subject: Completing A Business Plan Can Seem Off Putting: Here Are A Few Tips [print this page] You don't have to struggle with that business plan project. It may seem overwhelming but are a few tips to help you with the process.
Don't tell people you have little or no competition. This is a Fatal Flaw seen in many business plans. Everyone likes to think that their product or service is so unique that no one else can successfully compete against it. In rare instances, a new technology may come on stream that truly is a new and better solution to a problem, but even then the advantage may be only temporary before other people offering similar technology enter the market. In reality, every type of product or service faces competition of some kind, because you still have to convince someone to purchase from you rather than spend the money on something else. And if you really believe you have no competition, how do you know there's a market for your product?
Perhaps no one is offering it because no one wants to buy it. Perhaps others have tried and failed.
Investors reading a Business Plan in which the company states it has no competition, usually conclude the management group has not adequately researched the competition, and may be seriously underestimating the strength of competitors.
Spend Quality Time With Your Plan
People often underestimate the effort and energy it takes to write a Business Plan. They try to write it at night or when everything else at work is finished, in other words, when they are mentally and sometimes physically exhausted. A better approach is to write the plan when you have energy available to put into it: go in early and think and write for an hour before the phones start ringing.
The best projections are well-rounded ones.
Telling the investor that his projected return is 52.444% is not any More impressive than saying you project a return of roughly 50%. Many entrepreneurs come down with a bad case of spurious exactitude when doing projections. This seems to be a highly contagious disease.
First Drafts Are Always A Laugh
The first draft of your plan will undoubtedly resemble incoherent ramblings--jumbled stream-of-semi-consciousness ideas that look nothing like what you had hoped it would. Don't be disappointed or frustrated. Just put the draft away for a few days, come back to it fresh, and begin revising and rewriting. Magically, after several more revisions, the ideas will all come together and the language of the plan will flow.
