For a small business entrepreneur on a tight budget, working with a business plan consultant may not be in the cards. In these situations, look for a business plan template which can guide you in the process of creating your plan and set you on the right track by focusing you on what funders are interested in seeing. If it is a high quality template, it will indeed serve as a “consultant in a box”, providing you with basic guidance on how to proceed.
Structure and Format
A business plan template will be a great source of information as to the proper structure for your plan and format to use. This is because the template won’t simply tell you what to do, but will show you as it provides an example of the full layout of the plan. This means you can move past worrying about the presentation look of the plan and focus on its content (your research and strategy).
Financials
The revenues and costs of your intended business may be relatively easy to estimate, but converting these numbers into full pro forma financial statements may be beyond your ability, at least within a reasonable time frame. A business plan template should include Excel worksheets for financials which only need you to customize certain numbers in order to generate full, consistent financial statements just as funders want to see them. As long as the financial assumptions you enter are reasonable, the entire financial section should be correct. You can then spend more time looking at these statements as an investor or lender would and project what kind of questions they will ask.
Example Text
A business plan template includes not only the general structure and format of a business plan, but may include example text for all of its sections. Having this example text can serve as a great guide to what type of information to include, what questions you must answer, and how to relate the many pieces of the plan to each other.
Small Business Plan Templates: Start With Your Business Sector
For potential small business owners hoping to start one business in their lifetime, there isn’t a need to become a business plan writing expert. Even serial entrepreneurs who form business after business will often make use of business plan consultants to speed the process of creating a business plan and make the results more professional. Small businesses should seek the help of a business plan consultant as well, or, at the very least, use a business plan template to make the business plan development process simpler and faster.
What is a Business Plan Template?
A business plan template is an outline of a business plan, sometimes with a fully written sample, which uses the format and structure that is recommended by its creators for funders to see. Some basic templates are provided for free, but the most useful templates, including sample text, directions, and a customizable Excel financial model and pro forma financial statements, are sold online for a fee.
Start With Your Sector
If you are starting one of the top 50 or so types of small businesses, why use a generic business plan template when you can find one already customized for your business sector (such as a retail store, restaurant, salon, insurance brokerage, non profit, or financial planning business, to name some of the most popular)? By using a template customized to your sector, a lot of the legwork of making the plan more specific will be prepared for you. For example, a great deal of time savings will be from using a financial model more closely aligned with the nature of the costs and revenue drivers for your company.
How to Choose
Business plan companies and organizations supporting specific sectors are good sources for sector-specific business plan templates. Evaluate whether to purchase a template by looking at the track record of success of its creator, the type of support offered to customers, and guarantees. Don’t waste your time on purchasing multiple templates if they don’t rate well in these three categories.
Tags: business entrepreneur, business plan consultant, business plan template, pro forma financial statements, small business plan