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5 Tips for Writing the Business Plan

Planning an expansion of your business? Or maybe you are just starting your dream organisation? Only a good business plan will help you reach your goals successfully. Simona Sakalauskaitė who is the CEO of “Planas Verslui” is sharing some advice which will help you avoid the most common mistakes.

Define Your Intentions Clearly
The aims of business plans might be very diverse. For example, the business plan could be written in order to show the development of the organisation, expansion of existing production capacity. Also, it might provide information about starting a production of a new product or a wish to settle down in a different market. In the case of a new business, the business plan is necessary to describe and evaluate a business idea. In this scenario, every manager has to figure out the amount of money needed to reach goals, estimate commercial offers and assess market price analysis. Additionally, the business plan is required to facilitate the decision on choosing the investments.

Think About the Reader
The business plan might be dedicated to a bank, a credit union, an investor, a potential business partner, a new supplier, a client or etc. This means that every business plan has to emphasise different things to engage the reader. For instance, bank’s employees who gave a loan will look for the evidence in the business plan that your organisation is capable of paying the money back on time. At the same time the investor will be interested in the investment returns. While the bank and the investors are concerned only about financial capabilities, the supplier could be curious if the business is suitable for representation of a particular brand.

Choose a Correct Structure for the Business Plan
After writing down the purpose of the business plan and the recipient, form a suitable structure for the plan. Generally, the business plan includes a summary, a description of the business, a written representation of a project and employees, a plan of marketing, an analysis of sector and competitors, a financial analysis, a prediction of financing and the SWOT analysis. Besides all these parts, it is important to emphasise the significance of the summary. This part of the business plan is the first thing the reader will see, so, it might determine the fate of the project. Even though the summary is at the beginning of the business plan, make sure that it is the last one written because it has to include the most important parts of the project.

Pay Attention to Your Language
Remember that the business plan is not a literary fiction, so, try to avoid rhetoric and emotional expressions. The language has to be clear and specific, facts have to be proved! If the recipient of your business plan is not a professional in that specific sector, steer clear of abstruse explanations and definitions. In addition, graphs, images and schemes will always facilitate the reader to understand nuances of the business.

Do Not Forget the Appearance of the Business Plan
Even though the content is the most important while writing the business plan, it is critical to think about the appearance as well. While writing do not forget to follow the rules of grammar, punctuations and structure of a sentence. Also, keep in mind that it is necessary to format the text neatly. Most often people are using Word or PowerPoint to write their business plans, so, in order to stand out use special software to make the business plan even more attractive to the reader.