| How to Write a Business Plan |
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| Written by Brenda Keener | |||||
| Saturday, 27 October 2007 | |||||
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Page 3 of 3
Next is the Go-to-Market plan. Here you describe how you will sell your product or service, your sales and marketing channels, your Marcom plan, and your target customer base as well as any customers you have in the pipeline. If you show a full sales pipeline, it is also a good idea to list a probability of closure, as you will be measured by your investors on how well you achieve these targets. If you are a later stage startup, you may also want to show a realistic forecast here. If you are early stage, you will have to create sales projections which are riskier and known to be less accurate. Finally you are at the “meat and potatoes” section of your plan: the financials. You will need to take the sales projections you have created above as well as your headcount plan and create a projected Balance Sheet, Cash Flow statement (be sure to include your investment objectives in here as positive cash flow), and P&L. These take considerable time, so if you don’t have experience working with financial sheets, it may be a good idea to hire someone else to do them. Tie everything together in a nice summary statement showing why your business makes a great investment! It is important to keep this document brief and to-the-point as today’s investors are very busy and don’t want to read a book. If you deem extra information necessary, add Appendices at the end. These Appendices can (and probably should) include full resumes of the key team members, any comparables that are already listed on a stock exchange, and any detailed drawings or engineering specs you may think will help your case (once again, use your judgment here with proprietary and sensitive information). Once your business plan is complete, it will serve as the guiding light to you and your new business, and should showcase it to your prospective investors.
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