Top Tips

Don’t start at the beginning
The beginning of the Business Plan is the executive summary. It therefore follows that until you have gone through the planning exercise you won’t quite know what to say. Start where you most feel comfortable. For some this may be the values and visions you had when you first started the business for others, the product or market sector. But a good place may be to think through the key issues that are holding the business back and how theses will be resolved.

Money isn’t everything
Believing that more money will save the day is dreaming. Nobody is going to lend you money so that you can carry on doing what you are doing; you have to be very clear that money injected will increase both the rate of growth and your profits of your business otherwise no one will be interested

Understand the mindset of the funder
Investors are likely to be pretty shrewd business men looking to make a descent return from investing in your business, they are also risk averse and if you do not truly believe in your plan, you won’t fool them. They spend all their time looking for good opportunities and once found they spend all their time finding reasons not to invest. So remember that whilst your objective is to get the money in theirs is to get it out. Make sure that there is an exit plan. Banks on the other hand are primarily looking for security and a safe pair of hands. They are not entrepreneurs but they cost less. Their business plan templates are unlikely to help you with an investor

Do your research courageously
Make sure that you clearly understand your marketplace, it may be huge but can you access it. What are the barriers to entry; distribution, large competitors controlling 80% of the market, volume price points etc.