appendices and milestone business plan

What should you include in your business plan appendices?

So you're crafting a comprehensive business plan for your business but you are not sure about what should go in the main body of the document and what should go in the appendices? You're in the right place.

Our guide helps you decide what should go in appendices so that you can complete your business plan. Ready? Let’s get started!

In this guide:

What is the objective of the appendices section of your business plan?

What information should i include in the appendices section of my business plan.

• How long should the appendices section of your business plan be?
• Best tips for business plan appendices
• Example of appendices in a business plan

The primary objective of the appendices section is to offer proof or supporting documentation for key claims of your business plan.

This section gives readers the ability to learn more about particular facets of your company or to check the data used to make claims. It also enables you to keep the body of your business plan to the point and clutter free.

Need a convincing business plan?

The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

The appendices section is strategically placed at the end of the business plan to increase the validity and substance of your proposal.

You could include any of the following in this section of your business plan:

Additional financial records

While your business plan already contains substantial financial data, including additional material can offer further insight to potential investors and financial institutions:

• Inventories
• Asset valuations
• Credit profile synopsis
• Historical tax filings
• Exisiting loan contracts

Monthly financial statements

It’s likely that only the yearly figures will be shown in the financial plan section of your business plan which means that if the reader wants to look deeper into the monthly figures, this has to be included in the appendices.

You can also include historical monthly management accounts if you have them.

Organizational overview and team details

You could also include further information about your management team and the business structure by covering:

• A visual representation of your business’ organizational structure
• Details about your corporate structure (list of subsidiaries and percentage owned, share certificate, certificate of incorporations, etc.)
• Curriculum vitae (CV) of the members of your management team
• Floor plans of your premises

Legal documentation

Legal documents are frequently included in business plan appendices. These help demonstrate your business’ reliability to your readers and may include:

• Incorporation papers
• Permits, trademarks, licenses, and patents
• Shareholder agreements
• Rental agreements and leases
• Vendor contracts
• Equipment specifications

Market data & competitive analysis

Businesses that face intense industry competition may need to provide additional information. You could provide in-depth information about your competitors, including their strengths, weaknesses, market share, and positioning.

You could also include market research data or industry reports that back up your analysis.

Images of products and services

Including images of your products and services in the appendices section provides a visual representation that helps stakeholders better understand what your business offers. 

Words alone sometimes fall short in conveying your products or services unique features, design, and value

Visuals can also bridge communication gaps and make it easier for your audience to grasp complex concepts (for example, if you were a technological business producing goods). 

Potential investors, partners, and other stakeholders can quickly comprehend the nature of your products or services by viewing images, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of your business proposition.

Other supplementary resources

There are many additional resources that you can add. These help the reader in understanding the specifics of your business:

• Expanded marketing collateral
• Complementary financial analysis
• Architectural renditions for properties

How long should the appendices section of your business plan be? 

The length of the appendices section in your business plan is flexible and should be guided by the principle of providing only pertinent and meaningful information. While there is no set limit, this section typically spans from a few pages to around 20 pages. 

Remember to only include items that really help the reader understand your business plan and concept. Appendices should not be confused with a dataroom which comes later in the investment process and has strong confidentiality protections in place which business plans often lack.

Think about who will read your plan. Some stakeholders, like investors or lenders, might prioritise financials. Others, like partners or staff involved in your business, might care more about contracts or market research.

Need inspiration for your business plan?

The Business Plan Shop has dozens of business plan templates that you can use to get a clear idea of what a complete business plan looks like.

Tips for your business plan appendices

By adhering to a few simple yet effective practices, you can ensure that your appendices section adds value and clarity to your business plan. Let's discuss these best practices in more detail:

Create a table of contents

If your appendices section is lengthy and involves a range of documents, consider including a well-structured table of contents. This helps readers locate specific information swiftly, resulting in a smoother reading experience.

Include a confidentiality statement

Protecting sensitive information included in your business plan appendices, such as credit history records or legal documents, is essential. 

Include a confidentiality statement to remind readers of the private nature of certain documents. This acts as a gentle yet firm directive, underlining the need for discretion and permission before sharing or discussing confidential data.

Remember that, unless you signed a non-disclosure agreement with the recipient (which is extremely rare), there is no garantee that your business plan won't end-up in the hands of a competitor. Avoid sharing sensitive proprietary files, and if needed ask advice from a qualified lawyer.

Example of appendices in a business plan 

Below is an example of how the appendices section of your business plan might look like. As you can see, it includes a maturity profile and a monthly breakdown of the cash flow forecast.

This example was taken from one of  our business plan templates .

Crafting a concise and compelling business plan is vital in obtaining funding from banks or investors. Utilising your business plan appendices helps provide depth without overwhelming the document body. 

It also underlines your commitment to business and should, therefore, be included in any business plan.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

• Business Model vs. Business Plan
• 7 tips for writing an effective business plan

Know someone who needs help writing up the appendices section of their business plan? Share this article with them and help them out!

Founder & CEO at The Business Plan Shop Ltd

Guillaume Le Brouster is a seasoned entrepreneur and financier.

Guillaume has been an entrepreneur for more than a decade and has first-hand experience of starting, running, and growing a successful business.

Prior to being a business owner, Guillaume worked in investment banking and private equity, where he spent most of his time creating complex financial forecasts, writing business plans, and analysing financial statements to make financing and investment decisions.

Guillaume holds a Master's Degree in Finance from ESCP Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management from Paris Dauphine University.

Create a convincing business plan

Assess the profitability of your business idea and create a persuasive business plan to pitch to investors

500,000+ entrepreneurs have already tried our solution - why not join them?

Not ready to try our on-line tool ? Learn more about our solution here

Need some inspiration for your business plan?

Subscribe to The Business Plan Shop and gain access to our business plan template library.

Need a professional business plan? Discover our solution

Write your business plan with ease!

It's easy to create a professional business plan with The Business Plan Shop

Want to find out more before you try? Learn more about our solution here

What is an Appendix in a Business Plan?

Appendix is an optional section placed at the end of a document, such as a business plan, which contains additional evidence to support any projections, claims, analysis, decisions, assumptions, trends and other statements made in that document, to avoid clutter in the main body of text.

What is Included in an Appendix of a Business Plan?

Appendix commonly includes charts, photos, resumes, licenses, patents, legal documents and other additional materials that support analysis and claims made in the main body of a business plan document around market, sales, products, operations, team, financials and other key business aspects.

The appendix is the perfect place to showcase a wide range of information, including:

• Supporting documentation: References and supporting evidence to substantiate any major projections, claims, statements, decisions, assumptions, analysis, trends and comparisons mentioned throughout the main body of a business plan.
• Requested documentation: Information, documents or other materials that were specially requested by the business plan readers (e.g., lenders or investors) but are too large to place in the main body of text.
• Additional information: Any other materials or exhibits that will give readers a more complete picture of the business.
• Visual aids: Photos, images, illustrations, graphs, charts, flow-charts, organizational charts, resumes.

After reviewing the appendices, the reader should feel satisfied that the statements made throughout the main body of a business plan are backed up by sufficient evidence and that they got even fuller picture of the business.

How Should You Write a Business Plan Appendix? (Insider Tip)

The fastest way to pull the Appendix chapter together is to keep a list of any supporting documents that come to mind while you are in the process of writing the business plan text.

For example, while writing about the location of your business, you may realize the need for a location map of the premises and the closest competitors, demographic analysis, as well as lease agreement documentation.

Recording these items as you think of them will enable you to compile a comprehensive list of appendix materials by the time you finish writing.

Remember to keep copies of the original documents.

Template: 55 Business Plan Appendix Content Samples

For your inspiration, below is a pretty exhaustive list of supporting documentation that typically gets included in the business plan appendix. But please do not feel like you have to include everything from the list. In fact, you definitely shouldn’t!

The purpose of the appendix is to paint a fuller picture of your business by providing helpful supporting information, not to inundate yourself or the readers of your business plan. So, take care to only include what is relevant and necessary .

Company Description

1. Business formation legal documents (e.g., business licenses, articles of incorporation, formation documents, partnership agreements, shareholder agreements)

2. Contracts and legal agreements (e.g., service contracts and maintenance agreements, franchise agreement)

3. Intellectual property (e.g., copyrights, trademark registrations, licenses, patent filings)

4. Other key legal documents pertaining to your business (e.g. permits, NDAs, property and vehicle titles)

5. Proof of commitment from strategic partners (e.g., letters of agreement or support)

6. Dates of key developments in your company’s history

7. Description of insurance coverage (e.g. insurance policies or bids)

Target Market

8. Highlights of relevant industry and market research data, statistics, information, studies and reports collected

9. Results of customer surveys, focus groups and other customer research conducted

10. Customer testimonials

11. Names of any key material customers (if applicable)

Competition

12. List of major competitors

13. Research information collected on your competitors

14. Competitive analysis

Marketing and Sales

15. Branding collateral (e.g., brand identity kit designs, signage, packaging designs)

16. Marketing collateral (e.g., brochures, flyers, advertisements, press releases, other promotional materials)

17. Social media follower numbers

18. Statistics on positive reviews collected on review sites

19. Public relations (e.g., media coverage, publicity initiatives)

20. Promotional plan (e.g., overview, list and calendar of activities)

21. List of locations and facilities (e.g., offices, sales branches, factories)

22. Visual representation of locations and facilities (e.g., photos, blueprints, layout diagrams, floor plans)

23. Location plan and documentation related to selecting your location (e.g., traffic counts, population radius, demographic information)

24. Maps of target market, highlighting competitors in the area

25. Zoning approvals and certificates

26. Detailed sales forecasts

27. Proof of commitment from strategically significant customers (e.g., purchase orders, sales agreements and contracts, letters of intent)

28. Any additional information about the sales team, strategic plan or process

Products and Services

29. Product or service supporting documentation – descriptions, brochures, data sheets, technical specifications, photos, illustrations, sketches or drawings

30. Third-party evaluations, analyses or certifications of the product or service

31. Flow charts and diagrams showing the production process or operational procedures from start to finish

32. Key policies and procedures

33. Technical information (e.g., production equipment details)

34. Dependency on third-party entities (e.g., materials, manufacturing, distribution) – list, description, statistics, contractual terms, rate sheets (e.g., sub-contractors, shippers)

35. Risk analysis for all major parts of the business plan

Management and Team

36. Organizational chart

37. Job descriptions and specifications

38. Resumes of owners, key managers or principals

39. Letters of reference and commendations for key personnel

40. Details regarding human resources procedures and practices (e.g., recruitment, compensation, incentives, training)

41. Staffing plans

42. Key external consultants and advisors (e.g., lawyer, accountant, marketing expert; Board of Advisors)

43. Board of Directors members

44. Plans for business development and expansion

45. Plan for future product releases

46. Plan for research and development (R&D) activities

47. Strategic milestones

48. Prior period financial statements and auditor’s report

49. Financial statements for any associated companies

50. Personal and business income tax returns filed in previous years

51. Financial services institutions’ details (name, location, type of accounts)

52. Supporting information for the financial model projections, for example:

• Financial model assumptions
• Current and past budget (e.g., sales, marketing, staff, professional services)
• Price list and pricing model (e.g., profit margins)
• Staff and payroll details
• Inventory (e.g., type, age, volume, value)
• Owned fixed assets and projected capital expenditure (e.g., land, buildings, equipment, leasehold improvements)
• Lease agreements (e.g., leases for business premises, equipment, vehicles)
• Recent asset valuations and appraisals
• Aged debtor receivable account and creditor payable account summary
• Global financial considerations (exchange rates, interest rates, taxes, tariffs, terms, charges, hedging)

53. Debt financing – documentation regarding any loans, mortgages, or other debt related financial obligations

54. Equity financing – capital structure documentation (e.g., capitalization table, 409A, investor term sheets, stock and capital related contracts and agreements)

55. Personal finance – information regarding owners’ capital and collateral (e.g., Personal Worth Statement or Personal Financial Statement, loan guarantees, proof of ownership)

Related Questions

How do you finish a business plan.

Business plan is finished by summarizing the highlights of the plan in an Executive Summary section located at the beginning of the document. The business plan document itself is finished by an Appendix section that contains supporting documentation and references for the main body of the document.

What is bibliography?

A bibliography is a list of external sources used in the process of researching a document, such as a business plan, included at the end of that document, before or after an Appendix. For each source, reference the name of the author, publication and title, the publishing date and a hyperlink.

What are supporting documents included in a business plan appendix?

Supporting documents in a business plan appendix include graphs, charts, images, photos, resumes, analyses, legal documents and other materials that substantiate statements made in a business plan, provide fuller picture of the business, or were specifically requested by the intended reader.

Sign up for our Newsletter

Get more articles just like this straight into your mailbox.

Related Posts

Recent posts.

How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated April 10, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

Free business plan templates and examples

Kickstart your business plan writing with one of our free business plan templates or recommended tools.

Free business plan template

Download a free SBA-approved business plan template built for small businesses and startups.

Download Template

One-page plan template

Download a free one-page plan template to write a useful business plan in as little as 30-minutes.

Sample business plan library

Explore over 500 real-world business plan examples from a wide variety of industries.

View Sample Plans

How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan
• Templates and examples

Related Articles

9 Min. Read

What Is a Balance Sheet? Definition, Formulas, and Example

5 Min. Read

Should You Stick to the Business Plan or Change It?

13 Min. Read

How to Write an Online Fitness Business Plan

8 Min. Read

How to Forecast Personnel Costs in 3 Steps

The Bplans Newsletter

The Bplans Weekly

Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

Plan Smarter, Grow Faster:

25% Off Annual Plans! Save Now

0 results have been found for “”

 Return to blog home

How to Use Milestones to Create a Roadmap for Your Business

Posted june 11, 2020 by noah parsons.

Using milestones to create a roadmap for your business is the third step in the lean business planning process . If you’re building a lean business plan, download our free template or signup for LivePlan , and then follow along to create a simple, one-page business plan that will grow your business.

Even if you’re not building a lean business plan, this article series will help you develop your business strategy , develop tactics to support your strategy , create a roadmap to grow your business, and define your business model .

In this step, you’ll learn how to use milestones to create a strategic roadmap for your business.

What are business milestones?

Milestones are goals that you set for business, with dates and the person or team responsible. For example:

The marketing team will launch a new website by the end of the third quarter.

A business plan and strategy can’t turn into a real business without milestones. Milestones are what you use to convert your business strategy and tactics into action.

Just like a milestone on the side of a road marks how far you’ve gone, a milestone in business tracks your progress as you grow and implement your plan. They’re what you use to manage responsibilities, track results, and convert your idea into a functioning business.

How do milestones relate to strategy and tactics?

Previously, I’ve written about building your business strategy and then creating tactics to implement that strategy . Just like there’s a link between tactics and strategy, there’s a link between tactics and milestones. 

Tactics are the things you’re going to do to implement your strategy. For example, using social media marketing might be a tactic that’s part of your marketing strategy.

Milestones are used to add specific details to implement your tactics. Continuing the example above, a good milestone would be to establish a new Instagram account for your business and start updating it regularly. 

It may even be useful for you to outline how your strategy flows into a tactic and then to a milestone like this:

Marketing Strategy: Educate millennials about the environmentally friendly nature of our products.

Tactic: Social media marketing

Milestone: New Instagram account, established by the end of Q3, managed by our social media manager with a promotional budget of $1,000/month.

Now keep in mind that this is a very simple representation of this process. More than likely your strategy will have multiple tactics and each tactic will have multiple milestones. Think of them as a pyramid, building up toward the execution of your overall strategy.

What makes a good milestone:

A good milestone clearly lays out the parameters of the task at hand and sets expectations for its executions. When planning out specific milestones you’ll need to have:

• A description of the task

And lastly, you’ll need a responsible person to manage and meet these milestones. It may even make sense to work with this individual on setting the specifics of each milestone and task.

Milestones are key to management

You’ll use your milestones to manage your business better . Once a month, when you meet with your team to review your business strategy and business numbers, you’ll review your milestones to make sure your plans are on track. If there are problems or changes, this is when you can make course corrections.

Reviewing your milestones monthly gives you more opportunities to spot problems and identify opportunities. If you only check in on your progress once a quarter, or potentially just once a year, you have fewer opportunities to adjust course and change direction. In virtually every business, there’s always new information to review and changes in what your customers want and need. 

A frequent review of your goals allows you to be nimble and adjust quickly when you need to. For more on why you should review your milestones and other business metrics frequently, check out my post on the topic .

3 types of business milestones

When you’re building and growing a business, you should end up scheduling three different types of milestones:

Plan review

• Assumptions validation
• Implementation

All businesses should have “plan review” milestones. These might be the most important milestones that you create.

The plan review milestone sets aside time to review your business strategy, tactics, forecast and budget. If you don’t regularly check your plan and make adjustments, you can easily get off track. Not to say that you should follow the plan blindly, either. Instead, a regular plan review meeting will give you a chance to look at what’s working, what’s not, and revise as you go.

Here at Palo Alto Software , we have a monthly plan review meeting on the second Friday of the month. We get our management team together, review our financials, and talk about what got done last month and what’s in the pipeline. This monthly meeting is critical for making changes and adjustments to our strategy and changing course as necessary.

For early-stage startups, it might just be a few of you that get together and there might not be much in the way of revenue or expenses to review. That’s okay. Instead, your monthly meeting will focus on the next steps you can take to make your business idea a reality, and what progress you’ve made so far. 

You’ll review your progress on implementing your strategy and tactics, such as developing a new marketing campaign, increasing the number of customers who make a second order by 15 percent, or signing the lease on new office space.

Milestones to validate your assumptions

When you’re just starting your business and figuring out if you’ve got the right strategy, you’re going to create milestones to help you validate your assumptions . These milestones are set for interviewing potential customers to figure out if they have the problem you think they have, and to discover if they’re interested in your solution. You’ll also work to try and figure out what your pricing should be.

Remember, in the early days of your business, you’re making a lot of guesses – assumptions, really – about what your customers need and want. Your initial strategy is a collection of guesses about the problems your potential customers have, how they want their problems solved, and what they’re willing to pay for your solution. Your milestones at this stage should be geared around validating those assumptions so you can build a successful business.

Some example milestones might be:

• Interview 20 potential customers in my primary market segment
• Research pricing models of my competitors
• Creating a preview landing page for my business to see what potential customers think

The milestones that you create at this stage should be focused on the goal of finding what’s called “product/market fit.” This means that you’ve found a target market that’s interested in buying your product and that your product solves a real problem for your customers.

It’s very likely that you find out that you don’t have good product/market fit right away. That’s OK. It’s easy to make changes to your strategy, come up with new assumptions, and go back and test them again with your potential customers. That’s the benefit of validating your assumptions early in the business startup process – you haven’t invested too much in building your business yet and can easily change directions if necessary.

Implementing your strategy

Once your assumptions have been validated, you’ll start creating implementation milestones. These are the tasks you’ll do to actually build your business. You’ll be doing things like building your product, setting up your office or shop, developing your website, and more.

Implementation milestones are typically for companies that have progressed out of the very early stages of starting up and have a proven strategy that they know is going to work. These milestones are all about getting things done to execute your strategy.

With Lean Planning, you adjust as you go

Your milestone schedules will evolve as you go, so don’t spend a lot of time initially documenting every last step you’re going to take to launch your business. Instead, plot out the next few steps you’re going to take. When those steps are done, come back and add more steps as you go.

After all, Lean Planning is an ongoing process, not just a one-time event. It’s all about creating a plan, running that plan, reviewing the results, and revising before you take next steps. Having solid milestones will make that process easier and more efficient, helping you build a better business, faster. The next post in this series talks about your business model —how you’re going to make money. Read on to learn about the final component of your Lean Plan.

Like this post? Share with a friend!

Noah Parsons

Posted in business plan writing, join over 1 million entrepreneurs who found success with liveplan, like this content sign up to receive more.

Subscribe for tips and guidance to help you grow a better, smarter business.

You're all set!

Exciting business insights and growth strategies will be coming your way each month.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

Lean Business Planning

Get what you want from your business.

Business Plan Milestones

There’s no real plan without business plan milestones. Milestones are what you use to manage responsibilities, track results, and review and revise. The tracking and review means management, and accountability.

Milestones in a Lean Business Plan

Just as you need tactics to execute strategy, so too you need milestones to execute tactics. Look for a close match between tactics and milestones.

List milestones. Set down what’s supposed to happen, and when. Use it for ongoing tactics related to products, services, marketing, administration, and finance. They include launch dates, review dates, prototype availability, advertising, social media, website development, programs to generate leads and traffic. The milestones set the plan tactics into practical, concrete terms, with real budgets, deadlines, and management responsibilities. They are the building blocks of strategy and tactics. And they are essential to your ongoing plan-vs.-actual management and analysis, which is what turns your planning into management.

Give each milestone at least the following:

• Person responsible
• Start and end dates
• Expected performance metric
• Relationship with specific tactics and strategy points

You might also have additional information for main milestones. Then make sure all your people know that you will be following the plan, tracking the milestones, and analyzing the plan-vs.-actual results. If you don’t follow up, your plan will not be implemented.

You develop your milestones by thinking through strategy, tactics and actions for business offering and marketing. So you can naturally divide them into the same categories as your tactics: marketing and sales, product, and other (where “other” might be, as with tactics, financing activities like raising investment or contracting commercial credit). Or the milestones might be related to legal issues, or managing a team, or logistics like moving or opening a new location.

Sample Lean Business Plan Milestones

The illustration here shows the milestones from the bicycle shop lean business plan:

Share this:

Leave a comment cancel reply, discover more from lean business planning.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

When you finish writing your business plan, you want it to make sense when someone, probably an investor or a shareholder in your business, reads it. That’s where the exhibits and appendices section comes in!

Often overlooked, the appendix section is an integral part of any business plan. Let’s imagine you are writing your business plan to woo some investors. In that case, the quality of the exhibits and appendices section in your plan will matter a lot.

The appendix offers your target readers great insights about your plan. Ideally, you should use this section to convince the investors that you have a robust business concept.

If you want your potential investors to take your business concept seriously you must invest a lot of time and research to prepare a great exhibits and appendices section for your business plan.

In this guide, we will cover everything you need to know to complete a convincing exhibits and appendices section in a business plan.

Key Takeaways

• Before completing the exhibits and appendices section in a business plan, think of what you want to achieve with your plan. This way, you know what supporting documents to include
• Key documents to include in this section are financial statements – cash flow, income statements, balance sheets, and general financial projections, market analysis, company information and background, and marketing materials and plan
• Provide detailed documentation to make it easy to convince any reader to take the desired action
• Add a table of contents for ease of navigation from one section to the other

What Is a Business Plan Exhibits and Appendices Section?

The appendix, which is the last part in a business plan, offers supporting documentation for critical components in your plan. For instance, here you include any market research analysis you’ve done and financial statements.

Additionally, if there are any charts and tables, you should capture them in the exhibits and appendices section.

You can, as well, include other information in this section such as resumes, credit history, and intellectual property documentation. However, the limit of what to capture in the appendix section should be informed by the audience you are targeting.

What’s the Purpose of the Exhibits and Appendices Section in a Business Plan?

The exhibits and appendices section in a business plan has a defined purpose. It offers evidence and supporting documentation for your business concept.

For instance, while you can include charts and graphs in the body of your business plan, they are best captured in detail in the exhibits and appendices section.

How to Complete the Exhibits and Appendices Section in a Business Plan?

Now that you know the importance of having an appendix section, the next step is learning how to complete it successfully.

The most important success factor when completing a business plan appendix is knowing what goes into this section.

Here are some of the supporting documents to include in this section:

1.   Financial Projections

If you are writing a business plan for loan applications or raising capital, you better have clear and strong financial projections. Include detailed monthly, quarterly and annual cash financial projections in the appendix section.

The most critical financial information to focus on here include income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

2.   List of Customers

When preparing a business plan for expansion purposes, you will need to include a list of customers. Such information gives a potential investor and shareholders a clear snap chat of your present clientele base.

3.   Market Analysis

Analyzing the target market is a critical step when preparing a business plan. Whether you are starting out or expanding, you need a clear understanding of the market you are entering . Include all the relevant information about your market in the appendix section.

Some of the aspects to consider here include a clear definition of the industry, a brief description of the potential customers and competitors.

Additionally, add any potential risks you might have identified during the market research. Such information helps you make the right decisions towards achieving the set goals.

4.   Marketing Materials and Plan

How do you plan to market your business concept? What materials will you need? The exhibits and appendices section is a great place to expand the marketing section you have already covered in your plan.

Here, you need to attach a detailed marketing plan. It helps convince your readers that you have a clear understanding of your target audience, where to put marketing efforts, as well as how you intend to create awareness of your business concept.

Best Practices When Completing the Exhibits and Appendices Section in a Business Plan

Crafting a successful exhibits and appendices section isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Here are a few best practices to guide you as you complete the appendix section in your business plan:

• Include a table of contents : When the appendix section covers several documents, it is advisable to include a table of contents. This way, it helps a reader access the different sections easily.
• Confidentiality Statement : where you include legal documents, intellectual property applications or diagrams, and credit history documents, ensure that you have a Confidentiality Statement. It reminds anybody reading the business plan that they should not share or disclose such information with your consent.
• Short and Simple : You have covered a lot of information about your concept in the other sections of the business plan. Ensure that you keep this section as short and simple as possible. However, it is important to provide all the necessary information to support your business plan.

Final Thoughts

As a business owner, you want to write a business plan that gets read and convinces the readers –whether they are investors or shareholders – to take some action. The exhibits and appendices section is a great place to make this possible by including all the necessary information to back up any claims in the preceding sections of your business plan.

Whereas it is important to keep the appendix section as short as possible, it is equally necessary to ensure that it covers enough documents to support your business concept. Are you stuck writing the exhibits and appendices section in your business plan? Leave us a comment below.

• Apply as a Writer
• Privacy policy
• Terms of use
• SBA business plans
• Non-profit business plans
• Startup business plans

All rights reserved by MovaslearningOU @2023

We earn commissions if you shop through the links below.  Read more

What to Include in Your Business Plan Appendix?

Back to Business Plans

Written by: Carolyn Young

Carolyn Young is a business writer who focuses on entrepreneurial concepts and the business formation. She has over 25 years of experience in business roles, and has authored several entrepreneurship textbooks.

Edited by: David Lepeska

David has been writing and learning about business, finance and globalization for a quarter-century, starting with a small New York consulting firm in the 1990s.

Published on September 13, 2023 Updated on December 12, 2023

Launching a business involves countless tasks, and one of the crucial early hurdles is writing a business plan. Many entrepreneurs who aren’t looking for funding think they can skip this step, but that’s never a good idea. 

A sharp business plan is essentially a business owner’s commitment to and preparation for the road ahead, and if you’re seeking funding from an investor or lender, having a comprehensive appendix of documents that support your plan can really provide a boost.

But what documents should you include? Lucky for you, this guide explains the key elements of a business plan appendix.

• The Role of the Appendix in the Business Plan

In your business plan, you likely made many claims about various aspects of your business, and the appendix provides documentation to back up those claims. 

Of course, if your reader actually gets to your appendix, you’ve done well and captured their interest. Be sure to only include documents that support your business plan claims.

• Components of the Business Plan Appendix

The following components should be included if you have them, which depends on the stage of your business.

1. Financial Projections

In the body of your business plan, you summarized your financial projections and mentioned the highlights, but your appendix should provide your full financial calculations and spreadsheets. 

These should include:

• Profit and Loss Statement , also known as an income statement. This shows projected revenue and lists all costs, which are then deducted to show net profit or loss. 
• Cash Flow Statement. This shows how much cash you have on hand at any given time. It will have a starting balance, projections of cash coming in, and cash going out, which will be used to calculate cash on hand at the end of the reporting period.
• Balance Sheet. This shows the net worth of the business, which is the assets of the business minus debts. Assets include equipment, cash, accounts receivables, inventory, and more. Debts include outstanding loan balances and accounts payable.

Provide monthly projected versions of each statement for the first year, then annual projections for the following two years. You should also include a chart of your break-even analysis.

If you’ve already been running your business and have made sales, include your financial statements to date.

2. Market Research and Analysis 

If you have charts and graphs that support the market analysis of your business plan, include those as well. Also include any market information, such as market reports, that you used to do your market analysis.

Provide documentation about your target market , such as its size and demographics. If you’ve made a detailed profile of your target customer, create an infographic and include it as well.

3. Intellectual Property Documentation

If you have a patent, trademark , or copyright, include documentation of that intellectual property. Investors tend to appreciate patents, and will likely want to see them.

Include a brief history of when and how you obtained the patent or other intellectual property and how it benefits your business.

4. Legal Documents

Include your business entity documents, such as your articles of organization if you’ve formed an LLC, and your operating agreement . If you have agreements with suppliers or vendors, you can also include those. Documentation of any licenses and permits you’ve obtained should also be included, as well as any other legal documents pertaining to your business.

5. Resumes and Professional Biographies

Attach the resumes of founders and managers here or create professional biographies. Be sure to include all relevant experience, education, and achievements. Investors are very interested in the management team’s ability to execute the plan, so don’t skip this part.

6. Marketing Plan

If you’ve already created a full marketing plan, which is a good idea, include it here as well. How you’re going to get your product to market is critical, so having a detailed marketing plan will support the marketing summary in your business plan .

7. Customer Contracts

If you’re fortunate enough to have secured large customer contracts, include those as well.

8. Product Illustrations

If your product is in development, include an illustration of the design. If you’re manufacturing the product, provide an illustration of the manufacturing process.

• Tips for Creating a Strong Business Plan Appendix 

There are a few things to keep in mind when putting together your business plan appendix.

• Be selective and relevant – don’t overload the reader with too much information.
• Include anything that highlights the key points of your business plan.
• Be clear and concise. Keep your documents short and to the point.
• Use illustrations such as infographics and charts when possible.

If you’ve written a business plan that captures a potential investor’s interest enough to keep them reading all the way to the end, you’ve done great work. Now give them the cherry on top with a fantastic appendix that provides all the documentation to support your plans’ primary assertions. 

Keep it relatively short, but make it strong enough to make the reader a true believer. With any luck, you’ll get the funding you need to put your business on the road to serious success! 

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Featured resources.

Crafting the Perfect Business Plan: A Deep Dive with Upmetrics’ Vinay Kevadiya

Carolyn Young

Published on October 13, 2023

In the first segment of our conversation with Vinay Kevadiya, the visionary behind Upmetrics, we explored the platform’s origins and itsunique ...

LivePlan Software Review

Published on September 15, 2023

When you’re starting a business, a business plan is essential whether you’re going to obtain financing or not. Creating a business plan helpsyou ...

5 Best Business Plan Software

Published on March 7, 2023

Starting a business requires completing countless tasks, and a key early hurdle is writing a business plan. Entrepreneurs who aren’t looking forfu ...

No thanks, I don't want to stay up to date on industry trends and news.

Milestone Schedule in Business Plan

A milestone schedule in business plan is essential for the execution of your business plan. 3 min read updated on February 01, 2023

A milestone schedule in business plan is essential for the execution of your business plan. You can think of the milestone schedule as a mile marker keeping track of how far along the road you are. In business, the milestone table helps you with writing your business plan and keeping track of how you are implementing strategies.

Tactics go hand in hand with the execution of your business strategy and milestone table. Tactics are the way you plan to execute your strategy. Milestones are then utilized to add further details to your tactics. In planning a milestone table, you will decide:

• Who will complete a specific portion of the work
• When the work will be completed
• The budget needed to complete it

Making Your Business Plan a Reality

To make your business plan a reality, list out particular steps, or milestones, to be executed. Developing a business plan with measurable actions instead of just a document will make it easier to implement. The more milestones you list out, the more complete your business plan will be.

In creating your business plan , ensure that details of the actions in the milestone table are explained in an accompanying document. Ask these questions to ensure that the plan can be translated into actionable steps:

• How will the actions in this plan be implemented?
• Are the actions in your plan specific?
• How will the implementation of the steps be measured?

Monthly Review

Setting milestones is helpful in assessing your progress. To remain accountable in implementing these actions, let your employees know that you will be tracking and analyzing the results of each action. You can also manage the milestones by discussing pertinent milestones and their implementation within a specific time period with your team. Keep these questions in mind:

• Have you remained on budget?
• Are you meeting deadlines?
• Do you need to make adjustments?

Allow for a monthly review process to review and track your progress. Without a monthly review, you won't have a system of accountability or management. It is key to hold these meetings monthly, as a quarterly or yearly review will not allow you to identify corrections that need to be made. A monthly review will allow you to always be aware of new findings to quickly implement changes.

When your team meets monthly to review business strategy, introduce a review of your milestones to ensure you are making progress. You'll have the opportunity to discover problematic areas and spot new opportunities. Make changes based on your team's feedback. New information, such as customer needs findings, could propel some of these new changes to your milestone table.

Three Types of Milestones

There are three types of milestones that should be included in your milestone table.

• Plan Review. The plan review milestone is designed to schedule the time to go over your budget, business strategy, tactics, and forecast. This will give you the opportunity to understand what is working well and what isn't so you can make changes.
• Assumptions Validation. When you have a new business, you make a lot of assumptions about what it is your customers want. Your milestones should attempt to validate these assumptions. Your goal is to find the right product or market fit. Your assumptions have led you to believe a certain target market is interested in your product. However, you might not have the correct market fit right away. At this stage, you may easily readjust your assumptions and develop new ones to apply to your customer base.
• Implementation. After your assumptions have been affirmed, you'll create implementation milestones, which build your business. These strategies come after the early stages of starting a business so that you can implement strategies you know will succeed.

Developing Milestones for Your Business

Having a clear idea of where you want your business to go will help you understand if you're on the right track. To develop your milestones, think about your business strategy and what you will be offering and your marketing. You can divide these into categories and create smaller categories, such as product or sales. You can then begin to think of your long-term goals and short-term goals. Be as specific and detailed as possible when outlining your goals to make it easier to track your progress. Use quantifiable short- and long-term goals whenever possible, as these produce measurable results.

If you need help with creating a milestone table, you can post your job on UpCounsel's marketplace. UpCounsel accepts only the top 5 percent of lawyers to its site. Lawyers on UpCounsel come from law schools such as Harvard Law and Yale Law and average 14 years of legal experience, including work with or on behalf of companies like Google, Menlo Ventures, and Airbnb.

Hire the top business lawyers and save up to 60% on legal fees

Content Approved by UpCounsel

• Milestones Planning
• What Is a Milestone List Example?
• Creating a Business Plan
• Purpose of Business Plan Sample: Everything You Need To Know
• LLC Business Plan Template
• Do I Need a Business Plan
• Business Plan Contents Page
• Service Business Plan
• Milestone Schedule Template
• Business Plan for Existing Company

If you still have questions or prefer to get help directly from an agent, please submit a request. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Please fill out the contact form below and we will reply as soon as possible.

• Business Management & Operations
• Strategy, Entrepreneurship, & Innovation

Business Plan - Appendices

Appendices to the Business Plan

Written by Jason Gordon

Updated at August 5th, 2023

• Marketing, Advertising, Sales & PR Principles of Marketing Sales Advertising Public Relations SEO, Social Media, Direct Marketing
• Accounting, Taxation, and Reporting Managerial & Financial Accounting & Reporting Business Taxation
• Professionalism & Career Development
• Law, Transactions, & Risk Management Government, Legal System, Administrative Law, & Constitutional Law Legal Disputes - Civil & Criminal Law Agency Law HR, Employment, Labor, & Discrimination Business Entities, Corporate Governance & Ownership Business Transactions, Antitrust, & Securities Law Real Estate, Personal, & Intellectual Property Commercial Law: Contract, Payments, Security Interests, & Bankruptcy Consumer Protection Insurance & Risk Management Immigration Law Environmental Protection Law Inheritance, Estates, and Trusts
• Business Management & Operations Operations, Project, & Supply Chain Management Strategy, Entrepreneurship, & Innovation Business Ethics & Social Responsibility Global Business, International Law & Relations Business Communications & Negotiation Management, Leadership, & Organizational Behavior
• Economics, Finance, & Analytics Economic Analysis & Monetary Policy Research, Quantitative Analysis, & Decision Science Investments, Trading, and Financial Markets Banking, Lending, and Credit Industry Business Finance, Personal Finance, and Valuation Principles

What is the  Appendix to my Business Plan?

Material that adds to the business plan, but doesn't belong in the body. The appendices allow you to include valuable information to your business plan that does not fit neatly within the body of the plan. Generally, it is used to include exemplars of the material or information that is referenced within the business plan but does not need to be included in the body. You can include material that will serve a functional purpose in the business or that evidence key relationships. Generally, you can include any outside information necessary to support the propositions or assumptions within the business plan. 

Please enable JavaScript

Back to:  Entrepreneurship

Consider including the following information or materials in the appendix of the business plan.

• Marketing Material (Advertising) - The ability to drive sales is a critical part of the business plan. Providing samples of marketing material can provide an understanding of the brand that you are attempting to build around your product or service.
• Primary and Secondary Research - In order to effectively market your product (and establish a brand) you have to understand your target market. Further, you will need market estimates in order to accurately evaluate the market potential and potential profit from pursuing the venture. This material should support the figures that you introduce within the business plan.
• Designs or Property Layout Material - Perhaps you have designs, artwork, facility plans, etc., that provide a picture of your intended venture location, buildings, image. This can help third parties to understand your vision.
• Important Contracts - Providing proof of key contracts (such as leases, supplier contracts, etc.) add substance to otherwise seemingly hypothetical plans. Again, this will provide comfort to potential their-party investors.
• List of Key Assets - Providing a list of key assets within the business plan would be too large and cumbersome. While you will include the collective value of the assets within the plan, it may be a good idea to attach an itemized index for review. This can help in budget planning.
• Organization Chart and Employee Backgrounds - Within the business plan you provide a concise background of your employees and an organizational chart. Here, can provide a more in-depth background on your key employees and their curriculum vitae. If you have many other employees, you may want to provide their backgrounds, key roles, and responsibilities.
• Customer or Expert Endorsements - Customer or expert endorsements can serve as excellent credibility for your product/service. While you will mention these or provide brief quotations within the business plan body, you may wish to include the entirety of the endorsement or letter within the appendix.

Related Topics

• Business Plan, Part 1 (Outline Overview)
• Business Plan, Part 2 (The Executive Summary)
• What is a Mission Statement?
• What is a Values Statement?
• Setting Company Goals
• Business Plan, Part 4 (Market Analysis)
• Business Plan, Part 5 (Competitive Analysis)
• Business Plan, Part 6 (Marketing Plan)
• Business Plan, Part 7 (Operations)
• Business Plan, Part 8  (Management and Organization)
• Business Plan, Part 9 (Financial Projections)
• Business Plan, Part 10 (Appendices)
• Business Plan , (Final Modifications)

Related Articles

• Breadboard Configuration - Explained
• Elements of Operational Plan
• Growth Curve - Explained
• Initial Board Actions - Explained

• Sample Plans
• WHY UPMETRICS?

Upmetrics AI Assistant: Simplifying Business Planning through AI-Powered Insights. Learn How

• 400+ Sample Business Plans

Customers Success Stories

Business Plan Course

Strategic Canvas Templates

E-books, Guides & More

Business consultants

Entrepreneurs and Small Business

Accelerators and Incubators

Educators & Business Schools

Students & Scholars

AI Business Plan Generator

Financial Forecasting

AI Assistance

Ai pitch deck generator

Stratrgic Planning

See How Upmetrics Works  →

Small Business Tools

Entrepreneurs & Small Business

Accelerators & Incubators

Business Consultants & Advisors

Strategic Planning

6 Essential Milestones to Achieve in Your Business Roadmap

Free SMART Goal Template

Ayush Jalan

• February 19, 2024

Entrepreneurs start their businesses envisioning the success they wish to see. But just having a great idea is not enough. What’s needed is a long-term roadmap with appropriate business milestones. This helps break down long-term goals into bite-sized objectives.

Through these milestones, you get a birds-eye view of where your business is and where you want to be in a given timeline. Think of it as a guiding principle for your business. It gives you direction, clarity, and the means to track, measure, and compare your progress.

In this article, we will see what are business milestones , why they matter, and how you can set them for your business. We will also share with you six of the most essential business plan milestones you need to create your own roadmap.

Table of Contents

• Business Milestones and Needs

How to Create Business Plan Milestones

6 must-have business milestones to achieve, create your roadmap to success, what are business milestones, and why do you need them.

Milestones are the indicators in your business journey that help you identify how far you’ve come and what you need to do to reach your targets. They help simplify your actions into manageable and perceivable day-to-day activities.

Writing SMART goals and setting milestones are essential for your business to succeed. Milestones help you:

• Map out your goals with relevant metrics to track progress
• Adjust trajectory in case of any deviations
• Predict when you will reach your set goals

Goals without milestones lack direction. And to be able to follow the right direction, you need the right strategies that follow the right timeline.

Creating clear, accurate, and distinct milestones is essential to reaching your goals. An effective milestone has four key elements:

• Description (What): List down the details of your milestone. For instance, instead of writing ‘increase sales, you can write ‘increase sales by 30% percent. Add as many details as necessary to understand your objectives.
• Date (When): Mention a deadline for the task . Without one, it can be difficult to achieve goals on time. Set up a timeline for each task. This helps you manage and complete tasks as per your business requirements.
• Budget (How much): Before you start any task or project, plan your budget and how much of it you want to allocate to each task. This helps you stay within your budget, avoid wastage, and save time.
• Delegation (Who): Assign the responsibility to the relevant talents. Make sure to keep adequate supervision of the progress made to ensure a consistent outcome.

Inspired by a brilliant business idea, you decided to set up your company. You also took it upon yourself to create a custom business plan , acquire capital, secure all permits and licenses, and do other paperwork. Good job!

The next step is to set yourself apart from your competitors to establish authority. A well-made roadmap can help you get there and make sure that your business stands the test of time.

Keeping that in mind, here are 6 milestones to include in your business roadmap:

1. Create a Tailored Business Model

A business model explains how a company makes money; it describes how your business operates to generate sales and revenue. An effective business model is simple to understand and flexible to changes in the business environment.

Before you put up the “Yes, we’re open” sign, make sure to conduct a customer analysis. This will help you identify your target audience, and their pain points, and sell them profitable solutions. The more complex of a problem you’re solving, the higher you can price your solutions .

Once you’ve gathered enough data from your analysis, you can customize your business model based on the promising trends. After achieving this milestone, start selling your offerings to your target customers.

2. Sell to Your First Repeat Customer

A good business knows how to attract new customers, but a great business knows how to retain them. Your next milestone is to sell your offerings to a repeat customer, i.e. a former customer who wants to buy from you again.

Simply put, it means getting your one-time customers to revisit your store for a second purchase.

Here are a few ways to do that:

• Personalize the shopping experience: When customers buy from your store, they leave a trail of info behind like their age, gender, status, etc. This info helps you understand their buying habits, interests, and purchasing power. With this info, you can provide them with a personalized experience when they visit again to make them want to stick longer.
• Maintain customer relationships: Customers buy from brands they remember. To do so, you can reach them via email, SMS , social media, newsletters, etc. You can use these channels to let them know of special offers, remind them of sales, etc.
• Maintain a strong online presence: Interact with your customers on the platforms they use the most. Create targeted posts and increase engagement. Resist overblown hard-sell tactics. Instead, use creative ways to incur inbound leads.
• Reward customer loyalty: If you happen to be lucky enough to have loyal customers, make sure to reward them for their loyalty. Rewards can include discounts, coupons, free shipping, or free product demos. These will help spread word-of-mouth about your brand and increase awareness

3. Execute a Realistic Marketing Strategy

After attaining repeat customers, the next milestone is to multiply those numbers. We do this by using vigorous strategic marketing techniques. Remember, marketing is the heart of a business. It’s a medium to build relationships and communicate with the outside world.

A good marketer is an ambitious one, but a smart marketer injects a sense of realism into their omnichannel marketing strategy. The more realistic you are, the more likely you are to achieve your marketing goals and successfully promote and sell your offerings.

Creating a marketing strategy requires extensive research and analysis. To do so, a great start is to conduct a SWOT analysis . Keep a close eye on your industry’s growth, prevalent trends, customers, and competitors.

Marketing is a trial-and-error practice; don’t expect quick results. Once you know what works, you can outsource your marketing needs to an ad agency to save time.

4. Build a Reliable Team

After earning loyal customers and creating a robust marketing plan, the next milestone is to build a solid team . A team with a diverse skillset helps you generate new ideas, solve problems, and tackle uncertainties.

Every startup begins with a compact team. But as you progress further, you will need more support. Make sure that your team is on the same page and can manage conflicts and different opinions.

This is where a good HR can come in handy to unite the efforts of the team. Be sure to take your team’s opinions into account when making important business decisions and strategic changes.

5. Increase Your Repute in the Industry

With a reliable team in place, your next milestone is to compete with rivals and gain authority in your industry. Make use of every opportunity, online and offline, to spread your brand name. Analyze your customer needs, assess what your competitors are doing , and provide better solutions.

Doing so will help you turn heads—which later translate into sales. Write guest posts , offer free seminars/webinars, partner with other brands, use press releases, and market on social media.

6. Achieve a Set Sales Target

The milestones you’ve achieved so far are mostly qualitative. For the last milestone, you will set a quantitative sales target paired with a deadline. This means reaching a specific dollar amount of sales in a given amount of time.

Often, after a certain point, business growth stagnates. To avoid this, keep creating new goals that are ambitious yet achievable. This will ensure a higher chance of success in the long run.

Starting a business comes with all sorts of obstacles. Some are easy to overcome, and some take months. Regardless, setting milestones helps you maintain a clear vision of where you want to go.

A profitable business model, loyal customers, a realistic marketing strategy, a reliable team, a good reputation, and an achievable sales target—all combine to ensure your long-term success.

Build your Business Plan Faster

with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance.

About the Author

Ayush is a writer with an academic background in business and marketing. Being a tech-enthusiast, he likes to keep a sharp eye on the latest tech gadgets and innovations. When he's not working, you can find him writing poetry, gaming, playing the ukulele, catching up with friends, and indulging in creative philosophies.

Related Articles

6 Components of a Strong Business Model

Strategic Marketing Process: A Full Step-by-Step Guide

How to Write SMART Goals: Explained with Examples

Reach your goals with accurate planning.

No Risk – Cancel at Any Time – 15 Day Money Back Guarantee

Popular Templates

Business Plan Key Milestones: How to Write Guide .

Sep 17, 2023 | Business Consulting , Business Goals , Business Plan , Comprehensive Business Plan , Growth Planning , Key Milestones , Loan Business Plan , Project Management , Small Business , Starting a Business , Startup , Strategy

How to Write Your Business Plan Key Milestones & Dates

Business plan key milestones are required to manage responsibilities, track results, and review progress. Tracking and studying are essential for effective management, accountability, and goal attainment.

“ Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead. ” – Nelson Mandela

This is our final article for writing a detailed business plan . Your business plan and supporting timeline proposals get a roadmap that will guide your company toward realizing the objectives you’ve set for yourself.

The rest of your plan set the groundwork, describing what your business would be, the market it was entering, and your sales and marketing strategies. It provides internal and external data analysis, key figures, and research to support your business intentions.

Now, in the end, you need to write the plan for your plan. Your business will work toward these critical milestones to deliver on your promises to potential investors throughout the rest of the business plan document.

The format of this section is up to you. Just be sure your writing is clear, and your milestones are realistic. You don’t want to lose your readers at the end with vague, or worse, absurdly ambitious planning doomed to failure.

A business plan and strategy cannot become a real business without setting milestones. Milestones are used to turn your business strategy and tactics into action.

Learn how to establish and utilize critical milestones in your business plan.

Starting a new business is exciting as you bring your vision to life and open your doors (or website) to customers for the first time. However, it’s essential to be prepared for what comes next. Planning out the evolution of your business, from the early stages to long-term growth, is crucial.

Milestone planning is vital to your business plan, as it helps you understand the necessary steps and resources to achieve your vision.

By incorporating milestones into your business plan, you can keep your business on track and make progress toward your goals.

This article will cover the significance of milestones in business planning, how to create practical milestones, common business goals, the difference between goals, objectives, and milestones, and tips for managing your milestones effectively.

What makes a good milestone?

First and foremost, milestones should be achievable , have an owner assigned, and a target end date. That doesn’t mean they should be easy. Dates and critical events aren’t beneficial if they require a business to push themselves to achieve them. Attainable means within the realm of possibility for a company to do its best to meet its objectives.

What should be included in each milestone?

Include as many milestones as possible, and for each milestone, provide the following:

• Milestone description or name
• Completion date
• Person responsible

You aim to achieve these milestones, including expected timelines, required resources, and primary stakeholders.

Then, ensure your team knows you will follow the plan, track the milestones, and analyze the results. If you don’t follow up, your plan will not be implemented.

Milestones also need to be measurable . Without pre-established metrics you can judge yourself against, there’s no way to chart your progress or determine when you have met a milestone activity. After all, you want to celebrate success too!

For milestone examples, you can check out these resources: BPlans,  Leanplan , Liveplan , and GrowThink .

How do you determine which milestones to include?

It’s good to approach milestones from a short-term and a long-term perspective . For example, if your business were a building, you could think of long-term activities and milestones as each successive floor.

Each represents a significant accomplishment or a monumental shift in your company as you grow your business (in our example, the building to the top floor and roof).

Your short-term milestones then are the stairs leading between, and these are smaller steps that lead you toward your broader business goals.

Identifying milestones for your business plan

To identify your milestones , ask yourself your short-term and long-term goals.

• Are you seeking funding? If so, what are the critical dates?
• Do you plan to hire team members?
• What are your business growth plans ?
• What are your customer acquisition targets ?
• Will you launch new products, recruit additional staff, or open recent  locations ?
• How are you planning to scale your business and open other locations?
• Are you looking at a joint venture , possible business acquisitions , or global expansion ?

If you plan to open a chain of restaurants, a long-term milestone might be to open your second restaurant within three years. So how do you get there?

First, you might work to build a staff in your first location that can handle day-to-day operations so that you don’t need to be involved. Of course, that is a short-term milestone. But, it’s a stepping stone to your large island. You would then likely focus on financing and acquiring the ideal location.

Be specific and future-proof your business plan key milestones

When creating your business plan, be detailed and forward-thinking when setting your milestones.

Make sure to rigorously identify dates and metrics for success. Avoid vagueness if your GPS tells you the directions you need to turn but doesn’t tell you where or when. What is the likelihood you’d get to your destination? Milestones need to be explicit and time-bound.

Look to your passions and set visionary goals . Your milestones should be realistic, but they also need to inspire you. They need to give you something meaningful to shoot for in the future. They should be simultaneously your destination and your motivation.

However, don’t imagine that your goals are etched in stone. It’s impossible to predict future issues or opportunities. Your milestones should be flexible so that they can respond to unexpected circumstances.

As you track milestone progress , remember that it’s okay to fall a bit short. The dates and measures you choose are adaptable to your circumstances. However, reassessing your plan might be necessary and ambitious if you fall considerably behind.

Prepare to manage your business plan key milestones.

Including business milestones in your business plan is essential for tracking progress and maintaining accountability. It is also a valuable tool for managing business growth. When developing and implementing milestones, remember to keep communication open, encourage adaptability, and frequently monitor progress.

By following these strategies, you will be better equipped to manage milestones effectively and keep your business on track to achieve its goals.

Your business plan is finished!

Following our eight-step process, you should have a fully comprehensive business plan written with financial projections. You have completed your initial business planning and are ready and in a fit state for perusal by banks, business partners, and potential investors.

As always, we’re here to help if you’re having difficulties. Let’s talk if you require help with your business writing or financial projections.

Get in Touch

Are you looking to grow your business but unsure where to start? Our small business consulting and leadership coaching services are here to help! We’ll work with you to scale your operations and achieve your goals. Plus, we offer a free 30-minute consultation to ensure we fit your needs correctly. Let’s get started!

Contact Noirwolf Consulting today using the website contact form or by emailing [email protected] or call us at +44 113 328 0868.

Recent posts .

What is Program Management?

Apr 2, 2024

Program management is a vital component of organizational success, as it enables the coordinated execution of interdependent projects that yield benefits beyond the scope of individual project management. It involves the judicious application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet specific program requirements. Our experience has demonstrated that organizations with well-developed program management and program management offices (PMOs) consistently outperform those that lack such structures. Therefore, it is imperative that organizations prioritize the establishment of robust program management frameworks to achieve their strategic objectives.

Business Transformation Strategy: A 10-Step Strategy Guide

Mar 4, 2024

Business transformation strategy is a complex and dynamic process that fundamentally restructures an organization’s strategy, processes, and systems. Though each business transformation is unique, several critical steps remain foundational to a successful change management plan. A comprehensive business transformation framework ensures a smooth and practical transformation. This framework should encompass various elements, such as defining the vision and aims of the transformation, assessing the current state of the business, identifying gaps and areas of improvement, developing a roadmap and action plan, implementing the changes, monitoring and measuring progress, and continuously refining the transformation approach as needed.

What is the Change Management Process?

Feb 2, 2024

Change is the only constant in today’s fast-paced world, and organizations must adapt to stay ahead. Fortunately, change management provides a structured and coordinated approach that enables businesses to move from their current state to a future desirable state. To deliver business value, organizations introduce change through projects, programs, and portfolios. However, introducing change is just the beginning! The real challenge is to embed the change and make it a new normal state for the organization. This calls for implementing the main principles of change management, which we will discuss in this article. Get ready to transform your organization and achieve your desired outcomes by mastering the art of change management!

Happy clients .

Trevor mcomber, us.

I recently worked with Zoe@Noirwolf, who provided me with an outstanding 5-year business plan. The expertise in financial planning, market research, SWOT analysis, and consulting was exceptional. Zoe provided me with a comprehensive and well-researched plan tailored to my business. The entire process was professional, timely, and communicative.

Bill Walton, Leeds

Zoe provided first-rate work and is an excellent business consultant. I was trying to figure out my cash flow forecast for my startup. Zoe gave me an interactive consultation session over MS teams, which was valuable and saved me a lot of time. She is super quick in excel and knowledgeable about what to include in your estimates. She was able to offer me ideas & choices that I hadn't considered. Highly recommended.

Jeendanie Lorthe, US

Warren kim, us, oscar sinclair, london, get in touch ..

Looking to grow your business but feeling unsure about where to start? Our small business consulting and leadership coaching services are here to help! We'll work with you to scale your operations and achieve your goals. Plus, we offer a free one-hour consultation to ensure we fit your needs correctly. Let's get started!

11.4 The Business Plan

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the different purposes of a business plan
• Describe and develop the components of a brief business plan
• Describe and develop the components of a full business plan

Unlike the brief or lean formats introduced so far, the business plan is a formal document used for the long-range planning of a company’s operation. It typically includes background information, financial information, and a summary of the business. Investors nearly always request a formal business plan because it is an integral part of their evaluation of whether to invest in a company. Although nothing in business is permanent, a business plan typically has components that are more “set in stone” than a business model canvas , which is more commonly used as a first step in the planning process and throughout the early stages of a nascent business. A business plan is likely to describe the business and industry, market strategies, sales potential, and competitive analysis, as well as the company’s long-term goals and objectives. An in-depth formal business plan would follow at later stages after various iterations to business model canvases. The business plan usually projects financial data over a three-year period and is typically required by banks or other investors to secure funding. The business plan is a roadmap for the company to follow over multiple years.

Some entrepreneurs prefer to use the canvas process instead of the business plan, whereas others use a shorter version of the business plan, submitting it to investors after several iterations. There are also entrepreneurs who use the business plan earlier in the entrepreneurial process, either preceding or concurrently with a canvas. For instance, Chris Guillebeau has a one-page business plan template in his book The $100 Startup . 48 His version is basically an extension of a napkin sketch without the detail of a full business plan. As you progress, you can also consider a brief business plan (about two pages)—if you want to support a rapid business launch—and/or a standard business plan.

As with many aspects of entrepreneurship, there are no clear hard and fast rules to achieving entrepreneurial success. You may encounter different people who want different things (canvas, summary, full business plan), and you also have flexibility in following whatever tool works best for you. Like the canvas, the various versions of the business plan are tools that will aid you in your entrepreneurial endeavor.

Business Plan Overview

Most business plans have several distinct sections ( Figure 11.16 ). The business plan can range from a few pages to twenty-five pages or more, depending on the purpose and the intended audience. For our discussion, we’ll describe a brief business plan and a standard business plan. If you are able to successfully design a business model canvas, then you will have the structure for developing a clear business plan that you can submit for financial consideration.

Both types of business plans aim at providing a picture and roadmap to follow from conception to creation. If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept.

The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, dealing with the proverbial devil in the details. Developing a full business plan will assist those of you who need a more detailed and structured roadmap, or those of you with little to no background in business. The business planning process includes the business model, a feasibility analysis, and a full business plan, which we will discuss later in this section. Next, we explore how a business plan can meet several different needs.

Purposes of a Business Plan

A business plan can serve many different purposes—some internal, others external. As we discussed previously, you can use a business plan as an internal early planning device, an extension of a napkin sketch, and as a follow-up to one of the canvas tools. A business plan can be an organizational roadmap , that is, an internal planning tool and working plan that you can apply to your business in order to reach your desired goals over the course of several years. The business plan should be written by the owners of the venture, since it forces a firsthand examination of the business operations and allows them to focus on areas that need improvement.

Refer to the business venture throughout the document. Generally speaking, a business plan should not be written in the first person.

A major external purpose for the business plan is as an investment tool that outlines financial projections, becoming a document designed to attract investors. In many instances, a business plan can complement a formal investor’s pitch. In this context, the business plan is a presentation plan, intended for an outside audience that may or may not be familiar with your industry, your business, and your competitors.

You can also use your business plan as a contingency plan by outlining some “what-if” scenarios and exploring how you might respond if these scenarios unfold. Pretty Young Professional launched in November 2010 as an online resource to guide an emerging generation of female leaders. The site focused on recent female college graduates and current students searching for professional roles and those in their first professional roles. It was founded by four friends who were coworkers at the global consultancy firm McKinsey. But after positions and equity were decided among them, fundamental differences of opinion about the direction of the business emerged between two factions, according to the cofounder and former CEO Kathryn Minshew . “I think, naively, we assumed that if we kicked the can down the road on some of those things, we’d be able to sort them out,” Minshew said. Minshew went on to found a different professional site, The Muse , and took much of the editorial team of Pretty Young Professional with her. 49 Whereas greater planning potentially could have prevented the early demise of Pretty Young Professional, a change in planning led to overnight success for Joshua Esnard and The Cut Buddy team. Esnard invented and patented the plastic hair template that he was selling online out of his Fort Lauderdale garage while working a full-time job at Broward College and running a side business. Esnard had hundreds of boxes of Cut Buddies sitting in his home when he changed his marketing plan to enlist companies specializing in making videos go viral. It worked so well that a promotional video for the product garnered 8 million views in hours. The Cut Buddy sold over 4,000 products in a few hours when Esnard only had hundreds remaining. Demand greatly exceeded his supply, so Esnard had to scramble to increase manufacturing and offered customers two-for-one deals to make up for delays. This led to selling 55,000 units, generating $700,000 in sales in 2017. 50 After appearing on Shark Tank and landing a deal with Daymond John that gave the “shark” a 20-percent equity stake in return for $300,000, The Cut Buddy has added new distribution channels to include retail sales along with online commerce. Changing one aspect of a business plan—the marketing plan—yielded success for The Cut Buddy.

Link to Learning

Watch this video of Cut Buddy’s founder, Joshua Esnard, telling his company’s story to learn more.

If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept. This version is used to interest potential investors, employees, and other stakeholders, and will include a financial summary “box,” but it must have a disclaimer, and the founder/entrepreneur may need to have the people who receive it sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) . The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, providing supporting details, and would be required by financial institutions and others as they formally become stakeholders in the venture. Both are aimed at providing a picture and roadmap to go from conception to creation.

Types of Business Plans

The brief business plan is similar to an extended executive summary from the full business plan. This concise document provides a broad overview of your entrepreneurial concept, your team members, how and why you will execute on your plans, and why you are the ones to do so. You can think of a brief business plan as a scene setter or—since we began this chapter with a film reference—as a trailer to the full movie. The brief business plan is the commercial equivalent to a trailer for Field of Dreams , whereas the full plan is the full-length movie equivalent.

Brief Business Plan or Executive Summary

As the name implies, the brief business plan or executive summary summarizes key elements of the entire business plan, such as the business concept, financial features, and current business position. The executive summary version of the business plan is your opportunity to broadly articulate the overall concept and vision of the company for yourself, for prospective investors, and for current and future employees.

A typical executive summary is generally no longer than a page, but because the brief business plan is essentially an extended executive summary, the executive summary section is vital. This is the “ask” to an investor. You should begin by clearly stating what you are asking for in the summary.

In the business concept phase, you’ll describe the business, its product, and its markets. Describe the customer segment it serves and why your company will hold a competitive advantage. This section may align roughly with the customer segments and value-proposition segments of a canvas.

Next, highlight the important financial features, including sales, profits, cash flows, and return on investment. Like the financial portion of a feasibility analysis, the financial analysis component of a business plan may typically include items like a twelve-month profit and loss projection, a three- or four-year profit and loss projection, a cash-flow projection, a projected balance sheet, and a breakeven calculation. You can explore a feasibility study and financial projections in more depth in the formal business plan. Here, you want to focus on the big picture of your numbers and what they mean.

The current business position section can furnish relevant information about you and your team members and the company at large. This is your opportunity to tell the story of how you formed the company, to describe its legal status (form of operation), and to list the principal players. In one part of the extended executive summary, you can cover your reasons for starting the business: Here is an opportunity to clearly define the needs you think you can meet and perhaps get into the pains and gains of customers. You also can provide a summary of the overall strategic direction in which you intend to take the company. Describe the company’s mission, vision, goals and objectives, overall business model, and value proposition.

Rice University’s Student Business Plan Competition, one of the largest and overall best-regarded graduate school business-plan competitions (see Telling Your Entrepreneurial Story and Pitching the Idea ), requires an executive summary of up to five pages to apply. 51 , 52 Its suggested sections are shown in Table 11.2 .

Are You Ready?

Create a brief business plan.

Fill out a canvas of your choosing for a well-known startup: Uber, Netflix, Dropbox, Etsy, Airbnb, Bird/Lime, Warby Parker, or any of the companies featured throughout this chapter or one of your choice. Then create a brief business plan for that business. See if you can find a version of the company’s actual executive summary, business plan, or canvas. Compare and contrast your vision with what the company has articulated.

• These companies are well established but is there a component of what you charted that you would advise the company to change to ensure future viability?
• Map out a contingency plan for a “what-if” scenario if one key aspect of the company or the environment it operates in were drastically is altered?

Full Business Plan

Even full business plans can vary in length, scale, and scope. Rice University sets a ten-page cap on business plans submitted for the full competition. The IndUS Entrepreneurs , one of the largest global networks of entrepreneurs, also holds business plan competitions for students through its Tie Young Entrepreneurs program. In contrast, business plans submitted for that competition can usually be up to twenty-five pages. These are just two examples. Some components may differ slightly; common elements are typically found in a formal business plan outline. The next section will provide sample components of a full business plan for a fictional business.

Executive Summary

The executive summary should provide an overview of your business with key points and issues. Because the summary is intended to summarize the entire document, it is most helpful to write this section last, even though it comes first in sequence. The writing in this section should be especially concise. Readers should be able to understand your needs and capabilities at first glance. The section should tell the reader what you want and your “ask” should be explicitly stated in the summary.

Describe your business, its product or service, and the intended customers. Explain what will be sold, who it will be sold to, and what competitive advantages the business has. Table 11.3 shows a sample executive summary for the fictional company La Vida Lola.

Business Description

This section describes the industry, your product, and the business and success factors. It should provide a current outlook as well as future trends and developments. You also should address your company’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives. Summarize your overall strategic direction, your reasons for starting the business, a description of your products and services, your business model, and your company’s value proposition. Consider including the Standard Industrial Classification/North American Industry Classification System (SIC/NAICS) code to specify the industry and insure correct identification. The industry extends beyond where the business is located and operates, and should include national and global dynamics. Table 11.4 shows a sample business description for La Vida Lola.

Industry Analysis and Market Strategies

Here you should define your market in terms of size, structure, growth prospects, trends, and sales potential. You’ll want to include your TAM and forecast the SAM . (Both these terms are discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis .) This is a place to address market segmentation strategies by geography, customer attributes, or product orientation. Describe your positioning relative to your competitors’ in terms of pricing, distribution, promotion plan, and sales potential. Table 11.5 shows an example industry analysis and market strategy for La Vida Lola.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis is a statement of the business strategy as it relates to the competition. You want to be able to identify who are your major competitors and assess what are their market shares, markets served, strategies employed, and expected response to entry? You likely want to conduct a classic SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) and complete a competitive-strength grid or competitive matrix. Outline your company’s competitive strengths relative to those of the competition in regard to product, distribution, pricing, promotion, and advertising. What are your company’s competitive advantages and their likely impacts on its success? The key is to construct it properly for the relevant features/benefits (by weight, according to customers) and how the startup compares to incumbents. The competitive matrix should show clearly how and why the startup has a clear (if not currently measurable) competitive advantage. Some common features in the example include price, benefits, quality, type of features, locations, and distribution/sales. Sample templates are shown in Figure 11.17 and Figure 11.18 . A competitive analysis helps you create a marketing strategy that will identify assets or skills that your competitors are lacking so you can plan to fill those gaps, giving you a distinct competitive advantage. When creating a competitor analysis, it is important to focus on the key features and elements that matter to customers, rather than focusing too heavily on the entrepreneur’s idea and desires.

Operations and Management Plan

In this section, outline how you will manage your company. Describe its organizational structure. Here you can address the form of ownership and, if warranted, include an organizational chart/structure. Highlight the backgrounds, experiences, qualifications, areas of expertise, and roles of members of the management team. This is also the place to mention any other stakeholders, such as a board of directors or advisory board(s), and their relevant relationship to the founder, experience and value to help make the venture successful, and professional service firms providing management support, such as accounting services and legal counsel.

Table 11.6 shows a sample operations and management plan for La Vida Lola.

Marketing Plan

Here you should outline and describe an effective overall marketing strategy for your venture, providing details regarding pricing, promotion, advertising, distribution, media usage, public relations, and a digital presence. Fully describe your sales management plan and the composition of your sales force, along with a comprehensive and detailed budget for the marketing plan. Table 11.7 shows a sample marketing plan for La Vida Lola.

Financial Plan

A financial plan seeks to forecast revenue and expenses; project a financial narrative; and estimate project costs, valuations, and cash flow projections. This section should present an accurate, realistic, and achievable financial plan for your venture (see Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting for detailed discussions about conducting these projections). Include sales forecasts and income projections, pro forma financial statements ( Building the Entrepreneurial Dream Team , a breakeven analysis, and a capital budget. Identify your possible sources of financing (discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis ). Figure 11.19 shows a template of cash-flow needs for La Vida Lola.

Entrepreneur In Action

Laughing man coffee.

Hugh Jackman ( Figure 11.20 ) may best be known for portraying a comic-book superhero who used his mutant abilities to protect the world from villains. But the Wolverine actor is also working to make the planet a better place for real, not through adamantium claws but through social entrepreneurship.

A love of java jolted Jackman into action in 2009, when he traveled to Ethiopia with a Christian humanitarian group to shoot a documentary about the impact of fair-trade certification on coffee growers there. He decided to launch a business and follow in the footsteps of the late Paul Newman, another famous actor turned philanthropist via food ventures.

Jackman launched Laughing Man Coffee two years later; he sold the line to Keurig in 2015. One Laughing Man Coffee café in New York continues to operate independently, investing its proceeds into charitable programs that support better housing, health, and educational initiatives within fair-trade farming communities. 55 Although the New York location is the only café, the coffee brand is still distributed, with Keurig donating an undisclosed portion of Laughing Man proceeds to those causes (whereas Jackman donates all his profits). The company initially donated its profits to World Vision, the Christian humanitarian group Jackman accompanied in 2009. In 2017, it created the Laughing Man Foundation to be more active with its money management and distribution.

• You be the entrepreneur. If you were Jackman, would you have sold the company to Keurig? Why or why not?
• Would you have started the Laughing Man Foundation?
• What else can Jackman do to aid fair-trade practices for coffee growers?

What Can You Do?

Textbooks for change.

Founded in 2014, Textbooks for Change uses a cross-compensation model, in which one customer segment pays for a product or service, and the profit from that revenue is used to provide the same product or service to another, underserved segment. Textbooks for Change partners with student organizations to collect used college textbooks, some of which are re-sold while others are donated to students in need at underserved universities across the globe. The organization has reused or recycled 250,000 textbooks, providing 220,000 students with access through seven campus partners in East Africa. This B-corp social enterprise tackles a problem and offers a solution that is directly relevant to college students like yourself. Have you observed a problem on your college campus or other campuses that is not being served properly? Could it result in a social enterprise?

Work It Out

Franchisee set out.

A franchisee of East Coast Wings, a chain with dozens of restaurants in the United States, has decided to part ways with the chain. The new store will feature the same basic sports-bar-and-restaurant concept and serve the same basic foods: chicken wings, burgers, sandwiches, and the like. The new restaurant can’t rely on the same distributors and suppliers. A new business plan is needed.

• What steps should the new restaurant take to create a new business plan?
• Should it attempt to serve the same customers? Why or why not?

This New York Times video, “An Unlikely Business Plan,” describes entrepreneurial resurgence in Detroit, Michigan.

• 48 Chris Guillebeau. The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future . New York: Crown Business/Random House, 2012.
• 49 Jonathan Chan. “What These 4 Startup Case Studies Can Teach You about Failure.” Foundr.com . July 12, 2015. https://foundr.com/4-startup-case-studies-failure/
• 50 Amy Feldman. “Inventor of the Cut Buddy Paid YouTubers to Spark Sales. He Wasn’t Ready for a Video to Go Viral.” Forbes. February 15, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/02/15/inventor-of-the-cut-buddy-paid-youtubers-to-spark-sales-he-wasnt-ready-for-a-video-to-go-viral/#3eb540ce798a
• 51 Jennifer Post. “National Business Plan Competitions for Entrepreneurs.” Business News Daily . August 30, 2018. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6902-business-plan-competitions-entrepreneurs.html
• 52 “Rice Business Plan Competition, Eligibility Criteria and How to Apply.” Rice Business Plan Competition . March 2020. https://rbpc.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs806/f/2020%20RBPC%20Eligibility%20Criteria%20and%20How%20to%20Apply_23Oct19.pdf
• 53 “Rice Business Plan Competition, Eligibility Criteria and How to Apply.” Rice Business Plan Competition. March 2020. https://rbpc.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs806/f/2020%20RBPC%20Eligibility%20Criteria%20and%20How%20to%20Apply_23Oct19.pdf; Based on 2019 RBPC Competition Rules and Format April 4–6, 2019. https://rbpc.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs806/f/2019-RBPC-Competition-Rules%20-Format.pdf
• 54 Foodstart. http://foodstart.com
• 55 “Hugh Jackman Journey to Starting a Social Enterprise Coffee Company.” Giving Compass. April 8, 2018. https://givingcompass.org/article/hugh-jackman-journey-to-starting-a-social-enterprise-coffee-company/

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This book may not be used in the training of large language models or otherwise be ingested into large language models or generative AI offerings without OpenStax's permission.

Want to cite, share, or modify this book? This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution License and you must attribute OpenStax.

Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction

• Authors: Michael Laverty, Chris Littel
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Entrepreneurship
• Publication date: Jan 16, 2020
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/11-4-the-business-plan

© Jan 4, 2024 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.

Business Plan – Definitive Guide 2024 part II.

14/01/2024 14/01/2024

Second part of the step by step guide how to make a business plan. This part is focused more on the execution of the business plan. You will find here strategy to enter the market, financial projections and project plan chapters.

Content of the second part of the business plan

• Developing a business plan – Execution
• Market entry strategy
• Marketing plan
• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
• Company personnel overview
• Team overview
• Finance and project plan
• Business Model
• Financial Statements
• Forecast and Break even point (BEP)
• Development timeline, milestones and work-packages
• Risks and opportunities
• Business plan part I.
• How to make a business plan
• Writing a business plan – Intro
• Executive Summary
• Creating a business plan
• Product/ Service description
• Activities Taken After the Project
• Opportunity
• Target Market
• Target Audience
• Competition & competitive offerings
• Business scalability

4. Developing a Business Plan – Execution

When it comes to put the business plan into real life, executive planning plays the prime role as a financial plan shows where the money will come from and go, the execution plan outlines what specifically needs to be done and when.

Developing a business plan is a skill to review your critical goals or milestones, as well as to track specific tasks to ensure that everything is on track, on time and budget.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to three main topics.

• Marketing and business plan (Short form for purposes of the business plan)
• Intellectual property rights (IPR)

Main points for Go To Market strategy

• Market dynamics – Specifics and situation in the market for the given country.
• Major market drives & issues – W hat are the main problems in the market and drivers for the given industry?
• Market data or market study – If you are serious about creating your business plan in high detail. I strongly recommend to buy market data from dedicated agencies. I would not advice to use data of standard desktop research as these data may be defective or outdated. Investors ask often questions where the data come from.
• Scenario for the given market – The market situation description, key messsages and tactics to penetrate the market .
• Competition description – Very short one as the competition is described more in the detail in the marketing plan.
• Timeline with description – Simple timeline with short description how to enter each market.
• Contacts – Mention of distributors, resellers or partners that will help you with introduction to given market.

Other important aspects to mention when writing a business plan execution are product development, concept of sales distribution and promotion.

4.1. Market Entry Timeline and Description

Many companies, understand that highly effective marketing is the key to success. Each market is slightly different and it is important to prepare the market entry plan that is consistent with marketing strategy [later in this article]. Market entry strategy (also called Go to market strategy) is different from business to business and it encompasses same structure or points for all businesses.

4.1.1. Product development

Develop the products demanded by the market. Important features that your marketing efforts have to define are – apart from the technical specifications of the product – finishing, presentation/packaging, price, etc.

4.1.2. Selling and distribution concept

There are many selling and distribution channels available in the market choosing the right channel for your product is necessary for the market. Below are few concept of sales distribution:

• Distributor
• Resellers and their networks
• Freelancers
• Direct entry to the market with subsidiary creation
• Strategic partnerships
• Merger or acquisition (but this is not applicable in our case)

4.1.3. Product promotion

Develop and execute a promotion, advertising, and public relations campaign to inform the target clients about your products or services and the benefits they can derive from them. You can find distribution and product promotion concept in files to download on slide 11 and 13.

4.2. Marketing Plan

Once you decided to make the business plan, marketing plan is essential part of it. For purposes of our business plan, marketing plan may be simpler than the marketing plan used for strategy purposes although it contains all necessary elements that are crucial for the business (Simpler version of company marketing plan).

After Examined the market and the competition (having all necessary data about our markets) it is time to make a marketing plan.

Know your Business- Before making the plan you have to know your business correctly. In this section, you describe your business with SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threats) analysis is more than enough to know your business. Please take into account that strengths and weaknesses are internal factors of the company. Contrary to opportunities and threats which are external factors that affect the company and it is more difficult to handle them. You can find SWOT analysis template in documents to download on slide 12.

Target Market- We make the marketing plan for the market so describing your target market in this section is quite common. (This was answered in part 3.1. Target audience).

Analyze competitors – this was also included in chapter 3.3. You can add very slightly some information if you find it necessary.

Brand, Positioning & Message house– These topics were discussed shortly hereinbefore. In this section I would recommend only to simply describe the main vision and mission of the brand and its image. Positioning should be clearly defined and chosen according to point of difference. As mentioned hereinbefore, positioning should contain 2-3 main points the company supports. Message house is about the message delivery to each buyer persona. Each message is different according to buyer persona profile – target audience.

Marketing strategy & Tactics – Definition of the marketing strategy and channel distribution for the buyer personas. For the marketing tactics you should understand and have a good plan how to distribute the message through the channels during the year. You can find marketing tactics template in files to download on slide 14.

Goals setting & KPIs – Setting the right goal for your marketing plan is a difficult part as it may seem easy. To describe the goal to everyone is very clear. You simply answer two questions in your mind: What objectives do you want to accomplish? Are there specific targets you want to hit? Are your goals realistic and achievable? Each goal should have KPI to measure it as you can see the progress. Do not set too many goals as it can be difficult to accomplish them. I suggest 3 to 5 goals. For instance:

• Market share (% from market)
• CAC – Customer Acquisition costs
• # of new customers
• Customer excellence

Set a budget- Do you know how much funds do you require for a marketing activities? How much do you plan to spend on marketing and promotion throughout the next year, and how much will the action items you listed above cost you? I strongly recommend to define each activity by % of the budget and then by absolute values. Please notice that this budget is only for marketing activities. The whole budget for the company is covered in section 6 financials.

It is important that all expenses must fit financial projections.

4.3. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

What is intellectual property rights.

Simply said it is all spiritual property (Intellectual). In this property are included all patents, licenses, know-how, brands and other objects of intellectual creation. IPR definition here.

This section is very important when making a business plan. Investors/ readers are interested in something unique and IPR gives answer to that question, on top of that IPR shows that you secured your secrets. Describe the patents and copyrights that your company owns and explain how these may give you a competitive advantage or a superior position in the industry.

If your business depends on important licenses granted by others, give a short description of these licenses and indicate who provides them.

Explain how crucial they are for your production and how you have secured their use on acceptable terms in the future. Investors or lenders may be interested to know what would happen to your business if your licensor went bankrupt.

This point of IPR is important for your investors, banks or other contributors within your business idea. The reason is quite simple, a company with own know-how or patent that nobody is possessing is attractive for further development or investment.

Once creating IPR chapter please focus on following parts:

• IPR strategy and management
• IPR ownerships (list of your IPR – patents, licenses, codes etc…)
• Security before exploitation
• Knowledge management strategy

Before creating IPR chapter you should know answers to these questions:

• Do you or your company have/ has any intellectual property (IP)?
• What are your IPR assets? (Patents, copyrights, trade marks or know-how).
• Do you have any process or strategy for knowledge management to keep it sustainable throughout the company?
• Do you have any security to protect your IP against commercial exploitation?

5. Company Personnel Overview

In planning your business you have most probably thought about how you would like to structure the company, i.e. divide it into distinct functional units. You probably have also identified the head of each of these units. If this work has been done, you should compile an organizational chart and include it in your business plan.

Providing the Company overview helps investors and lenders in many ways  such as:

• Providing evidence to the lender or investor that you have seriously considered the future of your business.
• Confirming that you have identified the people required for operating the business. Naming persons in the chart helps to give a sense of reality to your business plan.
• Making clear to everybody in or outside the company who is responsible for what.

5.1. Team Overview

In this portion of the business plan we describe our company team. The main purpose of the team overview is team skills and capacities demonstration. You do not have to describe each member but only the leaders and key persons/ employees.

Investors/ partners need to see that responsible C+ level persons have appropriate experience to succeed with the project.

Here are few key points for team description:

• First/ Last Name
• Years of work experience
• Achievements in his/ her professional life
• Relevant bio (Why is he/ she crucial for your business)
• Unique skillset

After the key team member description you can also describe very shortly the team as a whole. You can highlight strong and weak points. For the weak points try to turn your weaknesses into reasons what you will do next to cover these weaknesses. You can include also very brief description of team incentives.

In case of missing some key competences I suggest to insert short strategy how to secure these competences in future.

Internal solutions

• Know-how transfer: Trainings and education for internal employee. Newcomers in team with seniors.
• Key roles identification
• Identification of necessary skillset
• Staff capacity envisaged
• Training process

External solutions

• Standard search for employees
• Job portals
• Networking and contacts within the industry
• Personnel agencies and ATS

6. Financial and Project Plan

Financial planning is the key element for your business plan. It’s important not only for you as well as your investors, funds or the lenders.

For the company point of view  all the decisions and assumptions that you make is totally depends on the finance because if you introduce new products, change the focus to new markets, refurbish your machinery, change your human resource policies, change the advertisement mix, etc., each one of these actions will eventually have an impact on your financial statements.

At the point of the investors, Your lender or investor will particularly want to know what you will be doing with the money you get and how you plan to generate the necessary cash flow to pay it back. A decision on whether your business will be funded or not.

6.1. Business Model

In this segment we cover all activity which generate revenue from operation. It is the DNA of the company’s strategy and it sets the direction for success. Here are the list of components that are found in most business models:

Unique Value Proposition :- UVP refers to explain why the customers are willing to buy our solution for there pain point to find out the answer are as follow:

• Identify all the benefits your product offers.
• Describe what makes these benefits valuable.
• Identify your customer’s main problem.
• Connect this value to your buyer’s problem.

Please note the difference between unique value/ selling proposition and point of difference.

UVP/ USP : Point out on the benefit that client will get from the usage of the product. Value for money.

Point of Difference (PoD) : This is the factor that makes product/ service standing out of the crowd. What makes it unique among the competitors.

Revenue Stream: A Revenue Stream is the building block presenting the cash a company generates from each Customer Segment. Most businesses need at least one great revenue stream to earn money. I assume to find more revenue streams for your product. Let’s say main revenue stream and other complementary streams. (For instance SaaS service can have main/ primary revenue stream from recurring payments, secondary stream from initiation fees, tertiary stream from add-on recurrent fees and quaternary revenue from customization).   If the investors bankers are investing money in their project they are very interested in from where you generate the profit or the revenue.

Pricing: Price refers to the product or service is based on supply and demand. This is very crucial part of your business model. You must to choose pricing that generates enough money for you but it is not very expensive in the eyes of the customer.

How to setup the pricing properly?

I strongly recommend to choose several pricing options (not too many, best 2 – 4 as more options can be too confusing). Pricing depends also on quantity or usage frequency.

Use historical data and make assumptions to set the pricing policy properly and correctly. Best methods to set up pricing according to assumptions are sensitivity analysis (in excel what-if scenario) or simple stress test made of three options (# of users, type of the user or whatever your client segment is).

In sensitivity analysis you usually change 2 variables and you see the possible or best fit options to choose from. Afterwards you can create packages the client can choose from. (For the investor information it is satisfactory).

6.2. Financial Statements

Financial statements are written records that convey the business activities and the financial performance of a company. You share your detailed financial statements with your investors or lenders in later negotiations about the investments or financing:

• Balance sheet
• Income statement
• Cash Flow statement

You can find templates for financial statements in files to download 15,16 and 17.

At the beginning of the it is enough to have an overview of your financial statements.

6.3. Forecast and Break Even Point (BEP)

6.3.1. forecasting revenue.

Your business revenue forecast is an essential part of future business planning. In this we calculate approx. how much revenue we earn in future it doesn’t show the exact figure of the future revenue but it does provide several methods that will help you forecast your revenue as accurately as possible.

Forecast can be very detailed and you can take many approaches how to forecast. For the needs of a standard business plan I would suggest simple forecast .

You can find forecasting model in files to download sheet PnL_FC.

It does not matter what kind of a forecast do you provide. What matters most to investors or funds are these 3 main parts: Assumptions [your data baseline], breakdown of the income or expenses, company historical data (financial one). Few best practices in forecasting:

• Make 2 or 3 versions of your forecast. It is also called realistic, pessimistic and optimistic forecast. Make breakdown of your revenue (show in which streams all revenue will be composed). Do not forget to include changed expenses for each scenario.
• Check your assumptions twice. OR you can simply buy a study from given industry to make a benchmark for your data. (This part is very important for the investor as the assumptions and its granularity gives high credibility to your forecasts).
• User historical data. You can include (recommended) your last 3 years data to better forecast your business.
• Forecast up to 3-5 years. No more. As forecast for 6-10 years is much more a prophecy of an oracle than valuable forecast.

6.3.2. Break even or Break even point (BEP)

Break point refers to the point where our total cost is equal to total revenue (TR=TC). It is a situation where a company has neither loss nor profit. We include this point in this business plan because investors are concerned about that point the reason behind it when the company crosses the break point after this company starts earning profits.

Break even is included in business plan usually if you start to run the business. In case of a company with longer history you do not have to include break even (Income statement forecast shows the investor when he will get his return on investment).

Once again as for the income statement or revenue projection you can calculate BEP by single way or more exact but difficult way. You can find break even template in files to download on sheet PnL_FC.

A.    Single way calculation of break even point (BEP)

• BEP calculation based on units : BEP(units) = Fixed costs / (Revenue per unit – Variable costs)
• BEP based on sales: Divide the fixed costs by contribution margin. BEP (sales) = Fixed costs / contribution margin. Contribution margin = Price of product – Variable costs

This single ways shows simply to investor when business starts to earn money .

B. More sophisticated BEP calculation

EBITDA + Income tax + Change in working capital + CAPEX = Free cash flow to firm (FCFF)

FCFF + Interest costs + Repayment (Principal) = Free cash flow to equity (FCEE) In the moment (in the year) when FCEE in excel is 0 or higher, that is the year of BEP. Year when the investor starts earning money and his investment will be repaid. (Said very simply).

Note: If you are not very experienced in financial calculations I would strongly recommend to ask a financial controller, advisor or accountant for help with breakeven or all financial calculations as they are very important for investor decision making.

6.4. Development Timeline, Milestones and Work-packages

6.4.1. development timeline.

A development timeline serves as the initial schedule that an entity will follow in developing its products, systems, or processes. Development timeline assure that the expected or target completion date will be achieved. with regarding I recommend to use Gantt chart in this section. (We mentioned simple timeline in previous chapter 2.1. ). You can find Gantt chart template in files to download on sheet Gantt.

6.4.2. Milestones

Milestone is the list of what is supposed to happen in the organization. In the list we include when it starts, when it finished, what’s the budget, who’s in charge, and which department is responsible for the activity. Milestone table is very important table in a business plan, because it’s so obviously important for tracking progress and making your planning part of your management Example of milestone table you can make this table in Microsoft Excel, Apple iWork, Lotus 1-2-3, and of course, Business Plan Pro or other simple software.

Few important parts that a milestone should incorporate:

• Name of the milestone/ activity
• Starting and ending date of the activity
• Responsible person for the activity

6.4.3. Work packages

 Work-packages refers to breaking the project and milestones into small tasks (modules)  which shows activities related to the product/ service creation. For each activity or milestone in the work-package set the following:

• Number of the task
• Name of the work-package
• Start & end date
• Number of persons working on the work-package and number of the months the works will take
• Requested budget for the work-package
• Description of the work-package
• Deliverable

6.5. Risks and Opportunities

6.5.1. risks.

Business plans are based on numbers of assumptions. All the assumption that we made is not true all the time actual results are totally different from the assumptions that we make so all the investors which are invested in our project they are likely to know “What will happen if one or more of the parameters deviate significantly from your original estimates?

How will your financial situation be affected? What is the risk that your cash flow, profitability and balance sheet will deteriorate so much that your whole firm is seriously endangered?” Briefly you should show to investor that you accounted for certain risks and you know how to lower/ mitigate them once they occur.

In your risk table you should include following.

• Impact (Low, Medium or High)
• Probability (Low, Medium or High)
• Type of the risk (Exchange rate, technical, commercial etc.)
• Mitigation – here you describe how to lower the impact of the risk or how to avoid it.

6.5.2. Opportunities

In your possibility plan you should not only consider possible deviations from your assumptions that would mean extra risks for your business. You should also think about how you would deal with the challenge if the business developed much better than you assumed. Here are the example:

Your sales volume rises much more rapidly than you assumed. How can you increase your production capacity in the short term? How do you quickly find additional suitable employees? Can you outsource some of the work?

Your cash flow increases more than expected. What do you do with your extra cash? Can you negotiate with your bank and repay your long-term debts earlier? What is the optimum way to invest the money: expand the business of the company, acquire another firm, buy securities, etc.?

Your major competitor sells his business. An important competitor decides to sell his business at a good price, for example because there is no successor to the owner, who is retiring. What would you do? Buy the whole company and integrate it into yours? Buy only the assets? Buy only the clients?

Table of opportunities has similar points as a risk table. (Opportunity, impact, probability, type and description).

6.5.3. KPIs

It is necessary to include KPIs into the business plan as the investor or whoever could see how and what are you going to measure.

High-level KPIs may focus on the overall performance of the business, while low-level KPIs may focus on processes in departments such as sales, marketing, HR, support and others . KPIs were mentioned in the chapter 4.2.

In this only worth to mention KPIs general groups.

High-level KPIs Revenue, EBITDA, market share, annual growth or other similar. Low-level KPIs We can divide them into categories like financial KPIs, commercial KPIs (market share, revenue, expenses marketing and sales, customer acquisition costs, monthly recurring revenues etc.), technical KPIs (to achieve certain technology level) and others.

7. appendix.

Explanation  of how to use the appendix

Appendix in business plan we should write most notable achievements of your management team in this section of your business plan. Then, at some point early in this section, you can place a parenthetical reference to the inclusion of their resumes.

The reader can decide for himself whether to read or not. Content should always be your guide, just as surely as you should include copies rather than original documents in the appendix. Consider your options, which depend on the content in your business plan:

• Building permits.
•   Charts and graphs.
•   Competitor information.
•   Credit reports.
• Equipment documentation.
•  Incorporation papers.
•  Leases or rental agreements.
•   Legal documents.
• Letters of recommendation.
• Licenses, permits, trademarks and patents.
•  List of business affiliates, such as your accountant and attorney.
• Marketing reports and studies.
• Pending contracts.
•  Pictures or illustrations of your product line.
•  Press clippings, feature articles and other media coverage.
•  Spreadsheets.
•  Tax returns

If you made it to this end, “Congratulations” ?? you are one step closer to make an outstanding business plan for your target audience. Next step is just the practice.

In the nutshell, strategic business plan is a summary of the whole business in one document. The reader must get good and granular grasp of what is going on, when, how and why.

The business plan informs and plans next steps in business, on the other hand it ingorms key stakeholders such as investors, banks, funds, strategic partners, owners or key employees about the next steps of the business.

Each chapter of the business plan should support other and everything must be aligned – financially and strategically as the reader can see trustworthiness of your plan.

Do not forget when writing a business plan most important chapters such as executive summary, problem and solution, innovative idea, point of difference, growth strategy – go to market strategy and financials.

Now it’s your TURN. What interested you the most or what are your business plans to be prepared? In case of any questions or suggestions let me now in comment below or by the message right now.

Related Posts

Untapped guide to a business plan. ? Write compelling business plan for investors and partners.?

Definitive guide to impress every ? investor and get ?the investment for your business idea…

Writing a marketing plan guide. Setup your marketing plan ?boost sales and spend ?the budget…

Leave a comment Cancel reply