Five ways to sell your business with the help of a business plan
Write a business plan for your audience
Business planning services: what to choose?
Business plan template: what to choose?
A business plan for a consulting firm: how to stand out from the rest?
Main sources of information for business planning
Developing a realistic business plan and financial assumptions
For example, if a company plans to work with infrastructure projects, then it makes investors suspicious planning an 80% operating income as investors can easily check the operating income of network infrastructure public companies and find out that none of them has a high level of operating income margins. That is they will understand that you have provided them with unrealistic data from the start.
Financial calculations should be based on actual performance indicators of your own firm or of other firms. As the example above shows, it's easy to check an operating profit of a joint-stock company and use them to forecast your own performance indicators. Similarly, a business plan should be based on earnings growth forecast corresponding to other companies in this industry. Many firms consider it simply impossible, claiming that they have a unique breakthrough idea and can't be compared to other companies. In this case use data of companies from other industries that have had breakthrough products. If you expect to grow even faster than they did (possibly due to new technologies that those firms could not have used), you can include more aggressive assumptions in your business plan as long as you can give detailed and plausible reasons for this growth in your business plan.
It is also important to make your forecasts realistic to attract funding and to keep temporary reserves to find alternative ways of developing your project. More realistic financing plans can help you to create the most accurate key points of project development.
Useful advice on writing business plan
How to make a business plan presentation
A business plan is the primary source of information for investors and loan suppliers but it does not always get due attention. So your project will not be evaluated the way you have planned due to an expert's lack of sufficient time to look through it or due to information redundancy in your business plan.
You need to make a presentation of your business plan yourself for the project to be duly evaluated.
Developing a winning presentation is one of the most important life stages of any project. It is important to understand that people who will listen to your description of a project, will first of all judge the way you present it. Only if the project presentation has aroused interest among experts, they will study it more closely.
Before making your presentation find out who will be your audience and who will evaluate your project, if there will be any investors present and gather as much information about them as you can. You may use the plan of the event in which you participate, the Internet as well as information from the event organizers to find out more about your audience.
On getting the image of your listeners-to-be you should look through your project and choose those points that will be more interesting to listeners. Draw experts' attention to the points which are important to both you and them - and you will surely arouse their interest.
The next step in making a presentation is to choose a slide design. First of all you need to know whether the room where you are to deliver your presentation is light or dark. Moreover, you should choose a design that does not strain eyes and makes it easy to read information on the slides.
On selecting the design you must organize the structure of your presentation which should be logical and be easily understood by your listeners.
Good luck with your presentation!
Five tips for creating a business plan cover page
Here are some tips to create a good cover page for your business plan.
1. Company name
The first page of the business plan must include a company name. It is traditionally placed in the upper or middle part of the page in a larger font than the rest of the text. The reader must know the name of the company.
2. Company logo and colour scheme
It is best to have a business plan cover page made of high quality material. You can make your cover page look attractive by adding a high-quality image of your company logo with a certain type of font and colour scheme. A hard cover always catches readers' attention. Business plans with an unattractive logo or colour scheme can produce a repulsive effect.
3. Name and Date
When was the plan written? And what is it – a business plan, a summary or a feasibility study? The third important component of a cover is the title of a document and the date when it was created. It is worth noting that the name and the date of a business plan should not be printed as large as the company name.
4. Less is more
A summary highlights the key points of a business plan. There is no need to write the same thing on the cover. It is also unwise to put too much graphics on the cover as in this case information is difficult to comprehend. Simplicity, clarity and persuasiveness are the three main objectives of a perfect title page of a business plan.
5. Information about the CEO of a company
Who is the reader to contact, if he wants to know more? CEO name and contact information should be on the front page of the plan, showing its readers who represents the plan.