Regardless of what industry your business operates in or how big your company is, you need an up-to-date business plan. While it is essential for start-ups, established firms need this too. A quality business plan will help keep everyone on track and focused on the set goals or strategy. A healthy, updated business plan can also help you achieve your business goals.
If you are searching for information on how to write a business plan, you will find all sorts of information out there. While this is true, some companies still make serious mistakes when creating this important document. With a better understanding of business plan writing, you can avoid these mistakes.
Having a Long, Boring Executive Summary
People who receive and read your business plan will usually start the evaluation process by taking a look at your executive summary. In this part of the document, you should focus on the most impressive and important elements related to your business. While you want it to be exciting, remember to remain objective in your descriptions.
You should create a compelling story that highlights how you are going to use your service or product to reach your ideal market and earn a profit. Here, you also need to share the vision for your company about how your services or products make the world better and how you will make a profit from this.
The last thing you should do is follow the pack and be bland and basic. Try to create executive summaries that will pique someone’s interest.
Unfortunately, many miss the mark. They offer an incomplete summary of your business idea and the implementation may seem unclear. Many business owners don’t put time or thought into this summary. If someone stops reading here, all the time and effort you put into the business plan will be for nothing.
Not Establishing a Clear and Obvious Focus
Focus is essential when creating a business plan. This includes focusing on your target market, along with how what you have to offer is unique and better than anything else on the market. In the case of an innovative startup company, there is a risk of not putting enough focus on clearly defining the service or product segment along with the target market.
In some situations, the result is a business plan that describes a “me too” type of business that doesn’t outline the clear reason it exists. If this happens, the ability to wow a potential investor is non-existent.
Not Clearly Defining Your Target Customers
How will your product or service benefit or add value to your customers’ lives? There are some business plans that keep the definition of their target customers quite general. For example, if you were to say that your travel app is for everyone who travels – this sounds good since that is so many people.
However, each group of travelers will have different needs. If you aren’t able to define these needs clearly and in a differentiated manner, the result is going to be an app with minimal functionality, or it could become too complex because it is trying to meet the needs of everyone.
Avoiding Common Business Plan Mistakes
It is important to note – there is no right or wrong way to create a business plan. However, there are some things that can positively or negatively impact the business plan you create. Use the information here to provide you with a guideline of what you need to avoid doing to ensure your business plan meets the needs of your business as it grows.
