Business Plan

  1. Industry Profile and Overview:

Industry Analysis-Facts about your industry:

  • What is the total size of your market?
  • Key Success Factors
  • What percent share of the market will you have? (This is important only if you think you will be a major factor in the market.)
  • Current demand in target market.
  • Trends in target market—growth trends, trends in consumer preferences, and trends in product development.
  • Growth potential and opportunity for a business of your size.
  • What barriers to entry do you face in entering this market with your new company? Some typical barriers are:
  • High capital costs
  • High production costs
  • High marketing costs
  • Consumer acceptance and brand recognition
  • Training and skills
  • Unique technology and patents
  • Unions
  • Shipping costs
  • Tariff barriers and quotas
  • And of course, how will you overcome the barriers?
  • How could the following affect your company?
  • Change in technology
  • Change in government regulations
  • Change in the economy
  • Change in your industry

 

  1. Business Strategy:

  • Your desired image and position in the market
  • Company goals and objectives
    • Operational
    • Financial
  • SWOT Analysis
    • Strengths
    • Weaknesses
    • Opportunities
    • Threats
  • Competitive Strategy
    • Cost Leadership
    • Differentiation
    • Focus

 

Products and Services

Features: Describe in depth your products or services (technical specifications, drawings, photos, sales brochures, and other bulky items belong in Appendices).

Customer Benefits: What factors will give you competitive advantages or disadvantages? Examples include level of quality or unique or proprietary features.

What are the pricing, fee, or leasing structures of your products or services?

 

Production

How and where are your products or services produced?

Explain your methods of:

  • Production techniques and costs
  • Quality control
  • Customer service
  • Inventory control
  • Product development

 

Location & Layout

  1. Location
    1. Demographic analysis
    2. Traffic count
    3. Lease/rental rates
    4. Labor needs and supply
    5. Wage rates
  2. Layout
    1. Size requirements
    2. ADA compliance
    3. Ergonomic issues
    4. Layout plan

 

Competitor Analysis:

  1. Existing Competitors
  1. Who are they? Create a Competitive Profile Matrix

 

 

Table 1:  Competitive Analysis

FACTOR Me Strength Weakness Competitor A Competitor B Importance to Customer
Products
Price
Quality
Selection
Service
Reliability
Stability
Expertise
Company Reputation
Location
Appearance
Sales Method
Credit Policies
Advertising
Image

 

 

Now, write a short paragraph stating your competitive advantages and disadvantages.

  1. Strengths
  2. Weaknesses
  1. Potential Competitors.  Companies that might enter the market
  1. Who are they?
  2. Impact on your business if they enter

Management and Organization

Who will manage the business on a day-to-day basis? What experience does that person bring to the business? What special or distinctive competencies? Is there a plan for continuation of the business if this person is lost or incapacitated?

If you’ll have more than 10 employees, create an organizational chart showing the management hierarchy and who is responsible for key functions.

Include position descriptions for key employees. If you are seeking loans or investors, include resumes of owners and key employees.

Professional and Advisory Support

List the following:

  • Board of directors
  • Management advisory board
  • Attorney
  • Accountant
  • Insurance agent
  • Banker
  • Consultant or consultants
  • Mentors and key advisors

 

  1. Key assumptions
    B. Financial Statements (year 1 by month, years 2 and 3 by quarter)
    1 Income statement
    2. Balance Sheet
    3. Cash Flow StatementC. Break even analysis
    D. Ratio analysis with comparison to industry standards

    Loan or Investment Proposal

    A. Amount requested
    B. Purpose and use of funds
    C. Repayment or cash out schedule (exit strategy)
    D. Timetable for implementing plan and launching business.

Personal Financial Statement

Include personal financial statements for each owner and major stockholder, showing assets and liabilities held outside the business and personal net worth. Owners will often have to draw on personal assets to finance the business, and these statements will show what is available. Bankers and investors usually want this information as well.

  1. Startup Expenses and Capitalization

You will have many expenses before you even begin operating your business. It’s important to estimate these expenses accurately and then to plan where you will get sufficient capital. This is a research project, and the more thorough your research efforts, the less chance that you will leave out important expenses or underestimate them.

Even with the best of research, however, opening a new business has a way of costing more than you anticipate. There are two ways to make allowances for surprise expenses. The first is to add a little “padding” to each item in the budget. The problem with that approach, however, is that it destroys the accuracy of your carefully wrought plan. The second approach is to add a separate line item, called contingencies, to account for the unforeseeable. This is the approach we recommend.

Talk to others who have started similar businesses to get a good idea of how much to allow for contingencies. If you cannot get good information, we recommend a rule of thumb that contingencies should equal at least 20 percent of the total of all other start-up expenses.

Explain your research and how you arrived at your forecasts of expenses. Give sources, amounts, and terms of proposed loans. Also explain in detail how much will be contributed by each investor and what percent ownership each will have.

III.          Financial Plan

The financial plan consists of a 12-month profit and loss projection, a four-year profit and loss projection (optional), a cash-flow projection, a projected balance sheet, and a break-even calculation. Together they constitute a reasonable estimate of your company’s financial future. More important, the process of thinking through the financial plan will improve your insight into the inner financial workings of your company.

12-Month Profit and Loss Projection

Many business owners think of the 12-month profit and loss projection as the centerpiece of their plan. This is where you put it all together in numbers and get an idea of what it will take to make a profit and be successful.

Your sales projections will come from a sales forecast in which you forecast sales, cost of goods sold, expenses, and profit month-by-month for one year.

Profit projections should be accompanied by a narrative explaining the major assumptions used to estimate company income and expenses.

Research Notes: Keep careful notes on your research and assumptions, so that you can explain them later if necessary, and also so that you can go back to your sources when it’s time to revise your plan.

Four-Year Profit Projection (Optional)

The 12-month projection is the heart of your financial plan. This section is for those who want to carry their forecasts beyond the first year.

Of course, keep notes of your key assumptions, especially about things that you expect will change dramatically after the first year.

Projected Cash Flow

If the profit projection is the heart of your business plan, cash flow is the blood. Businesses fail because they cannot pay their bills. Every part of your business plan is important, but none of it means a thing if you run out of cash.

The point of this worksheet is to plan how much you need before startup, for preliminary expenses, operating expenses, and reserves. You should keep updating it and using it afterward. It will enable you to foresee shortages in time to do something about them—perhaps cut expenses, or perhaps negotiate a loan. But foremost, you shouldn’t be taken by surprise.

There is no great trick to preparing it:  The cash-flow projection is just a forward look at your checking account.

For each item, determine when you actually expect to receive cash (for sales) or when you will actually have to write a check (for expense items).

You should track essential operating data, which is not necessarily part of cash flow but allows you to track items that have a heavy impact on cash flow, such as sales and inventory purchases.

You should also track cash outlays prior to opening in a pre-startup column. You should have already researched those for your startup expenses plan.

Your cash flow will show you whether your working capital is adequate. Clearly, if your projected cash balance ever goes negative, you will need more start-up capital. This plan will also predict just when and how much you will need to borrow.

Explain your major assumptions, especially those that make the cash flow differ from the Profit and Loss Projection. For example, if you make a sale in month one, when do you actually collect the cash? When you buy inventory or materials, do you pay in advance, upon delivery, or much later? How will this affect cash flow?

Are some expenses payable in advance? When?

Are there irregular expenses, such as quarterly tax payments, maintenance and repairs, or seasonal inventory buildup, that should be budgeted?

Loan payments, equipment purchases, and owner’s draws usually do not show on profit and loss statements but definitely do take cash out. Be sure to include them.

And of course, depreciation does not appear in the cash flow at all because you never write a check for it.

Opening Day Balance Sheet

A balance sheet is one of the fundamental financial reports that any business needs for reporting and financial management.  A balance sheet shows what items of value are held by the company (assets), and what its debts are (liabilities). When liabilities are subtracted from assets, the remainder is owners’ equity.

Use a startup expenses and capitalization spreadsheet as a guide to preparing a balance sheet as of opening day. Then detail how you calculated the account balances on your opening day balance sheet.

Optional:  Some people want to add a projected balance sheet showing the estimated financial position of the company at the end of the first year. This is especially useful when selling your proposal to investors.

Break-Even Analysis

A break-even analysis predicts the sales volume, at a given price, required to recover total costs. In other words, it’s the sales level that is the dividing line between operating at a loss and operating at a profit.

Expressed as a formula, break-even is:

Breakeven Sales          = Fixed Costs
1- Variable Costs

 

(Where fixed costs are expressed in dollars, but variable costs are expressed as a percent of total sales.)

Include all assumptions upon which your break-even calculation is based.

Financial Forecasts (suitable for an appendix