Business plan

A business plan is a document that explains the goals of your business and how you will achieve those goals. Business plans can be used when starting a new business or by a company that wants to come up with a new product. A business plan can be 200 pages long with statistics and numbers or just one page. It all depends on the purpose of the business plan. Most of the time it is used to find new investors or to convince a bank to give a loan. But it can also be used as a source of research in order to gain knowledge about your product or service.

Although all business plans are different, there are some elements that must be included in a business plan. Some of these are:

Executive summary
Business name and contact information
Your name and your contact information
Brief description of the business
Description of your product or service
Brief overview of the market for your product
Brief overview of the strategic actions you plan to take to make your firm a success
Brief description of the financial needs

Detailed description of your business
Uniqueness of your business
How it creates value for others
Key factors that influence the success of your business, like price competitiveness, quality, durability and dependability

Market analysis
Potential buyers for your products
Their motivation to buy
Size of the market
Total annual purchases

I have compressed all this information into a few steps. The average person can read this, understand it and put it to use. The steps are: Financial Goal, Product, Target, Market Analysis and Marketing.

Image 1: Business plan

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