Paul Tiffany - Business Plans For Dummies

Some of your colleagues might want a hard-copy print version of the plan (and why are we thinking of the age-challenged here?), but you will likely choose to commit it to a soft format version. That way, you can add or delete pages and swap entire sections in or out as your business plan changes — and it will change. Fortunately, however, the table of contents you use — all the major sections of a business plan — stays the same. If you do choose the soft-copy route, and it’s up and available on your internal website, be sure you have all the required security walls in place beforehand. Breaking into your business plan might not be equal to cracking the corporate safe, but it can still result in serious damage; the last thing you want is to find that the plan is for sale on the Dark Web. So be prepared; the hackers out there — may their pitiful little souls burn in you-know-where — are dangerous.

To avoid becoming overwhelmed, and to keep the business-planning process in perspective, break up the plan into the basic sections that every good business plan needs to include. This should apply to both a written plan as well as a PowerPoint presentation. Take a moment to review the sections of a business plan.

Your executive summary touches on every important part of your business plan. It’s more than just a simple introduction; it’s the whole plan, only shorter. In many cases, the people who read your plan don’t need to go any further than the executive summary; if they do, however, the summary points them to the right place.

The executive summary isn’t much longer than a page or two, and you can wait until you complete the rest of the business plan before you compose it; that way, all you have to do is review the plan to identify the key ideas you want to cover.

If you want to make sure that people remember what you tell them, follow the Public Speaker’s Rule of Three: You have to summarize what you’re going to say, say it, and then reiterate what you’ve just said. The executive summary is the place where you summarize what your business plan says.

The preceding little note might be helpful to recall if you deliver a summary of your business plan as a verbal plea to a VC (venture capitalist) or some comparable funding source. The senseis of Silicon Valley are known for requiring their acolytes to make the Big Ask as succinctly as possible, which has become known as “the elevator pitch.” (The idea being that these gurus’ time is so valuable that all you’ve got is the minute or so it takes to ride up the elevator with them to their palatial office digs.) But aside from the personal indignity involved, it’s actually not a bad idea. See whether you can boil down your concept to as simplified a version as possible — say, two or three sentences at most (but please, don’t take James Joyce as a model here). Chapter 4gives you more on this topic.

The company overview provides a place to make general observations about the nature of your business. In the overview, you highlight the most important aspects of your industry, your customers, and the products and services you offer or plan to develop. Although you should touch on your company’s business history and major activities in the overview (if you’re an ongoing enterprise), you can leave many of the details for the later sections.

To put together a general company overview, you need to draw on several key planning documents, including the following:

Values statement: The set of beliefs and principles that guide your company’s actions and activities

Vision statement: A phrase that announces where your company wants to go or paints a broad picture of what you want your company to become

Mission statement: A statement of your company’s purpose; establishes what it is and what it does as a business entity — and succinctly demonstrates its relationship to your vision

Goals and objectives: A list of all the major goals that you set for your company, along with the objectives that you have to meet to achieve those goals

To begin constructing these statements, turn to Chapters 3and 4.

Your business environment section covers all the major aspects of your company’s situation that are beyond your immediate control, including the nature of your industry, the direction of the marketplace, and the intensity of your competition. Look at each of these areas in detail to come up with lists of both the opportunities that your business environment offers and the threats that your company faces. Based on your observations, you can describe what it takes to be a successful company.

Pay special attention to how your industry operates. Describe the primary business forces that you see, as well as the key industry relationships that determine how business gets done. For example, has the digital revolution occurred there yet, and if not, when will it? Talk about your marketplace and your customers in more detail, perhaps even dividing the market into segments that represent the kinds of customers you plan to serve. Finally, spend some time describing your competition: their characteristics, how they work, and what you think you may see from them in the future.

For more information on how to explore your business circumstances and the overall environment that your company competes in, check out Part 2.

This section should go into much more detail about what your company has to offer. The description includes information about your management, the organization, new technology, your products and services, company operations, your marketing potential — in short, anything special that you bring to your industry.

In particular, look carefully and objectively at the long list of your company’s capabilities and resources. Sort out the capabilities that represent strengths from the ones that show weaknesses. In the process, try to point out where you have real advantages over your competitors.

Examining your company through your customers’ eyes helps. Today many interested observers of business organizations want to know your plans for dealing with issues of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and creating staff inclusiveness policies. Be sure you address these. With a consumer viewpoint, you can sometimes discover customer value that you didn’t know you provide, and as a result, you can come up with additional long-term ways to compete in the market.

To start to put together all the things that your company brings to the table, flip to Chapters 9and 10.

Company strategy brings together everything that you know about your business environment and your company to come up with future projections.

Map out your basic strategies for dealing with the major parts of your business, including the industry, your markets, and competition. Talk about why your strategy is the right one, given your business situation. Describe how the strategy is likely to play out in the future. Finally, point out specifically what your company needs to do to ensure that the strategy succeeds. Inquisitors of business plans often like to ask, “What is the one worst thing that might throw you off track?” so be sure you’ve got a reassuring answer if the question comes up.