Writing a Business Plan for Tomorrow’s Success

Running a business today in this technological age is quite a challenge. In the absence of foresight, businesses can flop in no time. The only solution to safeguard business is writing business plan that has adequate strategy and control measures in place.

So how do you put together a well-thought out and a well-researched plan?

Before charting out your venture you must understand some key issues.

Firstly remember, there is no jump-start platform in any business venture. When you evaluate the feasibility of your proposal you need to be objective, critical and unemotional.

Ask yourself the following questions.

•    Is there a market for my services and products?
•    Does my staff have the skill set to make my business a success?
•    Will my venture make me a profit?

To answer the above questions it is essential that you get down to writing a business plan which will prepare a road map for running the business and making profits.

In short, writing a business proposal will:

•    Identify opportunities and prevent costly lapses
•    Develop operating and selling strategies
•    Create budgets and show projections for future outcomes.

Any business is finances and funding all the way - while starting, operating and selling.

Such a plan needs a sound financial proposal for success. It will help you to:

•    Determine the capital you need
•    Forecast profitability and return on investment
•    Project cash flow, available liquidity and the ability  of the business to repay debt

All the above points may look pedantic, or rather generic. So for a change let us get down to what your plan must not contain.

Out-of-date financial information – All your calculations must be based on current interest rates and realistic industry comparisons. Bad or incorrectly presumed data will hurt your chances of funding. Substantiate all the assumptions you make by citing dependable references.

Too much optimism – If you do not consider pitfalls and negatives, your plan will look too rosy for anyone to believe. Make it look realistic by jotting down your perception of threats.

Generalized strategies and campaigns – People are fed up reading “we have world class state-of-the-art technology with the lowest price in the market”.  Too many businesses use such phrases too often. While writing a business plan, you must not think that the reader isn’t as smart as you are; so write down all the important details.

Making the business owner appear uncommitted – The plan must not appear as if the owner does not have anything at stake. The lender will surely expect the entrepreneur to invest some capital in the business.

The owner must be personally willing to guarantee the loans.

Another important factor is to avoid too much focus on collateral – even on cash secured loans. Any business must eventually produce adequate cash flow to enable repayment of loans.

When you conceive writing a business proposal, prepare an outline first. The overall document must be composed of the following three parts.

1.    Description of the business
2.    Financial data
3.    Supporting documents.

Finally, aim to make your business plan look good. Put your efforts where you are likely to get the most rewards. There is no excuse for shoddy work.

Seven Tips to an Unbeatable Spa Salon Business Plan

Spa salon services are perceived as luxurious and relaxing. The idea of a spa is to relax your body and mind. Understanding the consumer notions is important for those who want to get into the spa business. You don’t need to be a trained spa expert to own a salon. You just need to be a smart businessman and have a great spa salon business plan to work with.

Learning how to write a great business plan is not a day’s job. Knowing the process is anyway, not sufficient to write a plan. Only those who have the required expertise and experience are fit for the job. If you plan to start a spa salon business, all your focus should be on getting the best business plan. Going through some sample business plans is a help, but ultimately it’s what you and your planning team get on paper. To make sure it turns out to be a successful business plan, here are seven tips to get an unbeatable spa business plan.

Seven Tips for a Successful Spa Plan

1.    Hire professionals - Hiring trained spa professionals should be your top priority. If the consumer experience is bad, there is no use of having a plan. Get the best spa professionals, products, and equipment to provide high quality service to your customers.

2.    Look at successful spas for marketing ideas - No matter how small your business is, plan it the big way. Look at successful spa services in your vicinity. See how their marketing has helped them in reaching out to the right customers and convincing them to indulge in a luxurious spa experience. Read up a few sample business plans to explore the kind of marketing strategies that can be used.

3.    Size up the competition - Competitive analysis is an important part of all business plans. Study your competition and their best and worst strategies before writing your plan. The more you know about your competition, the better prepared you are to beat them.

4.    Hygiene and aesthetics are important - Spa services are supposed to be truly relaxing. Without hygiene and good aesthetics, do not expect your customers to come back. Good marketing strategies can be used to lure the customers once. To make them come back, quality of service, quality of the products used, hygiene, and ambiance play a very important role.

5.    Choose a good location - Central location makes you more visible. Besides visibility, ensure that it’s a nice area and the way that leads to the salon is free of any major disruptions.

6.    Pricing that pulls - Pricing strategy should be extremely competitive. A spa salon business plan must have a pricing strategy that can pull the customers to the salon. Affordable packages will attract customers to try your services at least once.

7.    Investments are huge - Lavish infrastructure and equipment calls for a huge investment. Make sure your plan specifies the source of funds along with a plan for its allocation among different resources.

A spa salon business plan must be written by a professional plan writing company that takes care of all important aspects. Their expertise, experience and good planning tips, your plan and business, both are bound to be successful.

Proper Structure of the Business Plan helps Draw Attention

The primary objective of a business plan is to obtain finance for startups whose limited or no operating history proves to be a major handicap in the way of tapping traditional sources of finance like equity market or banks. All their hopes of turning their dreams of owning and operating their own businesses into reality, hinges on finding favor with some wealthy investors or venture capitalists. A business plan that follows a proper structure will make it easier for these busy people to find and locate relevant information.

Needs, aspirations as well as challenges and opportunities confronting a business, will be vastly different from any other business operating in a same or different industry. It can be argued that events taking place in an industry has the capacity to affect all the business operating within. It holds true to some extent but the fact that the management and its qualifications and the internal policies and procedures followed by a business, greatly distinguishes it from its peers and cannot be disregarded.
As such, a business proposal should be tailored according to your own needs and the interests of investors.

Flexibility should be the hallmark of any business proposal. Specialist agencies providing business plan service for a nominal fee can do a great job as their experience and expertise in writing business plans can strongly advance your cause. Tell them about the type of recruiters you wish to hire and they will prepare a business plan with the requisite structure. Irrespective of the nature of your business, a business proposal should take care to include the following points without fail.

Executive Summary of the Business

Possibly the most important part of a business document, it somewhat eases decision making process of potential investors. Rather than going through the entire document they look at this section – and decide to proceed further if this section catches their fancy. Care should be taken to ensure that it helps the venture capitalists or stakeholders to acquaint themselves with the gist of your business idea without having to go through the entire document.

A summary of problems your business will solve and a description of your products or services, should find prominent mention. The industry your business is expected to operate in and how it fits into the industry, needs specific mention. Your summary should give a brief description about your target market and the strategies you plan to adopt to entice them to your offerings.

Financial Expectation

There is no business that can claim to function in a risk free environment. Only the degree of risk varies. Your business plan should clearly articulate the risk associated with the business. Bloated profitability and revenue projection without the underlying groundwork to support the claim is useless. A plan that inspires confidence in investors about your abilities will do wonders and the right way to do that is through a realistic risk and return scenario.

Recruitment and election Policies

A business will fall flat on its face if the competence level of people running it, is below par. Your people are your biggest assets. A rival can install the same sophisticated machinery that you have but cannot replicate the abilities of your human resource. The way you carry out your selection, recruitment, induction and training and development can be an important source of competitive advantage. An agency, offering its service in the field of business plan writing, can help you write a proposal that will highlight the importance of people in successfully running a business. At the same time, it will effectively convey the strong emphasis you lay on such an important aspect.

A business plan, that follows a proper structure, makes a proposal understandable and attractive. Readers don’t have to waste much time and effort looking for the requisite information. Easy navigation awakens interest by smooth to and fro movement between different sections of a business document.

Creating an Impressive Trucking Business Plan Using Expert Business Plan Writers

To write a trucking business plan, you need to describe your business details to your writing team unless you plan to do it yourself. That idea can however backfire because knowing everything about trucking business and actually writing a business plan are two distinctly different things. It is better you write down a description of the business you are starting including your reasons for starting and the specific markets you are looking to target.

Truck and Cargo Details

Another important section of your business plan is the financials. This section will describe the capital you are investing in your trucking business, the anticipated short term and long term costs of managing the business smoothly and the total expenses you will incur on a monthly basis on all fronts including employees, truck running and maintenance, office and insurance charges, licensing expenses and others. You must also correctly identify the number of trucks needed for timely delivery of cargo. The financial section of your trucking business plan must also cover expected income and profits for the first quarter and so on, to provide you with a clear financial goal for the long term.

About Marketing and Advertising

Provide your business plan writers, the details about marketing and advertising strategies you wish to follow to support and expand your trucking business. You must decide if you want to hire an outside marketing agency or have your own marketing team handle the affairs. The cost of marketing and advertising must also be taken into consideration in the financials. Your ideas will be used by the business planning experts and projected as charts and graphs so that it becomes amply clear at first glance to investors.

Identifying the management and operations team for your trucking business is the next part of your business plan. You must also specify how you will choose drivers and staff to handle the cargo movement. Trucking is a job for specialist drivers as it involves driving long hours, even during nights on highways and unfamiliar terrain.

You will need highly experienced drivers to meet the challenges. The business plan writing company will require details about licensing and how you intend to obtain them so that they can incorporate the details under the health and safety management regulation section. In fact, you must provide comprehensive details about all the skilled and non-skilled staff you will be employing for your business.

A trucking business plan is not merely a set of documents aimed at generating capital for your business. A professionally written business plan is in fact, a roadmap that tells you how to manage your business now and a few years down the line. The business plan not only identifies the opportunities but also tells you about the potential pitfalls.