How to make a Business Plan: Steps to follow it methodically 

Make a business plan is important work no matter how big or small your business. In business activities, a complete plan includes implementation goals, budget calculations, cost estimates, etc. Building a complete business plan is a premise to develop and evaluate feasibility. of business projects. So, in today's post, Johnson's Blog will give you the steps to plan in a professional, most methodical way.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a detailed document that describes the business activities that need to be carried out over a certain period of time to achieve a business goal. It includes analysis of market, customer, competition, product/service, business strategy, marketing plan, finance, etc.

A business plan is often used as a management tool to help businesses operate efficiently and achieve their goals. A business plan is also an important tool to assist businesses in seeking investment from investors or banks.

What are the common challenges of writing a business plan?

Writing a business plan is a complex and effort-intensive process. Here are some of the common challenges you may encounter while writing a business plan:

• Collect information: To write a good business plan, you need to gather a lot of information about the market, product, competitor and customers. However, gathering this information requires a lot of time and effort.

• Determine the target: To achieve success in business, you need to define specific and clear goals. However, determining this goal is also a challenge for those who are just starting out in business or those who are inexperienced in business planning.

• Financial planning: Financial planning requires specialized knowledge and precise calculation skills. If you don't calculate your costs, revenue, and profits correctly, you put your business at risk.

• Compare with competitor: Comparing with competitors is a difficult challenge in business planning. You need to research and evaluate the competition of your competitors to build a suitable business strategy.

• Long-term orientation: The long-term orientation of the business is also a challenge in business planning. You need to determine the strategic direction of your business in the future to determine the appropriate goals and plans.

Writing a business plan requires a lot of skill and effort. However, if you understand the common challenges and come up with the right solutions, you will be able to write a quality business plan.

Why do you need a business plan?

When it comes to business, planning is key. Without a business plan, it can be difficult to know where to start or even where to seek help. A business plan can help you estimate costs, identify potential investors, and map out the steps you need to take to achieve your goals.

Creating a business plan can be a daunting task, but it's definitely worth your time and effort. A good business plan should be well organized and easy to follow.

Business planning is important because it helps businesses and managers:

• Clearly define business goals: A business plan helps to clearly define business goals and set specific targets to achieve those goals. This helps businesses focus on activities that are important to achieving their business goals.

• Increase the efficiency of business operations: Business plans help businesses evaluate their current business activities and make improvements or adjustments to increase the effectiveness of those activities. This helps businesses save time and resources and achieve greater efficiency.

• Define target audienceBusiness plan helps businesses clearly identify target customers, understand customer needs and devise strategies to reach and retain customers. This helps businesses achieve greater competition and increase sales.

• Effective financial management: Business plan helps businesses manage their finances more effectively by giving specific spending plans and forecasting sales and profits. This helps businesses ensure financial stability and avoid financial risks.

• Evaluate business performance: Business plan helps businesses evaluate their business performance by comparing actual results with set targets and plans. This helps businesses know their strengths and weaknesses and make improvements to increase business efficiency.

When do you need a business plan?

A business plan is essential for any business, no matter its size. It can help you clarify your goals and strategies, and identify potential roadblocks to success.

So if you're planning to start or expand your business, it's time to start with a business plan.

Types of business plans

Business planning is an important step in starting a business. It can help you visualize your goals and create a roadmap to achieve them. Remember, a business plan is not a magic wand, which can be classified into two categories as follows:

Simple business plan

A simple business plan is essential for small and micro businesses. It helps clarify goals, strategies, and key performance indicators (KPIs) of your company. A simple business plan should be tailored to your business and should be realistic about goals and expectations. In addition, the business plan should also be updated regularly – to ensure that you are on track with your long-term plans.

Traditional business plan

A traditional business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines your business, financial, and operational strategy. It can be useful if you want to apply for a loan or raise money from investors.

It takes time and effort to create a good traditional business plan – make sure you are prepared for the task ahead! There are different types of traditional business plans – get an expert business strategy consulting if you need.

Steps to make a good business plan

Creating a business plan is essential for any business owner – it can help you map out business goals, plan for potential obstacles, and gauge your progress. It's also a great way to stay accountable and make sure your business stays on track.

To get started, start by developing a trading strategy. This will help you define your target market and map out your marketing plan. Next, outline financial projections and cost estimates for starting and running your business. Finally, create an activity diagram that shows how your business performs at each stage of development.

After you have all this information together, write your business plan in a clear, readable way. Here are how to make a business plan articles that you can refer to.

Build unique ideas 

When you start making a business plan, the idea is considered the soul, the foundation for your success. Therefore, before creating a detailed business plan, the first step you need to do is to build yourself a unique idea. 

So, when starting to make a business plan, look for a potential idea and have the least contact, that will determine more than 50% your success rate. 

Drafting an executive summary

A business plan is an essential document that outlines your company's goals and strategies. By providing a brief overview of your business, this summary will help you gain a clear understanding of your current position and identify any potential future roadblocks.

Once set in context, the summary provides an overview of your current state and future plans – including information on financial projections and feasibility studies if needed. It also offers tips on how to navigate the competitive landscape or market changes.

Overall, this summary should provide all the essentials to make an informed decision about whether it's possible to set up your own business!

Set goals and achievements 

If you want to draw a path, you need to define its beginning and end, and the goals and achievements to be achieved are the motivation for you to strive to achieve all your ideas. Listing immediate goals will help you create a more detailed and accurate business plan. 

Goals and achievements to achieve will help you have a clear and specific direction in business planning, thereby helping you achieve your business goals.

Market research and analysis

Market research and analysis is an important step in the business planning process. It helps you better understand your customers, competitors and the overall market, thereby helping you to make more accurate business strategic decisions. Here are some steps to doing market research and analysis:

• Define target market: You need to define your target audience, including age, gender, needs and tastes. This allows you to focus your efforts on the group of customers who are likely to buy your product or service.

• Customer research: You need to learn about the basic information of your customers such as interests, needs, tastes, shopping habits, vision of your product or service. You can use research tools such as online surveys, research the market through interviews or seek information from other sources.

• Competitor analysis: You need to learn about your direct and indirect competitors. This helps you know your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and business strategies to make appropriate strategic decisions.

• Overall market analysis: You need to learn about the size and development of the overall market, including development trends, characteristics and needs of the market. This helps you to make better strategic business decisions.

• Looking for business opportunitiesMarket research and analysis to help you find new business opportunities. You can learn about new trends, customer needs and other market opportunities to make informed decisions.

Make a SWOT chart 

After learning about your competitors, you need to find out about yourself SWOT model help you make statistics about what strengths your business has to compete with other competitors, and what the weaknesses of your business are to overcome and overcome difficulties. 

The key to success in any business is competition. Without it, no one would be able to make a living – let alone achieve great things. So before you do anything else, you should proceed competitive analysis.

This involves analyzing the financial health of your competitors and assessing their strengths and weaknesses as well as assessing the market potential for your product or service. Once you've ascertained all of this information, plan your marketing and advertising accordingly. Remember that without effective marketing strategies there is little chance of success in B2B!

Once you understand the potential of your business, you will have a way to Create an effective business plan, more precise and not blinded to impossible plans. For example, the strength of your business lies in the source of cheap goods but the quality is only average, so when making a sales plan, you need to focus on pricing strategy only then can take advantage of the competitive advantage. 

Describe your product or service

To be successful with making a business plan, start by understanding the goals of your product or service and then work your way up from there. Ensure that all information – including financial projections – is presented clearly and understandable to those unfamiliar with the business.

Develop a marketing and sales plan

A well-crafted sales and marketing strategy is an essential part of any business plan. Without it, it's virtually impossible to know where your efforts are going and whether you're making the right decisions.

A good strategy should define your target market, product or service, how you plan to reach them, and at what price point. It will also include financial projections as well as strategies to execute marketing and sales, such as media planning, pricing policy, etc.

Once you have all this information in place, it is important to get feedback from key stakeholders – investors, partners, etc., so that the business plan is validated and effective in achieving its goals. . Without this step, there can be potential disasters such as businesses wasting money on unprofitable business ventures.

To develop a marketing and sales plan for your product or service, you can take the following steps:

• Define target audience: Identify the customer group your product or service is aimed at. You can ask questions to understand the needs and desires of your customers so that you can come up with an appropriate marketing strategy.

• Market research: Learn about your competitive market, look for the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, this helps you know where your market share is in the market.

• Identify the key factors: Identify the factors that are important for promoting your product or service, it could be price, quality, trademark or warranty policy.

• Selecting a marketing channel: Select appropriate marketing channels such as advertising on media, social networks or email marketing.

• Set up a sales plan: Set up sales strategies, promotions, discounts, distribution, and warranty policies, helping to attract customers and increase sales.

• Set goals and track performance: Set goals for the marketing strategy and your sales, and evaluate the results so you can adjust your plans and optimize performance.

• Create advertising content: Create attractive and professional advertising content to attract customers' attention, and should also update the content regularly to keep customers' interaction.

Human resource management plan

Your product business will continue to expand, so the number of employees will increase so much that you cannot directly manage each person. So you need a professional system to help you manage, train and guide the skill development of your employees. 

To plan human resource management for your business, you can take the following steps:

• Definition of job position: Define job positions and duties of each position. From there, determine the number of employees to recruit for each position.

• Recruitment and Selection: Conduct recruitment and selection of employees in accordance with job requirements. Ensure the recruitment and selection process is conducted in a fair and professional manner.

• Staff training and development: Provide training and skills development courses for employees, helping them develop and improve their skills to be able to do their jobs better.

• Build a positive working environment: Create a comfortable, friendly and positive working environment to increase employee productivity.

• Performance Management: Monitor and evaluate employee performance according to predetermined evaluation criteria. Consider raising wages, promoting or offering other policies such as bonuses and rewards to encourage employees to contribute more.

• Set up HR policy: Set up HR policies on salary, bonus, reward, sign labor contract, leave policy, insurance regime, .. to ensure the rights and needs of employees and businesses.

• Solve problems that arise: Resolving HR-related issues, such as improving the relationship between employees, resolving disputes in the HR team, handling violations of company rules.

Financial planning 

Before starting a business, you also need to develop financial plan to make sure that your business can actually be up and running. This includes pre-calculating how much you will need as well as planning for future expenses. Also, it's important to create a cash flow plan so you know where your money is going and when it might happen.

Cash flow management is extremely important for a business, if you do not know how to allocate and manage it, it is very likely that you will suffer a loss. So you need to estimate expenses, revenues, etc. to form the most specific business plan. 

To financially plan your business, you can take the following steps:

• Revenue forecast: Evaluate and predict the revenue of the business for a specific period of time (usually a year or a quarter). Based on historical data, market research, business trends to determine future revenue levels.

• Cost prediction: Anticipate the costs required to carry out the business activities of the business in the given time period. Includes fixed costs (rent, wages, ...) and variable costs (production costs, advertising costs, selling expenses, etc.)

• Profit calculation: Calculate profit by subtracting costs from revenue. This allows you to know your business's profit projections for a certain period of time.

• Capital budgeting: Estimate capital for the business, including financing from investors, bank loans, or using capital from old profits.

• Cash flow management: Manage cash flow by comparing expected capital and expenses to ensure there is enough money to cover expenses for the business.

• Set financial goals: Set up financial metrics to measure the effectiveness of the financial plan, such as profitability, return on equity, etc.

• Evaluate and adjust the plan: Regularly evaluate the financial plan and adjust it according to the needs of the business.

Explain your sponsorship request

A business plan is a document that outlines your business goals and how you plan to achieve them. This is an important step in obtaining funding, so it is essential to understand the different funding options available before planning.

There are several types of investors – angel investors, venture capitalists, mutual funds, etc. Each type has its own needs and wants that need to be taken into account when proposing a business plan. To avoid any potential miscommunication or misunderstanding, ensure that all relevant information is included in the document for review by potential sponsors.

An effective grant request should be clear and convincing, give specific reasons why you need funding and explain in detail how to use the funding effectively to achieve your goals. work. In addition, you need to be familiar with your sponsor's standards and requirements to make sure your funding request meets their requirements.

Writing an accurate and persuasive funding request is crucial in garnering interest and funding from potential partners. If you need more advice on writing a grant request, you can search online materials and resources or seek help from experts or professional funding professionals.

In addition to presenting factual data relevant to company analysis and financial forecasting (e.g. budget overview), charts and figures can also add persuasive value to your argument. – makes it easy for investors to know where their money is going to achieve desired results.

Compilation of an addendum to official documents

A business plan is an essential document for any business. It helps you understand your goals, develop a strategy and schedule for achieving them, and gather all relevant documentation in one place – so everything is in order when it comes to your goals. marketing campaign.

Make sure you have everything in order before starting anything! This will help you avoid any potential hiccups along the way and ensure that your business plan will be a success.

Compiling an addendum to the official document can help supplement the necessary information and provide supporting documents to explain or clarify the information in the main document. Here are the steps to compile an appendix to the official document:

• Define the purpose of the appendix: You need to define the purpose and main content of the appendix. Addendums may include information on technical terms, statistical images or charts, data sheets, or other additional information.

• Prepare content: After determining the purpose of the appendix, you need to prepare the necessary content. Use supporting documents or references to gather the necessary information.

• Build layout: You need to determine how to arrange the information in the appendix so that it is logical and easy to understand. Pay attention to factors such as font, font size, text format, information classification, and annotation symbols.

• Number the pages and add names and page numbers to the table of contents: After completing the appendix, you need to number the pages and add the name and page number of the appendix to the table of contents of the main document. This will help readers find and access information easily.

• Check the appendix again: Before printing or publishing the addendum, you should double-check to make sure that all information is correct and complete. You should make sure that the images, charts, and data tables are properly arranged and in the right format.

Executing a business plan

Once you have created a detailed business plan, it's time to take it step by step and make sure that everything is on the right track. 

Implementation of a business plan is the process of implementing the activities outlined in the business plan to achieve business goals. Here are the steps to implementing a business plan:

• Perform marketing strategy: This includes developing product, pricing, advertising and distribution strategies to attract customers and increase sales.

• Financial management: You need to monitor and manage your business's finances to ensure financial stability and minimize risks.

• Production and supply management: You need to track and manage your production and supply processes to ensure the quality of products and services, meet customer needs, and minimize production costs.

• Human Resource Management: You need to manage and train employees to ensure they have the skills and capabilities to perform the tasks in the business plan.

• Follow and rate: You need to monitor and evaluate the performance of the business plan to identify problems and adjust the plan if necessary.

• Adjust the plan: If there is a change in the business environment or internal conditions, you need to adjust the business plan to ensure that it aligns with the actual situation and business goals of the business.

frequently asked Questions

Why did the business plan fail?

One of the most common reasons business plans fail is because of poorly researched assumptions. Without proper research, business planners can make unrealistic assumptions and can lead to the failure of their business plans.

Furthermore, lack of detailed financial forecasts can also lead to unrealistic business plans. Businesses often forget to include important aspects of their plans such as marketing strategy or financial analysis, which can lead to a failed business plan.

Having too many goals or focusing on the wrong ones can also be the main reason why a business plan fails. Without a clear plan with specific goals and strategies, the business may not know where to start and thus find it difficult to achieve success.

What does a lean startup business plan include?

A Lean Startup business plan typically includes the following:

• Business Description: The business needs to be described in detail, including market analysis, competitive analysis and financial forecasting.

• Set specific goals: The company should clearly state its goals and how it plans to achieve them.

• Market analysis: The company needs to understand its target market and what factors influence customer behavior.

• Competitive analysis: The company should identify any potential competitors and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

• Financial forecast: The company should establish a realistic financial budget and track actual expenses against projected income.

• Possible steps to achieve goals: The business plan should include a description of the specific steps that need to be taken to achieve the company's goals.

• Time limit: The business plan should give a deadline for completing each step as well as an estimate of the costs involved.

Epilogue

Steps business plan is an essential document to help you map out your business goals and strategies. By following the step-by-step instructions Johnson's Blog outlined in this article, you should be able to create a plan that is tailored to your specific business goals. Remember, a business plan is not a one-time event, it needs to be updated and adjusted regularly. So don't wait, start planning your business today and make sure you have a comprehensive business plan to guide you through your journey!