and outline how you intend to sell and deliver your products to customers. In addition, developing a budget for implementation will assist with determining your startup and operating capital requirements.

In the growth phase, an updated business plan is useful for forecasting or raising additional capital for expansion. And if you decide to sell or close the business, the business plan can include strategies and timelines for the transfer to new ownership or dissolution of the company.

To Attract Investors

If you're not convinced yet, here are five good reasons to write a business plan when starting a new business.

A business plan is essential if you're thinking of starting a business, but it's also an important tool for established businesses. Viable businesses are dynamic

Writing a business plan will ensure that you pay attention to the broad operational and financial objectives of your new business and the small details, such as budgeting and market planning. The process will ultimately make for a smoother startup period and fewer unforeseen problems as your business gets up and running.

Why write a business plan? Simple: The business plan is the blueprint for your business. If you wanted to build a house, you wouldn't walk over to an empty lot and just start nailing boards together. Starting a business without a business plan is just as risky.

In peripherals, accessories and other hardware, we carry a complete line of necessary items from cables to forms to mousepads . [additional specifics omitted]

Do a trademark search of your desired name to avoid expensive issues down the road. The search will tell you if another business has registered or applied for the trademark you'd like to use.

With your target customer and your brand identity under your belt, you can begin building the core marketing elements of your small business, which includes your website, your blog, your email tool, your conversion tool, and your social media accounts. To dive deeper into these topics, read our beginner's guide to small business marketing here.

This is also where you'll include a competitive analysis. In our example, we'd be answering the question: how many other bedding companies already have a share of the market, and who are they?

Example of an "Personnel Plan" section of the Operations & Management section (from Bplans):

Starting a business involves a whole lot of moving pieces, some more exciting than others. Brainstorming business names? Fun! Filing taxes? . Not so fun. The trick to successfully getting your business off the ground is to meticulously plan and organize your materials, prioritize properly, and stay on top of the status and performance of each and every one of these moving parts.

• Start marketing your business and building an online presence
• Get a sales process together and begin to sell your product or service
• Strategize how to keep your customers happy to earn testimonials, word-of-mouth referrals, and repeat business (to keep your customer acquisition engine going)

Print advertising and article publishing. The company's print advertising program includes advertisements in The Yellow Pages, Miami Express News, The Skate Zone Mailing, school flyers, and inline hockey trade magazines.

Take into consideration the differences between mission and vision:

If you are not familiar with marketing, you will probably be soon. Here you can give more details about your target market and what communication channels you will use to send information to your customers.

Here you should give details about the tasks of the management team. You should present the organizational chart that highlights the structure of the business and the relationships between management members.

You cannot start a business without having a description of it. Here is the section where you highlight the type of products your business is going to offer. Here is the section where you offer details about its location and schedule. All the general details about the business should be listed here.

2. Define Your Business Mission and Vision

If you are going to open your own business, then you need to know how a business plan looks like. And even if this business plan is just an assignment, it will help you familiarize with business concepts and with the classical outline of a business plan.

Every business plan has a section where it gives details about the management of the company and the way it is organized.

Your business plan assignment should have a section where you give details about the services your business is supposed to offer.

I will discuss all these aspects in detail in a later section. You may either jump to that section or may ask me – Why do I need a business plan?

The main objective of the executive summary is to present a concise summary of your business plan that can be read and understood separately. It means for the investors, bankers, concerned government officials, and any other one who has direct/indirect interest in your business. Make your executive so brief but clear that the concerned person can read it within typically half an hour without missing any point you want to highlight. While everyone in an organization is busy with many work responsibilities, he/she generally prefer to read short and snappy summary while presented to them. Only after reading the executive summary, the concerned person decides whether he/she needs to go through the complete document or not.

I hope this guide can help you in creating a very effective business plan for your business. This ultimate guide contains everything about the business plan. An enterprise of any type or size can use this guide for strategic business planning. You can also use the relevant section of the guide as a business plan template.

Make clear statements of your vision through which you aim to achieve your goals and objectives and can able to grow your business. Also, make it clear which mission you’re going to fulfill through your goals and objectives. While the goals are specific to your business, the missions should be broader, such as generating employability opportunities or helping customers to save their hard-earned money.

Do Adequate Research

• What is a business plan in the real sense
• Why write a business plan
• What if I don’t have a plan for my business
• How to write a business plan
• How I can prepare a business plan
• How can a business plan help me
• What should I include in a business plan
• Can you provide me with a sample business plan
• Can you help me with a business plan template

Including a few excerptions of relevant research-based data, final analysis, and a report of the research that you have conducted will strengthen the validity of your idea/concept, goal, and vision. You don’t need to include a complete research document in your plan. Show how the research findings are supportive of your idea but don’t make any biased statement. Instead, you should prepare a separate document for the research report for your future reference.

Put your company name and logo on the cover page of your business plan as well in the footer or header section of each page.