This quote from Fred Ward in the great 90’s movie Tremors illustrates an important point about the development of a proper business plan. You simply can’t run head-long into the creation of a business. In order to succeed, a proper plan needs to be carefully crafted.

There are many ways to create a competitive business plan. The following plan design is based on Stephen Lawrence, Ph.D. and Frank Moyes’ article “Writing a Successful Business Plan.” Dr. Lawrence and Mr. Moyes are professors from the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Developing a business plan may be one of the most important steps in starting a successful business and attracting potential investors. A business plan allows you to answer the hard questions about your business including: Why is there a need for our product/service? Who is our target market? How is our product different from other products in the marketplace? What is our competitive advantage? How will the business be profitable? How will the business be funded?

In order to answer these key questions, a successful business plan should include the following items.

1. Executive Summary - This is a one-page overview of your entire plan. The purpose of this is to capture the reader’s attention so that they will be interested in reading the entire plan.
2. Company Overview - This is a summary of your company. It should include how the company will be organized and what are the goals and ambitions for the company? This section should also include your mission statement. 
3. Product and Service - This section is rather self-explanatory. It should include a brief overview of your product or service. Keep in mind that your audience may not be familiar with your product or service so make sure it is carefully described and explained in sufficient detail. 
4. Market and Industry Analysis - Items to include in this section include any information that will help the reader better understand the market and industry in which you will be operating. Helpful pieces of information to include are customer surveys, supply chain analysis and samples of competitor products and promotional materials. 
5. Marketing Plan - Although all of these sections listed here are important, this section is arguably the most vital to the success of your business. Without customers no business can succeed. This section should be used to convince your reader that there are willing and able customers for your product. For more information on marketing strategies see: http://somersetblogs.com/category/marketing/. 
6. Operations Plan - This section includes all of the details on how you will produce your product and should include information on manufacturing, transportation, logistics and customer and technical service. 
7. Development Plan - Connecting back to the goals and ambitions discussion in the Company Overview section, the information here is a “road map” of how you will get your business from where it is now to where you want it to be in the future. 
8. Management - Potential investors are more apt to invest in a company that has a strong management team with a weak business idea than in a company that has a great idea and poor management. Use this section to build up your management team including resumes, customer testimonials and other honest information that highlight your strengths. 
9. Competitive Advantage - How is your product/service different from others in the market place? This is a key question that investors ask and it needs to be adequately addressed in this section. This section also should include how your business will sustain its competitive advantage once achieved. 
10. Financial Plan - The goal of every business is to turn a profit. In order to do that, a well articulated financial plan is a must. A strong financial plan alone will not help you secure investors it will only help to enhance the information that has been previously presented in the business plan. Included in this section should be projected balance sheets, income statements, and statements of cash flows. Also include break-even analysis, comparisons to competitors in the industry, and the basic assumptions used in developing the projection. 
11. Funding - This should be an overview of the funding required to start your business. Sources of funding include equity funding (venture capital and cash received from friends and family), debt funding (from banks, the Small Business Administration and consumer debt such as credit cards and mortgages), or other types (leases and customer advances). 
12. Appendices - This section collects all of the supporting documentation that is referenced by each section above.

Source: Stephen Lawrence, Ph.D. and Frank Moyes. “Writing a Successful Business Plan.” University of Colorado. 2004.