Business Plan for start-up 5

[kappa84]

X. Annexes

You must include here all the studies used for this business plan and all your sources, for example: industry studies, photos of location, articles from magazines, copies of contracts, market research studies and any other material needed to support what you say in this business plan.




Well, maybe a lot of you ask: why do I need this Business Plan? I’ll try to give you 2-3 examples in which you can use a good business plan:

1. For raising capital – banks and investors

If you’ll use this for bank, make sure you include the amount of loan, how will you use the funds, how your business will succed etc. Make sure you negociate a longer repayment term and a lower interest rate, if this is possible. Banks want insurance of orderly payments so be sure that you show its how you’ll do this.
If you’ll use the business plan for investors, you must take in consideration that they are looking for a quick grow and a quick profit from you. Explain them how you’ll use the money, estimated return on the investment, show them some exit strategies for them and negociate about their involvment in management and board.

2. For manufacturing

Write down about the production levels, prices per product line, capacity limits of plant, inventory management procedures and other manufacturing-related issues.

3. For services

Strategies for keeping clients, credit and collections policies, prices,quality control standards, methods for setting prices, these should be found in your business plan as well as the above chapters.

4. Hi-Tech

Here is a little more different, you must to manage rapidly costs changes and offer to clients what they need. Will you “reinvent the wheel” with your business? How will you retain key personnel?
In this business you’ll probably operate a long time without profits and therefore you must write down longer financial forecasts and your assumptions must be very well argued. There’s a very little possibility that banks and investors want to put their money into something that is a risk for them.

5. Retail

Here you must axe more on company image, prices profitability and competitiveness, customer service and methods used for promotions.


These being said, I hope you'll find this thread useful.

[Stephanie]

I think these are a really useful set of threads Kappa84, and would strongly encourage everyone to write a plan - and very importantly then USE it to guide their business. It is so easy to get carried away running the business and forget what you were trying to do (and find that business suddenly slows because you lost focus).

I am glad you focused well on understanding your customer and on the competition, these are often not given enough attention. We have some notes over on BizFace about how to do some of these techniques such as SWOT analysis, would anyone find them helpful here? I was thinking of posting up some advice like this there because most of our members seem to be small start-ups.

Thanks for sharing

kind regards
Stephanie