Writing a business plan is a challenging assignment for university or MBA students, it is also more than difficult for young specialists and entrepreneurs. We’ve gathered the most efficient tips on how to write a stellar business plan from academic writers and field experts working at CheapWritingHelp – professional academic writing company with affordable prices.
5 Reasons to Make a Business Plan
- This will help you analyze who your competitors are and how you can benefit from it.
- It will help to see a detailed picture, you can identify the shortcomings that were at the stage of the idea.
- You will understand your target audience and your potential client.
- Help formulate short-term and long-term goals and objectives.
- And finally, you will be able to show a plan to investors or future affiliates. And remember, planning is not a waste of time, but a guarantee of your future success.
Your Product and Market Research Implementation
You should answer the following questions: which product do you offer, how it differs from others and which needs it should satisfy. Try to describe all its properties and uniqueness as clearly as possible. It is important that this information is true. If the product doesn’t have bright features, it is better not to invent them, but to come up with a way that can distinguish it from competitive products. It may be a package, an additional service, or something else.
Issues of sales markets for a product or service are very important, but qualitative research is not a cheap service. What to do when there is not enough money for a full study and information is really needed? Experts recommend to make a batch test of your product and collect all the data you need in the sales process. This way of learning will give you important information: who your buyer is, what your preferences are, what price category for your product is optimal, what your product covers, how much time passes from product release to its implementation, etc. It is very important to objectively evaluate the results. If you have hardly implemented the trial batch, be sure to analyze the reasons. In case you can not change anything, it is better to suspend the project. So you will not suffer further damage.
If it is a college or university project, write that in this case you recommend to suspend the project.
Analyze Your Competitors
In this section, it’s important to correctly identify your competitors. Very often, entrepreneurs consider their corporations to be world-wide corporations and look rather ridiculous. Your competitors at this stage are manufacturers who work in similar conditions. Why so?
In the process of studying competitors, you need to get an answer to the following questions: What is your product different from the products of competitors, how do you plan to attract the attention of buyers and what are the reasons for the emergence of new competitors. If you first misunderstand the circle of your potential rivals, you risk making the wrong conclusions. And since the information received will be used in other sections, the price of the error will be high enough.
Write a Brief Marketing Plan
At this stage, you need to get acquainted with potential customers more closely. You need to target the particular segment by answering the following questions: What age are my clients? Where are they living? What level of education do they have? How many people in the city, country? What is common between them? How do they spend their free time? Where do they work? What technologies are used? How much do they make?
You will build your marketing campaign based on this data. With it you need to have a client on the path, consisting of 5 steps:
- Awareness – Customers are aware of your existence, but do not know what you are selling.
- Interest – the customers have heard about you, saw you and they are wondering what you are offering.
- Score – the client decides or gives you a chance.
- Test – The customer makes a trial purchase.
- Acceptance – The customer likes what you offer, and now he will make purchases on a regular basis.
Draft a Production Plan
The production plan explains the management of the company, which resources are needed at the start of the business and which need to be regularly updated. How will the path of the product be built from the manufacturer or purchase until it is received by the buyer?
Main questions
- Do you need suppliers and, if you need, whom exactly?
- Will you rent an office or at the initial stage, will you work at home?
- Do you need employees now and how many? What responsibilities will they perform? Will workers need a month or six months?
- What do you need with equipment and furniture? Consider everything from computers to office chairs.
- How goods or services will be delivered to the client?
Summary of the Business Plan
In fact, this section should be the first. But you need to prepare it when you have all the data from the previous sections.
It will be best to describe your plans for a maximum of two pages for a large project and one for a small one. The summary you are preparing for a potential investor or creditor. After reading it, he must answer his internal questions: what will I get as a result and what are my risks? It is worth writing about this – it is your appeal to the future partner.