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Tips for Writing an Effective Business Plan

September 10, 2010 by Frank Goley, Business Consultant

Business Mentor Review 

Have a business mentor who has a lot of experience in your area of business read your business plan and critique it. Use the feedback to tweak your Business Plan. 

Don’t Go Crazy with Excessive Graphics  

Business Plans do not need a lot of fancy graphics and art work to be effective.  Simplicity and straight forwardness are more important than a bunch of pretty graphs.  Many modern business plans lack substance and have lots of flash.  Add some flash and graphics to the plan after the substance of the plan is completed and only if it aides the understanding and comprehension of the written content. 

Develop a Good Business Plan Process 

What is the most effective way to build a business plan?  For each section of the plan, write out questions prior to writing the section.  Pull the questions from your experience, your team’s experience, your mentor’s experience and published business planning books and software.  Answers to the questions will build out that particular section.  Order the sub-sections in a logical, building block order. Please see my Business Plan Book for more details on this business planning process.  

First Develop the Comprehensive Business Plan 

After you have developed your Comprehensive Business Plan, you should develop specific business plans of shorter length and format (usually no more than 20-30 pages in length) for various purposes:  Funding Business Plan, Investor Plan, Joint Venture Business Plan, Marketing Business Plan, Strategic Plan, Customer Plan, Supplier Plan and so forth. 

A Business Plan is a Business Document 

A Business Plan is a technical document – a business document.   It should be written as such.  It should not be written like a novel or a book.  It should be concise and utilize outline organization versus long, wordy paragraphs. 

Realistic and Believable  

A business plan should be realistic to be believable.  It should contain facts and figures to support the “believability factor.”  For instance, just stating in your Marketing Plan that you will achieve 5% market share is not enough.  Your Strategic Plan in combination with your Marketing Plan should carefully illustrate how you will achieve 5% market share. 

Business Plan Purposes 

A comprehensive Business Plan serves two purposes typically: a dynamic document to run your company successfully, and a document to start, acquire or expand a company, all backed by the shorter version business plan formats (i.e. a Funding Business Plan). 

A Successful Business Plan is Dynamic

An effective Business Plan is never static.  It should be dynamic and easily adaptable to changes in the market and opportunities which arise.  It is a “living” document used to run your business on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.


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