A Guide to Writing a Business Plan: Part 3

03 March 2009

The next section to be included in your business plan is the “Legal Status and Licenses” section. With this, you will illustrate what legal status your business will have, if any. These decisions affect your tax liability and determine when your taxes will be paid. Investors are concerned about this, as it concerns money. It’s up to you to choose the appropriate legal status.

If your business needs legal licensing, you need to acquire the necessary licensing before investors will lend. If your business is a work-from-home type of business, you may need to approach a landlord for permission, or something similar. Make sure you don’t fail to include any licensing details in the plan.

In the “Management Processes” section, you will carefully illustrate how you plan to manage your business. Making sure that you’re organized will make your business run more fluently, and by illustrating this on the business plan, investors will know how you plan to handle your business.

Here are some key aspects to include:

Administration
General Management
Sales and Marketing
Finance
Product Development
HR and Recruitment

Remember to include how you plan to monitor the performance of your business.

In the “Market Situation” section, you need to cover aspects such as market location and competition. In order to earn enough revenue to be considered successful, your business must achieve a healthy share of the available market. For this, you will need to illustrate a thorough comprehension of your targeted market, including the size and the share you hope to achieve.

Thorough research of the market situation as it pertains to potential customers is required. Make sure to describe your targeted customers thoroughly, and justify the estimated market share you plan to secure. Take your time and work up a comprehensive section about your customers, including: Characteristics, market trends, benefits, etc.

You’ll also need to list your competition in this section, and explore their goods and services and relay how what you’re offering is superior to other marketplace businesses. List the location of the competitors and the type of customer they deal with. You need to illustrate the competitions strength and how you plan to combat that and pull in your piece of the market share. Carefully analyze their products, customers, and share of the market, strategies, facilities, operations, and any future plans.

Research is required here, so make sure you know as much about your competitors as your own business. Make sure that your market situation section thoroughly covers each of these aspects and back up every claim and/or assumption about the marketplace.

The next section covered in your business plan is “Marketing Strategy.” Here, you will discuss how many customers you estimate to have, and when. It’s your job to make sure your plan clearly defines your understanding of the market’s size, potential customers, customer profiles, and trends and other influencing factors. You can then break this down into certain objectives. For instance: