Whether to secure venture capital investments or just to take a long hard look at your potential business before you invest any money, a business plan can help you identify the pitfalls, strategize your market planning and help to keep your focus on your own personal road to success.

The initial page or pages of your business plan should spell out your actual business, from nuts to bolts. While you may know that your idea is a winner, the business plan is where you pen out your plan to succeed. Your business plan should be a summary of your business goals, what your company does, how it will make money and why customers will want to pay for your product or service, what kind of budget is needed and how it will be spent.

Then you want to expand on that plan and answer why your product or service is needed or detail out the size of your target market, and how fast you expect to grow, its geographical limitations and how you plan to reach your market. Some of this information may require research through professional organizations or government agencies providing data to the public about trends and growth.

Your next segment should address your competition, their weaknesses and strengths and how you plan to tackle competing with them successfully. List who they are, the products they sell, and don’t forget the indirect competitors who could choose to offer the same products and services you do.

Introducing your team complete with a list of their accomplishments to date helps you illustrate how you plan to execute your plan. And then detail out your actual business model complete with revenue streams, cost structures and justification of any assumptives complete with how much you anticipate your company making.

Once you’ve polished up your business plan, refer back to it regularly to update it with new information and ideas you have and to monitor how close you’re coming to your objectives. It can remind you of ideas you had originally and never implemented or reward you with verification of your successes.

Harbortouch America can help with new business start ups with FREE POS system hardware and software.