Why would you want to write a basic business plan as opposed to a more elaborate one? Most business owners I know struggle with the idea of writing a full-blown plan for their business. To be completely honest, writing a plan for anything, let alone a business you own or intend to start, is challenging because…

1. we don’t know where or how to start
2. we want our plan to be perfect the first time we write it – as in, we don’t want to make any mistakes
3. we don’t like to write – and let’s face it, writing a plan involves writing.

I’m going to share with you ways to overcome each of these hurdles. But before you do anything, allow yourself to break the process of business planning into small steps.

The first step is to have a basic plan which will serve as the foundation for a more detailed and comprehensive plan down the road.

How to Start Writing Your Plan

What goes into a basic plan? Well, let’s first define a basic plan as a plan for the bigger plan you will arrive at later on.

Here are the essential questions you need to answer:

1. What do you want to gain by writing this plan?

Is this plan an internal plan which you will use to guide yourself or your team towards achieving specific and measurable targets? Or are you aiming to attract potential investors? Is this something you would like to take to the bank to propose a loan for your business?

Begin by examining what your specific goal is for writing your plan.

2. Who is going to review my plan, and what do you want them to do with it?

You need to identify who is going to actually study your plan, and what they are going to do with it. If it’s yourself, then it’s a little easier to answer this question because the answer lies within you.

If, however, you are writing your plan for others to review, and assuming you’ve answered #1 above, you’re going to have to do some background analysis.

Start listing names or titles/positions of people who you expect to review your plan. Then, for each person, brainstorm how you want that person to react to your business plan – what they should do with it.

You could do the same thing for investors – do you know any business owners? Ask them what they would look for in any business venture they would invest, and specifically what they would look for if you wanted them to invest in your business.

3. What is the core product or service your business offers to buyers?

To answer this, write down the product or service you intend to offer as simply as possible. We’ll answer more detailed info about it in the following questions.

4. Who is the ideal customer for this product or service?

Really, ideas for business are a dime a dozen. You often hear people talk about a great business idea they have, but they rarely back it up with any kind of proof that a customer exists for such a product or service, and that that customer would be willing to pay.

Try to be specific in profiling your buyer. For example, does your product or service cater to men or women, or both? What age groups or income levels does it service/attract? Are there any geographical areas that your product or service would supply?

5. Is there enough demand for your product or service?

This is something you’ll want to investigate in more detail as you develop your business plan. At this point though, what’s important is to do some preliminary research. Searches on Google, Hoovers or Bizminer will help you study a particular industry, and you can often drill down your research to a particular state or city. Your search at Google is of course, free, but you’ll often find for a small investment at sites such as Hoovers or Bizminer, you’ll get meaningful data for your market vertical, which you can start analyzing right away.

It’s also not a bad idea to survey buyers on their purchase behaviors and perceptions towards your product or service. Arranging a questionnaire or focus group can give you some useful insight into how potential buyers react to your product or service.

If it’s reasonable, consider giving away product or service trials and then follow-up to evaluate user expectations and experiences.

If you don’t have demand for your product or service, it really doesn’t matter how great it is anyways, right?

6. What existing problems or needs does your product or service solve for your customers?

This is one of the most important questions to answer, because ultimately, your product or service is just another one available unless it clearly and uniquely solves a problem or need which buyers face.

To give an example, let’s say your product is a software application that helps you manage your finances and taxes. There are a few applications in the market which do that already. So, what does your application do that others don’t? Is it better on features, is it faster? Is it more secure? Is it more user-friendly? Is it more portable? Does it really help someone save money or increase their net worth?

Can you see why getting clear on the solution you offer to your target market is so crucial?

7. Who are your direct and indirect competitors?

You really should gain at least an initial understanding of who else is offering similar products or services to your target market. It’s good to know how their products or services are currently used and perceived – why people buy them, and why they don’t. In doing so, you begin to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors from the consumer’s perspective.

Depending on what your product or service is, you can find all kinds of information about user experiences with your competitors’ offerings. Sites like Amazon let you see product reviews by customers who bought products.

8. What do you need to get your business rolling/growing, and what will it cost?

This is arguably the most painful part of business planning. Yet, what is the point of having a plan if you don’t know how it all adds up financially? You may not know how to put all the numbers together on your own. If that’s the case, invite or even hire someone to help you sort out the numbers.

Aside from any potential revenues earned from sales of your product or service, you’ll need to know your fixed expenses – what it costs you to run your business whether or not you sell a single item, and your variable expenses – what it costs you for each item sold.

Naturally, in the early stages of planning a business, you will be doing a lot of forecasting, and your numbers may not be as accurate as you’d like them to be. So, you’ll want to be as conservative as possible about how much revenue you’ll generate and how much your business will cost to run.

9. Putting your plan to action – what are the key steps you need to take?

At some point, the plan needs to hit the road! The plan is no good if it doesn’t help you take action. So a simple action plan should be included – what needs to be started and completed, when and who will do it, all need to be mapped out at least at a basic level.

Having an action plan will also help you get excited about your business venture, as you can see how it comes to life.

10. How can you improve your plan?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you have a basic blueprint of how your business is going to look at the early stage.

Remember, your first step is to prepare a basic business plan that serves as a foundation. From this foundation, you will want to further explore areas which need more analysis and testing, while some aspects of your business venture merely require you to get started and measure how things are going.

Here is a simple overview of a planning hierarchy: The business plan is the master document that directs all aspects of an enterprise. Yet, many executives fail to fully understand its importance for achieving goals. Too often, the plan is written then filed away and never used as a key tool in managing a business. A good plan is not necessarily about how well it is written – more important is how well it is implemented. Someone once said, “A partial plan implemented well is better than a well written plan never placed into action”. It is very important to use the plan as your guide, but it must also be dynamic under constant revision because the marketplace is not static. Without a plan, how do you know where you are going and how you will reach your destination?

A business plan addresses functions related to product, marketing, operations, administration, finance, legal, and budgeting. Yes, you can argue that more goes into the plan – remember this is just a simple summary. Planning is like preparing for a road trip. You know where you are and know where you want to go, but how do you get there?

Let’s say your trip is several hundred miles long. Studying your map, you ask yourself questions about time and resources needed before you start the journey. You want to get to your destination as quickly and efficiently as possible, but at the lowest cost without sacrificing essentials or your comfort.

Factors to consider for your trip include mode of transportation, cost, length of trip, and best route in a realistic amount of time. What happens during the trip, if you encounter road construction, traffic jams, or even detours? What if your car breaks down along the way? You tried to plan properly in advance, but now you’re faced with unexpected choices. What resources do have at your disposal? How do you tap resources you don’t have now? What are the opportunity-cost to consider? Which options make most sense to keep you moving on?

Planning your road trip, you consider all the route options. Route A is the shortest, but research shows the route is full of road construction. Taking this route will make your journey longer because of delays and it may cost more in gas money because poor mileage efficiency caused by many stop and go driving. Route B is significantly longer meaning it takes more time to reach your destination. However, there are no detours or construction to deal with. You can zip all the way with minimal stops and find the improved mileage efficiency means less gas station stops resulting in cost savings.

These are the kind of factors requiring consideration when starting a plan. After you decide on the route to take, you must now consider your available resources and their capacity to fulfill your goal. In our road trip example, your next considerations will be influenced by a systems check of your automobile – is it road worthy for a long trip? Must you invest in new tires? Is your battery reliable? You get the idea. How much money do you have allocated for gas, food, and the unexpected? Are you doing all the driving and navigation yourself? When do you start your trip after considering your options?

Being realistic with your goals and anticipating roadblocks will assist you in starting your plan. Don’t waste time constantly refining your plan at the start or you will never reach your destination. Just start with the basic elements using research and a little common sense. Risk is part of the game, but you can significantly reduce future risk if you plan, learn, evaluate, and adjust. Adjustments are always necessary because the market is dynamic – so should be the application of your plan. You cannot anticipate every obstacle, but you will be better prepared to resolve issues if you have a plan and evaluate it on a regular basis.

The plain truth is, business owners of any size that take the time to outline what they will offer, what they’ll need to start and what their goals are more likely to succeed.

What exactly is a business plan? It really isn’t a mystery; it is your plan for making your business a success. Not only will a good business plan help you in securing funds for starting your business, it can help you think about every aspect of your business, from who you plan to sell your services to, to what you’ll need before you even start selling your services.

You might even find yourself avoiding some common pitfalls of smaller businesses, such as not anticipating enough funds to keep you going for the first year of business or realizing that you may need assistance in an area you don’t have experience in, such as technical support or bookkeeping.

A business plan doesn’t have to be dozens of pages long, but it should include basic information about your goals in both the short and long term, your business and how you imagine you’ll run it, and what your start up costs will be. The following are a few things that should be included in your business plan.

The first thing in your business plan should be your purpose. Think about what you want to accomplish with your business and what your goals are. From there, describe your business. Here you can describe exactly what your business is, when and where it was formed, the structure of the business, who the owner is and who is operating it.

From there, you can describe your market. Who do you imagine your customers will be? Here, you can also go into better detail about what you’re offering, why there is a need for your particular service or goods, and what makes your business better or different from your competitors. From there, you can go on to explain how you intend to meet the needs of your market. How are you going to produce your services or the goods you intend to sell, and how are you going to deliver your goods or services to your customers?

If you’re not truly a one person business, include information about who your staff is and what they will do, as well your suppliers.

The next thing in your business plan should be your time table. Do you want to reach a specific goal in a certain amount of time? This is the area where you should detail what your financial goals are.

Finally, outline your financial requirements for starting your business. This is not the area to skimp — if anything, overestimate the amount of money you’ll need. Too many small businesses fail to count on enough operating money at the beginning and find that they have to close their doors all too soon. Don’t make this mistake!

Really sit down and itemize everything you’re going to need to get going, including advertising, your business license or fees for setting up the structure of your business, computer software, even keeping your utilities going in your home (if you don’t have any other income), plus the cost of operating your business for a fixed amount of time without profit.

Writing a business plan for your home based business shouldn’t be something to be afraid of. If anything, a business plan will help you focus, get all your goals and ideas on paper, and help guide you in making your business a success.