How To Set Out A Business Plan

Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success in raising funds or mobilizing support, but lack of a sound plan will, almost certainly, ensure failure.

Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success in raising funds or mobilizing support, but lack of a sound plan will, almost certainly, ensure failure.Preparing a satisfactory business plan is a painful but essential exercise.

If you don't have a sensible strategic plan, how can you realistically write a sensible business plan?

Use a short strategic plan as the foundation for a more comprehensive business plan.

It serves four critical functions as follows: Just as no two businesses are alike, so also with business plans.

As some issues in a plan will be more relevant to some businesses than to others, it is important to tailor a plan's contents to suit individual circumstances.

This then leads to strategy development covering the following issues which are discussed in more detail immediately below: The first step is to develop a realistic Vision for the business.

This should be presented as a pen picture of the business in three or more years time in terms of its likely physical appearance, size, activities etc.

Anticipate many weeks of hard work and several drafts of the emerging plan to get the job right.

A clearly written and attractively packaged business plan will make it easier to interest possible supporters, investors etc.

In the following sections, we discuss the preparation of a strategic plan and present ideas for preparing the outline of a business plan and writing up the detail.

A short strategic plan (2-3 pages) can provide a very useful foundation on which to base a much more detailed and comprehensive business plan.