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Posts Tagged ‘Business Plan’

Here are some tips when you are writing a business plan for you to consider:

1. Convert it to a PDF document and give electronic versions over paper copies. First this protects you from someone being able to change your text. Second it gives a more professional look to your plan. (Hint: do this for your resume).
2. The entire focus should be about your business, not the science. The audience will want to see target markets, channels, sales, costs, exit strategies, defensibility, scalability, etc… This may be difficult if you are the inventor and your background is scientific. I suggest you go to various classes offered in your area (many states offer free classes), check on line or hire a consultant.
3. Include early sales, testimonials from customers, are great adders that not only validate your science, they show early market success.
4. Summarize, summarize, and summarize but do it well!!! Be brief and more importantly, do not fall victim in becoming repetitive. This is a killer. If you said it once, you said it. If you can condense your plan down to fewer pages, this is great. There may be some whom thing more is better but my experience is less is superior as long as you are getting your points across. This also allows for you to utilize larger fonts in the document. Nothing is worse than a business plan in small fonts and multiple pages in length.
5. Layout your achieved milestones, and milestones you are working towards.
6. Financials need to be realistic. Don’t display gross margins that are greater than the industry average you are targeting unless you have the next iPad. This will make most investors believe you don’t know the business you’re in.
7. Update your intellectual property with not only patents granted, what’s in the pipeline, coverage (US only or global). Be sure to include an analysis of the competition, how defensible your patents are and any right to practice issues.
8. Include cash flows items such as inventory management, receivables and collection days. Make sure you discuss quality and how you will control it, especially if you are out sourcing the manufacturing. Too many times I see business plans that just say we have identified a low cost manufacture off shore and fail to discuss logistics, quality, scale up and such.