Business Plan: How to Create One in Clear, Simple Steps

Worried about starting a new business or trying to expand one that already exists, But wondering how?! Well, why not start with the ultimate process that can make or break the fate of a small business- The process of making a Business Plan!

A detailed business plan document offers a visible road map for the future, makes you think through the effectiveness of a business idea, and can provide you a much wider understanding of your current finances and competition!

Also, if you are looking for investors or applying for loans- a business plan presents your fully evaluated business idea and shows that you are prepared!

So, no stressing anymore! We will help you in this journey of creating the perfect business plan with all the necessary components. But, before that let’s dig into learning more about what is a business plan and why do we need one?

What is a Business Plan? (Definition)

A business plan is basically a well-described document that thoroughly outlines the main idea of your business, it’s future goals and how you are going achieve them.

It forces you to think through all the major parts of your business. Mostly, these documents are used to get buy-in from stakeholders and raising funds.

Importance of Creating a Business Plan

A business plan works as proof for others, whether your business idea is worth the chase. It’s the best way to solve issues before you even start getting into the real deal!

But, there are more such benefits offered by a business plan such as-

1. Helps you with critical decisions

The primary purpose of a business plan is to help entrepreneurs make better business decisions. Entrepreneurship is mostly a never-ending exercise of crisis management and decision making.

Considering the aftermath of any given decision is something business owners can’t always afford. That’s when a business plan comes in handy.

2. Proves the viability of the business

A business plan shows exactly how you are going to successfully execute that grand idea into a working business with reality and concept.

3. Set better objectives and benchmarks

Without a business plan, reasons and objectives become meaningless. Having a proper business plan can help make aims more calculated and consequential.

It also helps in gaining insights into how your strategy is (or isn’t) coming along over time.

4. Reduces risk

Risk becomes more manageable once forecasted based on a well-aligned business plan. Devising logistics and understanding the market are all part of a business plan and can all help reduce the risk factor.

Top Reasons to Write a Business Plan:

1. To Raise Capital

Funding, funding, and funding. We all know that building a business is expensive, and we need capital to get it off the ground. If you don’t have the funds to build it yourself, you need someone to help you get started, and that’s where a business plan will help you.

Although it would be awesome, banks and investors won’t give you money just because you requested it. Angel investors want to know if their investment is worthwhile. They want to where their money is going, what it is going to be used for, and if you will be able to pay them back.

All of this can be answered by a solid, formal business plan!

2. To Identify Weaknesses

We all want our business to run as smoothly as possible, right?

However, we often ignore our weaknesses and focus on our strengths. The truth is, like every business, a company does some things exceptionally well and falls short in some areas.

For example, your company might be awesome at distribution, but you fail at responding to customer complaints quickly.

Or perhaps you have got a great marketing message but zero social media presence.

Whatever the situation is, a business plan helps you identify inherent & unrealized loopholes. It allows you to think things through. It helps you grasp the full spectrum of the weaknesses and avoid the risk of being outsmarted by the competition.

3. To Establish Milestones

According to Guy Kawasaki, a milestone is something remarkable enough to come home and share with your spouse (without boring him or her to death).

Would you tell your spouse that you added an image to the company’s flyer?

Most probably, you won’t.

But you’d definitely share the news that you launched a new product or had a profit of $1M.

…and if you want that to happen, you need to create a road map of success, also called a business plan.

A business plan will help you keep a sharp eye on your goals and execute them well. It will help you set your priorities, keep you accountable to your long-term objectives, and figure out whether your plan is working out or not.

Let’s face it. You can get inspired by watching those success videos on YouTube, but real success comes from having a vision and working towards that vision.

4. To Keep Your Team Aligned

Let’s say you want to hire someone.

You want someone who is talented and passionate.

You want someone with a similar work ethic.

You want someone who aligns with your company’s vision.

But the question is, how to find that someone?

Your business plan will help you attract and retain the right talent by spelling out your mission and communicating your company’s culture.

To avoid any misunderstandings later, get everything on paper first so that everyone’s on board with the company’s current & future plans.

5. To Gain A Deep Understanding Of The Market

Researching, analyzing, and writing about the market gives you an overview of the business plan, but that’s not it. It gives you a greater insight into the overall market, helps you get a deep understanding of the industry, and tells you whether your business will survive or not.

Unfortunately, some business owners are convinced that their product or service is unbeatable, so they don’t really take out the time to do market research and work on a proper business plan.

The truth is, the more you know about the market, the industry, your competition, and potential customers, the greater the likelihood of your business succeeding.

Think of your business plan as a safety net. It is the best way to test out whether your business idea is viable or not. While working through a business plan, if you find out that your business idea won’t fly, you will save a great deal of time and money.

Ready to turn your strategy into action? Grab this free operational plan template.

6. To Prepare For The Future

When things get rocky, you need something to help you get through it.

You need something you can refer to, something to make sure that you don’t stray from your original vision.

In short, you need a business plan.

Everyone makes mistakes on the way to success. A business plan will help to keep you grounded and keep you from falling if you ever hit an obstacle. It’ll help you identify issues before they even arise and prepare you for the battle.

Let’s be honest. We obviously can’t predict the future, but we can certainly be prepared for it!

7. To Get Clarity

Relationships, politics, international relations – clarity is the key to most of the things.

But, let’s stick to the topic – clarity in business.

There are so many things that can go wrong in a business – sales falling through, employees protesting, or clients getting upset. These things could happen because of any number of reasons, but mostly, there’s one thing to blame: lack of clarity.

If you don’t want to turn the little bumps in your business into mountains, maintaining clarity should be your utmost priority…and a business plan helps you do just that!

Who are you?

Where are you going?

How will you get there?

Who will benefit and how?

A business plan answers all these questions, helping you identify a clear goal and a clear path.

8. To Give Your Business The Best Possible Chances of Success

The idea of taking control & being your own boss always sounds good.

However, just like most people, the success rates for new businesses might scare you a bit.

Well, there is never going to be a “sure thing,” but there are significant benefits of preparing before taking the leap. If you really want your business to be successful, don’t be someone who doesn’t think things through before plunging into the unknown.

Using a business plan, you can properly allocate your resources, refine your approaches, have squeaky clean priorities, and increase your chances of success.

Don’t worry; you don’t need a business or accounting degree to put together a well-formatted business plan because we have something that is going to make things a hundred times easier for you!

How to Make a Business Plan? (Format and Structure)

It is obvious that the business plan of your organization should be documented before your business starts. Even, if it’s the very first step, it works as a pillar to support the decisions you make when creating and running a business.

Well, here is a list of all the key components to keep in mind while making a business plan document

Step 1. Add Title

Company Name
Created By / Date

Step 2. Include Executive Summary

Describe the problem you are solving and ultimately the need for your target market. It’s important to include market analysis to back up your points. Explain how your solution fits in to solve the problem you have identified.

Step 3. Include Business Overview & Highlight Key Objectives

Your main goal with this section of your business plan is to explain why your business is in the right place at the right time.

Step 4. Provide a Marketing Plan

Provide an overview of your market size, statistics, and penetration.

Step 5. Do Competitive Analysis

Compare your competitors from features, customers, revenue, market penetration, and future outlook.

Step 6. Discuss Design & Development of Your Product

In this section, you’ll want to show off the core functionality of your product. Hone in on your core features and features your customers most appreciate. Be sure to include any new game-changing features you plan to add.

Step 7. Provide Operational Plan

This is your opportunity to provide brief bios of your core team, along with their experience. Point out experiences that translate over to your industry and their job function.

Step 8. Include Financial Forecast

Include a cash flow forecast, initial investment, and a timeline for profitability. This is your opportunity to showcase your current run-rate, cash flow, and projections.

Step 9. Add Charts in Appendix

If you have any additional charts or further details you want to reference, add them to your appendix section.

‍Create a well-defined Business Plan the Right Way with Bit.ai

After learning about all the key elements on how to create a Business plan, we know you are excited to get on with creating one. However, what is the purpose of knowledge if you don’t have the means to deploy it? That’s why we would like to introduce you to Bit.ai, the smartest document collaboration tool to help you create a strong marketing strategy!

Bit.ai Home Page Bit.ai is a new-age document management and collaboration tool that helps teams to collaborate, share, track and manage all information in one place. It’s the perfect tool to create, store and share Marketing plans. Apart from marketing plans, one can create everyday documents like ebooks, case studies, onboarding docs, fact sheets, sales decks, project proposals, media kits, and many more.

Bit has an amazing UI that’s easy to understand by a new user, making onboarding easier. The user experience is phenomenal too as things flow from documents to workspaces swiftly.

Still not sure how Bit can help you write an impressive marketing strategy to help you execute that business plan? Let’s see some more of Bit’s awesome capabilities!:

Collaborate in real-time– Multiple people can simultaneously collaborate on a Bit smart document in real-time. Suggest edits, work collectively and ask questions with real-time mentions, and comments.
Interlink business plan documents– Now, you can interlink your document with other important assets that are supposed to be posted like swot analysis, sales funnel and more on the web or inside the platform.
Minimalistic design – Bit’s editor allows you to focus on writing and the work you’re implementing, without any distractions. The platform interface is easy to understand, making it easy for new visitors to get onboard quickly.
Create a fully interactive document– Make your document more engaging and interactive by adding recommended power links and files to your business plan, like- Web links, PDFs, PowerPoint in Google Drive/OneDrive, Draw.io, LucidCharts, etc.

Track engagement on shared business plan documents with investors, partners, etc.- Imagine if you were able to track the time spent by others on your document, how frequently they were viewed, and if they were viewed at all. Well, Bit allows you to track your documents and gain amazing insights, helping you create an even better version of your documents.

Automated table of contents- Bit also has an automated table of contents based on the headers you add to your document. This makes sure you can scroll to different sections of your marketing strategy quickly as a marketer, collaborator, and for your audience viewing the final published document!
Multiple ways to share- Bit documents can be shared in a live state meaning that all changes that you make to the document will update in real-time. If you are sharing your documents with clients, they will always get your most up-to-date changes. You can even embed Bit documents on any website or blog. Since Bit documents render and are responsive, any changes made to these documents will reflect live on the site! Moreover, features like document tracking, password protection, file access restrictions, etc. help keep your business plan and other workplace documents safe.

Now, that you have learned everything about a business plan and how to create one, feel free to check out Bit’s amazing Business Plan template to make that planning a success!

Business Plan Template

To make the process of crafting a Business Plan easier and fun, we have created a ready-made template for you! Check it out below:

How to use Business Plan Template with Bit.ai

The process of creating a business plan document on Bit.ai is insanely easy! Just follow these four simple steps to create a business plan document quickly:

Step 1: Create a Bit Account

Go the home page of Bit.ai and click on Get Started for Free or Sign Up to get started. Enter your email address to sign up. Once in, you can create your personal profile.

Step 2: Create a Workspace

Workspaces are where the work gets done. Click on the ‘Create Workspace’ button on the right. A popup will show up prompting you to add a name for your new workspace.

You can create a workspace around a team, department, large project, client, partner, etc. Inside each workspace, you can create an unlimited amount of Bit documents and access your content library (storage area for all of your digital assets – web links, files, cloud files, rich embeds, etc.).

Step 3: Add Team Members

Bit allows your team members to collaborate in real-time and get work done. Collaboration starts at the workspace level.

You create private workspaces by default. However, you can invite others to join you inside of a workspace and collaborate together with the knowledge, projects, documents and content inside of the workspace.

Step 4: Create Your Desired Document

Once you are in the workspace, click on the ‘Create New’ button. Select ‘From Template’ in the dropdown. A pop up will display allowing you to select a template from the gallery.

In the search box on the top left corner, you can search for “business plan template”. Once your desired template pops up, click on it and click on the “Use Template” button on the bottom right corner.

That’s it! Your business plan document is ready for use!

Our team at bit.ai has created a few more awesome business templates to make your business processes more efficient. Make sure to check them out before you go, your team might need them!

?Watch this video to learn more?

Bottom line

Crafting a business plan can be a long process, yet it’s an important one for the future of your company. It’s not just about attracting stakeholders but, also to helps you and your team manage the business better, with one eye on its current state and the other in the future.

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