Business Plan Guide

A business plan is a map to running your business. This is a plan that will guide you to WHAT you are going to do, WHEN and HOW to do it. A business plan will also help you to see more clearly about the type of business you are going to path, who will become your customers, and what products or services will you offer.

If you plan to borrow funds to start your business, whether it be from a bank or investor, then you must make a formal business plan. Formal business plan will provide summary from your business and market, and will discuss in details about your products, customers and market share, suppliers, profit estimated, competition analysis, and others.

On the other hand, small business owners do not need to make a formal business plan to start a business. Often they create a business plan in the form of notes during a brainstorming session or in outline form. To start, this is enough.

The most important thing is write a plan. Often a small business owners start their business without a plan at all, so that their ideas become blurred and they do not know what they should do next. By writing a plan, even though it was a brainstorming notes, you will get more clearer picture about the type of business that you want, and how business should be developed.

Here are the things you should thinking about when writing your business plan:

1. What kinds of business would you start? Stores? Professional services? Online Website?

2. What is the purpose of your business? A business can be started for amusement, but if you want to get profit, you need to know why you started your business. Is it to meet the specific needs of the customer? Or create something that had never been there before?

3. How your business will make money? Do you want to sell a product ? and  what kind of the product? from where you will get the product ? At what price you will buy the product and how you will sell it?

4. Who are the will become your customers? Knowing your customers is the main thing in writing a business plan. If you know that your customers are those with limited income, certainly you can not sell a product or service at a high price. Knowing who your customers, also will assist in carrying out activities your advertising and marketing.

5. How did you get those customers? For example, if you plan to call him one by one, or you will hire a great sales team? You have to know how you get customers. If not, your business will not grow.

Of course, the above points are just the basic steps in creating a business plan, but these points are the most important.