Are you looking for a business plan template? I’ve written over 35 articles on the topic of business plans, and in them I’ve described several templates that can help you. If you’re serious about building a solid business, I suggest that you learn how to write a business plan properly, both as a guide for other entrepreneurs, and as a way to help you select the best template. There are several types of business plan template out there – most have only five or six paragraphs, and some give you the option of additional detail. The following article presents the best ones I could find.
The simplest business plan template available here will get you going quickly. A typical single business plan includes a single document with a single paragraph to describe the company, a brief description of the industry, a competitive analysis, a sales strategy, financial forecasts, and other data. You’ll need to include one more paragraph that describes how your management team will coordinate the different aspects of marketing, operations, finance, and development. For the market analysis portion of this template, you’ll usually just need to supply a small piece of information, such as your company’s size and target customer.
A detailed and comprehensive business plan template includes the same basic outline outlined above, but gives you several additional detailed sections to work with. In it, you’ll need to provide a detailed description of your ideal customer, your product or service, your strategy for meeting these needs, your growth strategy, your competitors and other key factors. You may also need to describe how you’ll deal with problems in a new industry, what risks you believe you face, and what you expect to accomplish within a year, three years, or five years. By reviewing this section after you’ve written your other sections, you can check for holes that you may have overlooked.
Finally, many templates provide a final, glossary-style list of definitions. If you find that you don’t understand any of your chosen words, look up their definitions in the dictionary. Remember, that the terms are often considered “glossaries” by those who write them (they were not named in your book, after all!). Be especially careful of those terms whose definitions you found online, because they might not be exactly what they appear to be in print. The best way to be certain that your definitions match those in your book is to consult both your book and an expert in the field (a consultant, for example). To create a glossary, simply highlight the definitions that you find in your template, and use the Internet to search for other terms in your industry.
When you’re done with the business plan template, you’ll notice that it generated several hundred backlinks. This is very good news, because the more links back to you, the more people know about your small business idea. This is also good news, because more links back to you means higher search engine rankings, and therefore higher revenue. The more traffic you can generate to your small business site, the more people will be able to locate your business on Google or Yahoo’s search engine list, increasing your chances of making a sale.
There are, of course, many other ways that a quality template can benefit your business. When choosing which template you want to use, keep in mind that you will probably only have time to look over one at a time during your development phase of your business plan. This makes it especially important that the template you choose to be easy to use, intuitive, and well designed. The simpler the template, the more likely it will be to inspire potential investors to give you their money. Choosing a free business plan template is your best option if you want to save time and money.
