Nowadays, many people begin to be imbued with thoughts about how to go about their own business and not depend on work "for uncle." But in practice, implementing this decision is not so simple. To start with the fact that in order to receive funds for the initial development of your business, you need to provide a detailed and clear plan that details the directions of your activities for possible investors.
If you do not know what sections of the business plan should be done, it is unlikely that you will get something really sensible at the end. In this article, we will not only consider all stages, but also give an exhaustive description of them.
Title page
It is very strange, but many people completely forget about this detail, considering it a "trifle" and "a waste of time." Of course, this is not so. A competently and beautifully designed title page is useful if only because it shows your responsible attitude to the matter, and this is an important circumstance. So, what should be indicated in the “title”?
Firstly, you should provide information about your company, or simply the name of the individual entrepreneur. All necessary contact information is registered there: physical address, phone, email address. Many people forget that on the title page you need to indicate brief information about what you intend to do, as well as the total estimated cost. Important! Mandatory write a footnote that should contain something like: “Data that contains sections of a business plan should not be disclosed and / or transferred to third parties.”
Summary
When writing this section, you need to remember one subtlety. Despite the fact that the sequence of sections of the business plan involves finding this item at the forefront, it is being drafted at the very least when the entire document is ready. In general, the whole purpose of this data is that it should interest prospective investors or lenders. Its volume should not exceed four pages, but also be at least two. A remark should be made here: when you describe the features and prospects of your project, you need to do without vague and intricate phrases.
In general, it is necessary to describe the matter in such a way that no one would have a shadow of doubt about its full potential. In general, the characteristic of sections of a business plan is a rather vague concept, since everyone has their own business, but nevertheless some aspects always remain unchanged.
So, it is very important to make a long-term forecast (at least for a couple of years) on the estimated sales volumes, as well as on how much specific money you will need to establish production. Of course, it is necessary to especially emphasize the rate of profit you are counting on. In this case, one should not embellish the situation. At the end, write down in a separate paragraph, after what period of time you will return the money invested in you to investors and at what profit for them. What other sections of the business plan are needed?
Industry Analysis
This stage is extremely important, because here you describe how things are going in the industry you have chosen, what is the annual gross income and its prospects for the next few years. As in other cases, the structure and content of sections of a business plan when writing a resume should reflect the most important information:
- What happened in this field of activity in five to seven years.
- The likelihood of its stagnation or, conversely, development.
- It is important to find out how many new companies that appeared on the market you are discussing have remained afloat, and how many have had to leave. Explain the causes of adverse outcomes.
- It is necessary to describe all types of new goods and services that have appeared in this field of activity, indicating their prospects.
- Investors will be very curious to know which competing organizations exist in the market, what is your advantage over them.
- How are you going to take a leading position, what methods will achieve the highest results.
- What are the sales rates of competing firms?
- Describe their strengths and weaknesses, build a method of “pushing” your products to the market, based on previously obtained data.
- Indicate what segments of the population will be your potential buyers, what is their purchasing power.
- How will your customers differ from those served by competitors?
Practice shows that investors tend to ask just these questions. If you find answers to them and correctly formulate your report, lenders will surely turn their attention to you.
The essence of the proposed project
All other sections of the business plan are important, but at this stage you will have to especially try. You must show everyone that your product or service will be competitive in the modern market, that they will always have buyers. To do this, you need to write the answers to some sections in the document. So, what should the structure of the business plan include (sections are given approximately):
- The name of the product or service.
- Describe trademarks, used patents (if any), other features.
- Once again indicate the location of your company.
- Where is the premises used as a production hall or a place for the provision of services?
- Indicate whether you own (if you have not yet answered the previous question) such a workshop or you will have to rent it.
- If you have a room, is there any repairs needed. What is the condition of the property that you intend to rent?
- What skills and skills will you need?
- A complete list of required equipment.
- Is it possible to rent these means of production or do you have to purchase them all?
- What is your experience in business? This information, by the way, should contain sections of the business plan (business project).
- Do you have any managerial experience? If so, what is the experience.
- Please provide a brief summary.
- What made you decide to do your own business?
- Why are you confident in the success of your business?
- What stage the project is currently at.
Reveal the other nuances: what kind of packaging are you going to make for your product, how are you going to distribute it, what can you cover advertising costs, and also give an example of your (or similar) marketing research in the field of demand for this product or service in your region (or city). If you describe how exactly you are going to form stable demand for your products, this will be a huge plus. What is the further sequence of sections of the business plan?
Production plan
Many at this point make a blunder when describing only a standard production plan. In fact, it is important to describe not only this, but also the timing of the deployment of production, as well as ways to control the quality of products. Will you be able to keep within the allotted schedule and whether the services you offer will meet quality standards - this is another, no less important, question.
Subparagraphs
This issue is extremely interested in economists and financiers of potential investors, and therefore it is important to approach the design of the section with all possible responsibility.Here are the topics you need to disclose in more detail:
- It is necessary to completely list the production cycles, and especially to focus on attracting subcontractors: is it planned to do this, and if so, what technological operations will you put them on?
- In the case of attracting subcontractors, you have to list all their contact details.
- Explain why you specifically chose these companies.
- How much do you plan to pay subcontractors?
- Be sure to draw up technological schedules and diagrams.
- Provide the plan with the most detailed list of equipment and materials that you have to buy and / or rent.
- Tell us in detail what raw materials you need and what technical characteristics they should have.
- List all available suppliers of consumables, indicate the terms of cooperation with them.
- What is the estimated cost of your product?
- Try to make a list of the equipment that you may need in the future, indicate its price.
If you plan to engage in trade or services, the development of sections of a business plan includes an analysis of the following issues:
- Specify specific suppliers of goods.
- It does not hurt to decide in advance which system you will use for warehouse control and what configuration you will need to buy for this. Prices for their varieties can vary significantly, so the size of your profit directly depends on this.
- Do you have a room that you can use as a warehouse. Indicate whether it is in your property or if you intend to rent it.
Please note that when planning the work of a large enterprise, you must provide all the data in this section for four to five years in advance. If your company does not reach this size, a three-year period is enough. It is very important to show a simple and maximally transparent scheme of how and where you intend to get raw materials, what quality it will be and how you intend to communicate this information to potential consumers of your product. Once again, we recall the importance of how detailed you are about the proposed quality control scheme. It is especially important to indicate how and at what stages of production you intend to implement it, as well as the estimated cost of this event.
In the same section you can talk about environmental protection measures, about their cost, which will affect the cost of finished products. This is especially important for those entrepreneurs who for the first time plan to open their own production of such a scale.
Marketing Surveys
This is the main section of the business plan. It involves the detailed influence of internal and external factors on your chosen field of activity. External forces are especially important. The entrepreneur is not able to influence them, but they have an extremely serious impact on his activities, and therefore it is impossible not to take them into account. Here is a list of such factors:
- Macroeconomic indicators, including GDP dynamics, statistics on the level of income of the population and real numbers for your region. This is the financial section of the business plan, so include vivid and clear graphs with detailed charts here.
- Social factors: population, its focus on the consumption of your products and services specifically, average age of your potential buyers.
- Indicate the dynamics of technology development in the world and in Russia with regard to your chosen field of activity.
- Demonstrate the stability of the level of demand for your products and immediately predict and model your actions in cases when it will decrease or increase.
- Important! Show that you are aware of all the laws that govern your business, provide excerpts from the laws and comment on how a particular rule applies to you.
- It is necessary to draw up an enterprise development strategy in the light of competitors. What can you oppose to more developed and old companies?
Finally, indicate your actions with sharply reduced volumes of supplies of raw materials required by your production. Will you be able to as soon as possible re-focus on the production of other products or will you have to close your company? Some highlight this item in a separate section, “Business Plan Risks,” but practice proves that it is undesirable to focus on undesirable points, as lenders may not like this.
External and internal factors
Accordingly, internal factors are those that you yourself can directly influence in order to adjust their effect on your business. This includes control over suppliers, their own personnel, and financial expenses (not including cases of force majeure). Simply put, the main section of a business plan involves answering the question: “What do you have at the moment, how do you plan to increase your performance and what do you intend to do in the future”? To correctly answer these questions, you need to collect and analyze considerable amounts of information:
- First of all, your potential consumers are important to you: what gender, age, what is their level of well-being, how often they shop. It is advisable to dwell in detail on when, how often and to what extent they buy exactly the goods and services that you are going to offer them.
- You need to collect information about what advertising strategy your competitors used, and how successful it turned out in the end.
- Show potential investors what factors affect the price of products like yours and how much they can change in an unregulated market.
- How exactly do consumers relate to this kind of product? How strong is their motivation to buy it?
- It is very important to find out which sales channels for goods and services from your sphere have proven to be the most profitable and how you can integrate your own sales system with minimal costs.
- Once again analyze the “quantitative and species” composition of your competitors, try to describe all their strengths and weaknesses.
- What, in your opinion, marketing methods were used by your competitors and how many of them really achieved their goal, allowing you to increase sales?
- Finally, consider the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service.
Main conclusions
The most difficult to answer questions related to marketing strategy. To do this, it is important to conduct a final analysis of the sections of the business plan:
- How exactly will you sell your goods: through your own retail chains, or do you intend to use the services of one of the large companies that are already present in our market?
- What do you plan to follow when setting a specific price for your product?
- Calculate Estimated cost-effectiveness and indicate how long all funds invested in the project will be completely “repulsed”.
- How do you intend to advertise your product or service and how much money it will take.
- Investors are also very interested in the question of how you want to increase profits: sell more products or expand possible markets.
- Do you intend to accept payment only in cash or will you install terminals for payment by credit cards.
- Finally, tell us in detail about the measures by which you intend to strengthen the reputation of your product and your company.
Conclusion
At this stage, it is important to briefly summarize, once again talk about the importance of your chosen field of activity in people's lives, and outline the bright prospects for business development. That's how they make up a business plan. The description of the sections given in this article will certainly help you in your further work.
