A business plan outline should include the following elements:
- Your Business Name: Develop your business name with your product or service in mind. Consider how well it fits, how easy it will be to brand and market, and if it could already be in use by another entity. Legal assistance may be obtained to ensure the business name is available.
- Your Business Vision: Consider the future of your business. Look ahead five years and think about where you want to be. This includes franchising, branching and employees. For instance, if you do not want to work full time five years from now, consider your role as CEO and what you'll need to do to ensure employees take care of the work for you. This will become part of your long term goals and objectives.
- Branding Ideas: Think about how you'll be able to take your product/service and business name and create an image to tell your story and promote your business. Consider this deeply as this will be what develops into your business logo and slogan for business cards and other marketing materials as the business grows.
- A Mission Statement: Determine what it is you want your company to accomplish and the standards you want to use to accomplish them. Your mission statement will speak volumes to potential customers and clients about who you are and what you do. Make sure your mission statement includes something about your business to separate you from your competitors.
- Your Business Goals and Objectives: What exactly is it you want your business to do? How are you going to get it there? Make several small goals and objectives, because large goals and objectives--while important--will be harder to measure and therefore may cause discouragement. Keep larger goals in mind, without making them first priority.
- Market Research: Research your competitors to determine if there is a viable market in your area for your product or service. This will help you determine if you should revise your business idea slightly to differentiate yourself from competitors and will help set your pricing structure.
- A Financial Plan: This will help you determine the money you're going to need upfront, how much money you'll need in reserves if business doesn't turn out the way you anticipate, and give you a better grasp of how to go about securing capital.
- A Detailed Plan of Action: Include what you're going to do for sales and marketing, what you're going to do in the event the business starts to falter, how you're going to expand your business in times of prosperity, etc. Having a plan for what to do in the event something doesn't happen the way you hope it will is one of the best things you can do to help your business succeed.
If you're still feeling uncertain about what your business plan should include for your particular venture, you may want to invest in software such as Business Plan Pro to help walk you through the steps of creating the plan. Whichever route you decide, be sure to have someone you trust read the plan after creating it. Even though something may seem obvious to you, a second set of eyes can help point out places in the plan where more information is needed.