11 Things Every Startup Needs to Include in Their First Business Plan

What is a Business plan, and why is it important?
A business plan is a long and detailed document that outlines your business objectives and strategies, describing your project, what you want to do, and how you are going to do it.
In shorter words, a business plan is a written description of your business future that guides you to start over and manage a variety of functions to manage your startup.
Usually, a business plan is a 15-20 pager document that includes information related to your products, services, marketing strategies, operating strategies, and overall finances.
A business plan helps direct the activities and enables us to perform a number of tasks efficiently. With the help of a business plan, startups can approach investment-seeking entrepreneurs or venture capitalists to convey their vision and raise a considerable amount of funding.
To outline the importance of business plans, the following are the ten reasons that answer your question well.
A business plan helps articulate your vision into realistic terms, determine and fill the gaps in the strategy.
By exercising a business plan, you can avoid significant mistakes by purposely addressing the pain points and creating a plan of action.
A business plan helps to increase the viability and longevity of the business.
A business plan helps you to set better small-term and long-term objectives and benchmarks.
A business plan helps you create a guide for the service providers, like consultants, contractors, employees, and freelancers, to refer to the relevant sections and support your startup in the best possible way.
A business plan helps you to secure your financing through various sources.
A business plan helps you understand and maintain the market terrain such that you can go way too long.
A business plan helps you operate the functions more broadly, illuminate the customer trends and preferences, and provide more insights crucial for your business.
A business plan helps you significantly manage and reduce the level of risk by drawing inferences, projections, and plans such that you can enjoy the most transparent view of the future of your startup.
Building a business plan assists you in determining the right answers to the most critical business decisions for your startup.
With over 71 % of fast-growing companies and startups focusing on creating their business plans, they are already aiming themselves in the bigger picture by planning to make the right and important decisions.
"A business plan is a road map that increases your chances to travel long distances and decreases the odds of getting lost along the way."
What is the business planning cycle of startups?
The business planning cycle of startups follows a particular set of parts required for the formation and content curation of the business plan.
The business planning cycle can be divided into three primary parts:
Business concept
Marketplace concept
Financial concept
Let's discuss these concepts in brief:
1. In business concept, the startups look forward to discussing and plan about the following:
Industry
Business structure
Product or services that they look forward to launching in the market,
How they look forward to planning to make the business success
2. In marketplace concept, the startups look forward to discussing and plan about the following:
Identifying the target marketplace
Describing and analyzing the potential customers
Answering questions about customer behavior as who, where they are, and what makes them buy
Let's discuss the profound insights of the critical things that a startup should mention in the business plan.
The 11 things that every startup needs to include in the first business plan are as follows:
A solid headline statement
The problem you want to address
The solution you want to offer
The target market you wish to address
Take care of the competition around
The funding and financing step
Building your sales channel
Streamlining the marketing activities
Setting a budget and sales goal
Milestones that you wish to achieve
The team associated with you
1. A solid headline statement
Introducing and summarizing the unique elements of business in one sentence sounds intimidating at first but plays a crucial role in making the first impression about your business.
Your headline should give a basic overview of the idea that can excite the person reading on hearing about the same.
For example, if you sell cookies, your actual headline should be something like "sugar-free and organic."
You should ensure that the headline statement should be written to solve a customer statement and communicate the critical elements to them.
In that case, you can revise your headline by sharing the purpose of the business and the products or services you are offering.
In addition, you can always find ways to revise the headlines in a more accurate and summarized way that includes our unique business, vision statement, and the value you are offering to the customers.
2. The problem you want to address
The following section that startups should concentrate on addresses the problem statement and generates solutions for each set of problems.
Startups should share how they will attract people such that they become willing to spend money on a particular product or service.
You can also use the section to ask people about their experiences, preferences, and problems. Based on the combined resources, customer reviews, and market trends, you can create a list of the problems worth solving and condense them to address daily issues that real customers face daily.
3. The solution you want to offer
This is the next follow-up step based on the previous point of addressing the problems.
After the startup has noted all the inferences, the next thing is to describe how the product and service is the best solution for the target customer.
For example, if a customer has addressed the problem of fewer varieties of a particular product, your answer should emphasize the variety aspect that can appeal to your customer.
Hence, matching the problem with a specific solution helps to build a startup and offer the "Unique Value Proposition" for your business.
4. The target market you wish to address
Defining the ultimate customers for your brand entirely depends upon the target market you want to serve.
Here, a startup should be very much focused on developing marketing plans and building sales strategies that can be effective in finding the right customers for your brand.
Before you decide to address a target market, it is crucial to take care of these two points
The number of people interested
The amount of money they would spend on the particular product or service
It would be best to focus on creating a persona representing the customer who is likely to buy your product and research their behavior to refine your solutions statements.
Moreover, if you wish to utilize only one characteristic to segment your customers, you can deep dive into the demographic segments to focus on the marketing activities.
For example, if your brand deals with the line of party shoes that appeals to women, then you can use this demographic segment to set your target market and use other traits like spending levels, choice of color, or designs.
One thing to note is that the more you learn about the target market, the higher is a chance for you to create the products and services specifically to address your customers' points and create messages that they will look forward to responding to.
5. Take care of the competition around
There is no doubt that your competitors may be at the forefront before you. They might have already created their presence in the market and have captured a good amount of customers with them.
As a startup owner, it is always emphasized to research the competitors that serve the same target market.
You can also group similar competitors and make a note of how they operate and function around.
6. The funding and financing step
Funds act as fuel for business. Because of these funds, the startups are in a position to finance their ideas and convert them into sales.
Apart from the investment that you bring through, it is also important to get a clear idea of what, how, and who your ultimate target groups will be willing to spend money on your business plan.
In addition, if your business plans to bootstrap the startup or grow naturally from the sales revenue, then this information should also be particularly mentioned in the plan.
Since financing and funding is the most crucial part of the business plan, the startup owners are recommended to plan out their options through SMART goals where,
S stands for the specific dollar amount
M stands for measurable results
A Stands for attainable combinations
R stands for relevant to the growth
T Stands for the time you need
Going by the SMART process helps you streamline these crucial activities and gives a positive direction towards the process.
7. Building your sales channel
There are multiple sales channels in a startup that you can look forward to opting in for your customers. Accordingly, there are multiple sales processes that a startup builds for their customers.
But as a startup owner, you need to make sure what will assist your customers in exchanging money for your products or services.
For example, whether your product requires you to offer a direct or indirect sales channel for your customers?
Or
If you are dealing with two products, you should opt for two separate sales channels or build in only one.
Based on the answers, you can select the best suitable option and fix your sales channel accordingly, which will help you to generate more revenue and sales.
Also, you get the flexibility to make variations suitable as per time and convenience.
8. Streamlining the marketing activities
The amount of time spent on promotional and advertising activities is directly proportional to the number of new customers who will associate with your startup.
It is because of your marketing activities you can set your ideal target customers by promoting your business through social media, advertisements, magazines, or billboards.
In this world of social media, organic and paid marketing is doing rounds to grab the customers' attention. These have proven to be the most significant marketing asset of all.
For example, a baker can use advertisements to promote his cakes and cookies with its target audience and thrive by the relevant foot traffic.
9. Setting a budget and sales goal
As already mentioned previously, financing is the lifeblood of the business. It is extremely a daunting exercise for startups to plan their budget and the goals they wish to achieve.
This component is a process in itself where you decide on the following
What are a few tips for writing an effective Business plan?
Since its documentation of your entire business structure, the following are six tips you can consider in writing an effective business plan:
Create different sections in brief and include all the major information
Proofread each section by self or seek review from consultants, mentors, or family.
Make a note of the points highlighted auto question asked
Revise the notes to answer the questions
A different set of innovative points that you might have for startup
Keep on revisiting and revising the business plan
Conclusion
Curating a business plan is a crucial part of the whole startup journey that assists the business to grow and evolve along with other businesses.
You can't imagine the level of places you can move forward by creating your business plan and fulfilling your vision and mission statement.
As a startup owner, you should definitely focus on creating a business plan that helps you lay out your goals, update and track the progress for the longevity and success of your business.
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