- Evaluate your business ideas. Whether you’ve got one business idea or many, a business plan can make an idea more tangible, helping you see if it’s truly viable.
- Plan for your next phase. Whether your goal is to start a new business or scale an existing business to the next level, a business plan can help you understand what needs to happen and identify gaps to address.
- Clarify marketing strategy, goals, and tactics. Writing a business plan can show you the actionable next steps to take on a big, abstract idea. It can also help you narrow your strategy and identify clear-cut tactics that will support it.
- Scope the necessary work. Without a concrete plan, cost overruns and delays are all but certain. A business plan can help you see the full scope of work to be done and adjust your investment of time and money accordingly.
- Hire and build partnerships. When you need buy-in from potential employees and partners, especially in the early stages of your business, a clearly written business plan is one of the best tools at your disposal. A business plan provides a refined look at your goals for the business, letting partners judge for themselves whether or not they agree with your vision.
- Secure funds. Securing funding for your business, whether from venture capital or a bank, is one of the most common reasons to create a business plan.
- Executive summary. A one-page summary of your whole plan, typically written after the rest of the plan is completed.
- Company description. An overview can include many potential sub-sections, from the basics (your type of business model) to the meaningful (your business’ vision and mission statement).
- Market analysis. Everything from estimated market size to your target markets. It’ll also include a competitive analysis of your industry to address competitors strengths and weaknesses.
- Products and services. What you sell and the most important features of your products or services. It’ll also include any plans for intellectual property, like patent filings or copyright. If you do market research for your products, it’ll show up in this section of your business plan.
- Marketing plan. How you intend to get the word out about your business, and what strategic decisions you’ve made about things like your pricing strategy.
- Logistics and operations plan. Everything that needs to happen to turn your raw materials into products and get them into the hands of your customers.
- Financial plan. It’s important to include a look at your financial projections. This section includes templates for three key financial statements: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement.
In our business plan template, each section includes an overview of the most important information to cover and guidelines on how to approach writing and researching each one.
The sample is set up to help you get a sense of each section and understand how they apply to the planning and evaluation stages of a business plan. If you’re looking for funding, this example won’t be a complete or formal look at a business plan, but it will give you a great place to start and notes about where to expand.
Why write a business plan at all?
We’ve filled out a sample business plan as a companion to our template, featuring a fictional ecommerce business. We’ve noted where—and how—an entrepreneur could add more details to expand on their plans, depending on their goals.
Before you write your own, read through the following business plan example. You can download a copy in Microsoft Word or Google Docs and use it to inspire your own planning.
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In order to download the business plan created, you will have to sign up for a trial subscription, but that can be cancelled if you don’t plan on using the service.
There are also several industries to select from as a base, giving you a template that is specifically tailored to your needs.
The dynamic Visionary Pitch deck is designed to communicate big business ideas — the whys and hows of a new business model.
This 21-slide template helps you define and present your market, your competition, and the future roadmap. The deck visually supports the pitch story you’ve worked so hard to craft.
8. LawDepot free business plan builder
As one of the leading nonprofit organization devoted to helping business owners succeed, SCORE has created one of the best business plan templates because it is in-depth and customizable. It’s available in PDF or Microsoft Word format here.
The user experience sets the LawDepot business plan template apart from the best business plan templates, with simple input fields and a nice preview option that lets you watch the progress.
- Outline the problem and your proposed solution
- Share facts and figures about your target market
- Describe your product
- Outline your business model
- Illustrate the competitive landscape and your place in it
- Propose a timeline and product roadmap
- Introduce your team
- Detail financial requirements
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has one of the best business plan templates available, and it is very thorough — which you would expect from one of the most trusted and respected small business resources.
Steps to Create Your Own Business Plan with Readiris 16 for Windows
Readiris 16 for Windows allows users to scan document to PDF, also convert any PDFs into searchable PDF, Microsoft Office files, ODT, ePub, Audio and image.
First, choose the business plan template in your field, then preview the templates in the newly opened webpage and choose one. Those come with a “Buy” icon are not free, those come with a “Free Download” icon are for free use.
You can find several business plan template in PDF for different business program. Just click on the “Download this plan” and get the free template in PDF.
For Windows Users
Now you have obtained a business plan template, the last step to create your own is to modify the template and add the details. But how? You need a PDF program. Here, instead of recommending a PDF editor with expensive price, we offer an affordable solution---using a PDF converter. You will find a PDF converter is constructive to your work.
While for Windows users, there are more choices than that for mac users, here we recommend Readiris 16 for Windows, as many users do.
Also, there are websites offering different business templates in PDF, you can have a preview on these template and download a needed one. Here we pick top 4 for you to choose from, if you deem these resources valuable and useful, please spread the word by sharing on your social media to extend your thanks for those great file contributors.
- Executive Summary
- Business Overview
- Market Analysis
- Company
- Strategy and Implementation
- Financial Plan
- Appendices
There is consensus over the concept of Business Plan representing a formal, written statement of the goals of a new venture, and an overview of the original strategy that will be followed to achieve them. There are several formats in which this document may be prepared. The traditional one you'll come across on the web is a text document, probably 20 to 40 pages long.
A mission statement summarizes a company's purpose in one or two paragraphs: why it exists. It's usually made up of a general description of the organization, its function, and its objectives. The vision, on the other hand, talks about what the company aspires to be in the future.
One important thing to note here is that is NOT a fundraising document, so avoid adding fundraising or round information.
Now, Eric Ries' Lean Startup movement revolves around skipping the step of developing a business plan and jumping directly into experimentation, and I absolutely agree with this.
What is a Business Plan?
Summarize two or three core customer acquisition and growth strategies and a basic overview of how you plan to implement them.
8- Marketing Plan or Go-To-Market Plan
Defining a marketing strategy early on is very hard, but it's important to note the first and second plans the company intends to experiment with.
5- SWOT analysis
The Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunites-Threats summary is a famous exercise used in business to assess the state of the industry, the market, and the competitor environment.
Another important thing to remember about content is consistency.
Canva is a great design tool for all kinds of design projects. It has a wide range of features that you could use to design amazing graphics and download them for your marketing plan.
The next section of the marketing plan has to do with your “why”.
- Who are the competitors?
- What marketing strategies are they employing?
- And how are they going about achieving their goals?
Expertise blend
- What industry-relevant experience do you possess?
- What kinds of campaigns have you previously managed?
- Can you show me some examples?
Here’s another really great marketing plan example. This one looks really old school, so if you are a visual learner this one is probably not for you. But if you want to see a really well-written explanation of every section of a traditional marketing plan, you will get a lot of this example. Download it and fill it out, you will get a lot of value out of it.
And you might be asking yourself, how do I write this marketing plan? It’s going to take me ages! There is so much research that goes into it, do I have to do it all manually?
Here’s a great 2-minute video from Hubspot that shows how to write an executive summary from start to finish.