You might want to seek more tools for making sure the writing of your business plan goes smoothly. We recommend checking out LivePlan for writing your business plan. It will guide you through each step in the process of writing your plan and help you generate accurate financial forecasts.
Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of Outpost and the online business plan app LivePlan, and content curator and creator of the Emergent Newsletter. You can follow Noah on Twitter.
That’s why we put this guide together. Business planning doesn’t have to be intimidating and we’ll guide you through the process of pulling everything together for your new service business.
Once you’ve defined the problem you are solving for people, how you solve that problem for them and described exactly who your customer is, you’ll have a great platform for creating a marketing and sales plan.
Noah Parsons
It might be helpful to explore how other service-based businesses have written their business plans. Check out our free library of sample plans and templates for service businesses. You can download any of these documents in Word form and get some structure for your own plan.
If you’re starting a subscription service, include a forecast for subscriptions, renewals, and cancellations — otherwise known as “churn”.
For some service businesses, overhead expenses can also be very low. Many service businesses don’t need storefronts, warehouses, or other expensive real estate.
Although you may have a good idea in your head for the services you’ll be offering, it’s important to write down exactly what you plan to offer to your customers and what you plan to charge. Especially for service businesses where you may be selling your time, it can be tempting to take on any job. That can lead to distractions and lead you away from your core business.
This is the part of your business plan where you will describe the specific products and services you’re going to offer. You’ll fully explain the concept for your business, along with all aspects of purchasing, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution. You’ll go over suppliers, costs, and how what you’re offering fits into the current market and stacks up against your competitors.
How much will you charge for the products or services you’re offering? Where does this fit in with what’s currently available?
Where are you currently with this product or service? Is it in the idea stage or do you have a prototype? Have you produced some and are looking to expand? Have you started offering this service already or are you still in the planning stages?
Have you had the product tested or certified? Gotten approvals from industry experts? Did you trademark, copyright, or patent your product? These can add substance and credibility, so be sure to mention them.
The Product or Service Description
While you write up the Products and Services section of your business plan, keep your reader in mind. Things that you might take for granted or know inside-out might not be common knowledge to potential lenders or investors. As you write, avoid being too technical, assuming too much knowledge from your readers, and using buzzwords.
Do you envision future products or services as an extension of the business once it’s successfully launched?
Will you need any special equipment or technology to provide your product or service?
Don’t be surprised if a bank manager or investor jumps straight to this section of your business plan to see whether your business can be profitable or not. Make sure you cover the following three key areas:
But, by mapping out your income and expenses, you should have a reasonably good idea when this will happen.
- Business structure, e.g., LLC, sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation
- Legal and trade name
- Contact details, e.g., email and telephone number
- Social media profiles and website address
- Type of business, i.e., tree service business
- When you registered your business
The truth is, most elements of a good business plan can be written down on a single sheet of paper. And the time it does take will be well worth it in the long run.
6. Business operations
It’s undeniably important—and that’s why you need to create one for your business by using the above template.
- Who you’ll hire, plus their skills and qualifications
- The equipment you’ll need, e.g., chainsaws, brush chippers, climbing boots, mini skid steers, arborist apps, etc.
- The systems you’ll use to book more jobs. For example, how will you collect client information when they first call, build a proposal, schedule the tree care job, create a job order, and invoice and collect payment from the client?
- The software you’ll use to support your system. Will you use tree service management software?
- Whether or not you plan to subcontract certain jobs. For example, let’s say you decide to specialize and only offer tree removal services, and a client contacts you asking about pruning or tree treatment. You can subcontract, or simply refer that customer on to another tree services company in your area.The beauty of this approach is that it works both ways, and you can generate business from two-way referral networks.
For your business plan, limit your marketing strategy to three tactics to start with.
An excellent place to start is to plan to set up a referral program because most tree service businesses rely on word of mouth referrals to grow their business.
· Research stage: At the research stage, the business plan consultant you hire will be involved with researching the industry, competitors, market sector financials, and more that is most closely aligned with your business and will help them to not only outline your strengths in the market but also more effectively form the marketing plan and ultimately inform your potential investors through your business plan.
1. Team Qualifications — You really want someone to write your professional business plan that has experience working for a big company doing exactly what you are hiring them to, so if you’re looking to raise money, make sure the team has worked for an investment group or investment bank.
Specialty: Business Plans, Business Consulting, Analytics, Products & Services
Whether you’re building a startup from t h e ground up and seeking your first investment round or have a mature company and need a business plan in place to garner new insights, having a professional to help conduct research and outline the model is imperative.
5 minute break: Do you want to learn how investor business plans are structured? Take a look at this slide show.
3. Work Product — It’s always important to review their business plan samples and see what format or layout they follow. Is it outdated? Does it provide too much “fluff” and is poorly constructed? Does it contain grammatical or financial errors? These are things that ultimately need to be sifted out.
· Interview / Materials Gathering: During this period, you may have an in-person or over the phone meeting for the business plan writers to gather all pertinent information for your business including historical financials, understanding your concept, business strategy, management bios and more. The amount of information your business will have ranges depending on the stage and business size.
Sometimes you cannot always afford a top agency to assist with the plan and would prefer to work with a freelancer. While we cannot recommend any specific freelancer, there are many websites, UpWork being the most notable which feature many freelancers that can assist with the plan. This may be the best option for those that cannot afford agency fees.
There’s no fixed cost for a professional business plan, it depends on several factors such as the qualifications of the team, complexity of the business, stage, and type of capital you are raising. Generally, custom business plan writing services change anywhere between $1,500–6,000, but plans can easily run more than $10,000.
You should think through and create a detailed plan for each category, but you won't need to share the results with the people who read your business plan
In the cycling rental business example we've been using, products and services could be a relatively simple section to complete or it could be fairly involved. It depends on the nature of the products the company plans to rent to customers.
You could certainly include more detail in each section
We will not be the low-cost provider for our target market. Our goal is to provide mid- to high-end equipment. However, we will create web-based loyalty programs to incent customers to set up online profiles and reserve and renew equipment rentals online, and provide discounts for those who do. Over time we will be able to market specifically to those customers.
Operations
For the purposes of your business plan, narrow your focus and focus on answering these main questions:
While these questions may seem like a lot of work to answer, in reality the process should be fairly easy. You should already have a feel for the competition's strengths and weaknesses--if you know your market and your industry.
Patents, copyrights, and trademarks you own or have applied for should also be listed in this section.
So first let's gain a little perspective on why you need a business plan.