Small Business Planning, Skins - Dressing Up Your Business Plan

Small Business Planning Pillar #9: Skins – Dressing It Up

Congratulations. Your small business planning process is on fire. You’ve now reached a point where you have a viable plan, packed with strategies and action points, written by you for you.

At this point, you may be suitably financed to just get going. In most cases however, and for most big ideas, your next step will be to convince others to invest their children’s inheritance in your new small business.

Whether you do or don’t, you now need to consider how to present your plans externally. This can take many forms, different skins applied to essentially the same small business planning information.

- A bank manager may be just interested in your financials.

- A potential investor may want a business plan summary and great emphasis on exit strategy.

- A journalist might be interested in marketing strategy and ideas you have for putting that strategy into practice.

- Your staff need to be exposed to visionary mission statements, mantras or core strategies presented simply, perhaps using images instead of words.

For each external requirement, you need to tailor your small business planning information to suit both you and the relevant third party. At the risk of repeating myself, this is very much down to you. However, to give you an start, here are the points I would consider when presenting a business plan document to, say, a potential investor:

- Does the document convey professional image? Colour front page, easy to use index, pages numbered correctly, spelling mistakes checked, properly bounded and so on.

- Is it easy to read? Good use of grammar, not too many font styles and sizes, plenty of paragraphs, single space after commas, double space after full stops etc.

- Does the first page spell out quickly the enormity of the big idea to gain early interest? (These guys may well plough through many business plans per day, why does yours stand out?)

- Is the key information easy to find, possibly backed up by optional more in depth appendices if required?

- Put yourself in their shoes, what would they really want to know about?

- Is it too long? Saying too much can be as damaging as saying too little.

- Are my assumptions clear and consistent with my financials?

- Have I spelt out what’s in it for them?

- Will the information provoke the desired response?

- Is it an interesting piece or just dull?

- Have I done some background research on them and tailored the plan accordingly?

You get the idea. The core small business planning information remains yours in a format that suits you. But you are now developing different skins to suit different audiences. Simple as that.

Ten Pillars Of Small Business Planning – Introduction

Small Business Planning Pillar #1: How To Start A Business Plan – Mindset

Small Business Planning Pillar #2: Strategy

Small Business Planning Pillar #3: Mini Business Strategies And Postage Stamps

Small Business Planning Pillar #4: Changing Gear: Seed Money & Intrapreneurs

Small Business Planning Pillar #5: Rapid Content Building

Small Business Planning Pillar #6: The Four Financial Statements

……Small Business Planning Pillar #6.1: Profit And Loss Statement (P&L)

……Small Business Planning Pillar #6.2: Cash Flow Statement (Forecast)

……Small Business Planning Pillar #6.3: Balance Sheet Statement (Forecast)

……Small Business Planning Pillar #6.4: Financial Assumptions

Small Business Planning Pillar #7: Business Metrics