Simple Business Plan Contents
This is a series of posts covering the contents of a business plan. This post will act as a general index and be a place to reference all the posts in the series.
When presenting a business idea to investors, financial projections would normally be accompanied by an simple business plan.
The simple business plan tells a story, it does not need to be long, but the content and presentation of the business plan does need to be clear and concise to make the potential investor take notice and show interest in the idea.
It’s best to tackle the content of a business plan in sections. Listed below is a selection of the most important sections of a simple business plan proposal. We are developing further posts to explain each section in turn, and will update this list with links as they become available.
Contents of a Business Plan List
- Business Name, Tagline and Logo … we are …
- Elevator Pitch … we have this idea …
- Team …we have put a team together …
- Problem … the customers problem is this …
- Solution … our solution to the customers problem is …
- Product and Technology … our product looks like this …
- Traction … we have some history, and have done this …
- Key Metrics … we measure our success like this …
- Milestones … in the future we will do this …
- Market Size … the market looks like this …
- Target Market … we are targeting this part of the market …
- Competition … there is competition in the target market …
- Competitive Advantage … but we have the following advantages …
- Market Share … so our market share should be …
- Marketing Strategy … we will get this market share by …
- Business Model … we will make money from this idea by …
- Financials Summary .. our financials show this …
- Existing Investors … we already have investment of this …
- Funding Requirements … we are looking for investment of this …
- Exit Strategy … investors will get their return on investment by …
This is not an exhaustive list of the contents of a business plan, the sections in your business plan will inevitably depend on the type of business concerned.
The rules regarding the raising of finance from potential investors are complex and vary from country to country. Professional advice should always be taken before discussing or issuing a business plan.
About the Author
Chartered accountant Michael Brown is the founder and CEO of Plan Projections. He has worked as an accountant and consultant for more than 25 years and has built financial models for all types of industries. He has been the CFO or controller of both small and medium sized companies and has run small businesses of his own. He has been a manager and an auditor with Deloitte, a big 4 accountancy firm, and holds a degree from Loughborough University.