A business plan is a twenty-five to forty-page written document that describes where a business is heading, how it hopes to achieve its goals and objectives, who is involved in the venture, why its product(s) or service(s) are needed in the marketplace, and what it will take to accomplish the business aims.
There are three essentials reasons to prepare a business plan:
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Entrepreneurs reap benefits from the planning activity itself
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The plan provides a basis for measuring actual performance against expected performance.
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The plan acts as a vehicle for communicating to others what it is that the business is trying to accomplish.
The most common use of business plans by businesses is for funding, to attract/convince investors (and/or venture capitalists), bankers, corporate partners.
I believe business plans fail because:
- you do not take the time to do it right, prepare it for the audience you are going to be presenting the plan to
- you business plan is static: you do not update it and you don’t really focus on the business environment in which you are operating
- you focus too much on the expected results rather than on the actual results
- there are the wrong people at certain management positions
Thats a great way to introduce the post.
Why do you think “moving business” plan is that important? or at least what do you mean with this?
nice post by the way
Thank you.
I cannot see where I wrote “moving business” in the post but I assume you mean the “static” business plan… What I mean is that a business plan is not something you do ones and never update again. Because it is something you want to use in the long run and if you want to do that, the informations in it have to accurate.
I like how you highlight the chapter’s contents in your post. I also think you did a great job of analyzing the reasons from the purposes of business plan.
Great post! I really agree with the statement that there are wrong people at certain management positions. I believe – especially for startups – that hiring the right person to manage the company or help out is essential. Sometimes it’s a good match, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s not the hired person’s fault that he/she is not doing a good job; maybe it was just a bad hire, and the person in charge of hiring that manager simply couldn’t see that the person wasn’t a good fit for the job.
Overall a very nice post!
I agree with you when you say that a business plan should not be static, the market it always changing and its your job to be able to change with it
The business plan is a very important start! Business plans should be done right so they can be used as a guide for the business and to attract investors. The business plan has to reflect the innovative ideas and be truthful. When you are not honest and do not provide investors with the honest risks they can view your venture’s business plan with negativity. I agree that having the right key people in the right positions is very important!