This Business Plan Template from is one of many free downloads available at blogger.com This template is a simplified business plan outline. It’s a good way to get started, but as you know, you can’t just type in your details, print it, and turn it in to the bank. Every business is unique, and your business plan should reflect that Who the business plan was prepared by. The name of any other owners or key partners. Project your sales for a period of two or three years, going one month at a time. Include seasonality whenever applicable. your expected CLV would be $ You know each average customer will make 3 purchases per year, for 3 years, at $ each. 3 cumulative net profits in excess of $, over a five-year period, and average monthly sales of $72,, while maintaining adequate levels of liquidity. The purpose of this plan is to secure additional funding from an investor and a bank ($29, investment, and $30, five-year term business loan), to cover the start-up blogger.com Size: KB
Prepare a business plan for growth
The following business plan for the fictional firm of "Acme Management Technology" AMT is an example of what a completed business plan might look like. This example is provided as part of the instructions and detailed descriptions included in the Components of a Business Plan.
This business plan leads the way by renewing our vision and strategic focus of adding value to our target market segments—the small business and high-end home office users in our local market. It also provides a step-by-step plan for improving our sales, gross margin, and profitability. AMT is built on the assumption that the management of information technology for business is like legal advice, accounting, graphic arts, and other bodies of knowledge, in that it is not inherently a do-it-yourself prospect.
Smart business people who aren't computer hobbyists need to find quality vendors of reliable hardware, software, service, and support and they need to use these quality vendors as they use their other professional service suppliers—as trusted allies. AMT is such a vendor. It serves its clients as a trusted ally, providing them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. We make sure that our business plan prepared month year have what they need in order to run their businesses at peak performance levels, with maximum efficiency and reliability.
Many of our information applications are mission-critical, so we assure our clients that we'll be there when they need us. It has a good reputation, excellent people, and a steady position in the local market, but has been having difficulty maintaining healthy financials.
AMT is a privately-held C corporation owned in majority by its founder and president, Ralph Jones. There are six part owners, including four investors and two past employees. The largest of these in percent of ownership are Frank Dudley, our attorney, and Paul Karots, our public relations consultant. AMT has been caught in the vise grip of margin squeezes that have affected computer resellers worldwide. Although the chart titled "Past Financial Performance" shows that we've had healthy growth in sales, it also indicates declining gross margin and declining profits.
The more detailed numbers in Table 2. All of these concerns are part of the general trend affecting computer resellers. The margin squeeze is happening throughout the computer industry, worldwide.
Short-Term Assets. Long-Term Assets. Debt and Equity. Other Inputs: Along with sales, it includes a training area, business plan prepared month year, service department, offices, business plan prepared month year, and showroom area. AMT sells personal computer technology for small business including personal computer hardware, peripherals, networks, software, support, service, and training. Ultimately, we are selling information technology.
We sell reliability and confidence. We sell the assurance to small business people that their business will not suffer any information technology disasters or critical downtimes. AMT serves its clients as a trusted ally, providing them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. We make sure that our clients have what they need to run their businesses at peak performance levels, with maximum efficiency and reliability.
Since many of our information applications are mission-critical, we give our business plan prepared month year the confidence that we'll be there when they need us. In personal computerswe support three main lines:. In peripheralsaccessories and other hardware, we carry a complete line of necessary items from cables to forms to mousepads to add relevant information. In service and supportwe offer a range of walk-in or depot service, maintenance contracts, and on-site guarantees.
We haven't had much success in selling service contracts. Our networking capabilities include In softwarewe sell a complete line of In trainingwe offer The only way we can hope to differentiate effectively is to brand the vision of the company as a trusted information technology ally to our clients. We will not be able to compete in any effective way with the chains using boxes or products as appliances. We need to offer a real alliance that feels personal.
The benefits we sell include many intangibles: confidence, reliability, knowing that somebody will be there to answer questions and help at critical times. These are complex products that require serious knowledge and experience to use, which we have, while our competitors sell only the products themselves.
Unfortunately, we cannot sell the products at a higher price simply because we offer services; the market has shown that it will not support that concept. We must also sell the service and charge for it separately. Copies of our brochure and advertisements are attached as appendices. Of course, one of our first tasks will be to change the messaging of our literature to make sure we are selling the company, rather than the product.
Our costs are part of the margin squeeze. As price competition increases, the squeeze between the manufacturer's price into channels and the end-users ultimate buying price continues. Our margins are declining steadily for our hardware lines. We generally buy at A similar trend shows for our main-line peripherals, with prices for printers and monitors declining steadily.
We are also starting to see that same trend with software To hold costs down as much as possible, we concentrate our purchasing with Hauser, which offers day net terms and overnight shipping from the warehouse in Dayton. We need to continue to make sure our volume gives us negotiating strength.
For software, margins are: add relevant business plan prepared month year. For years, we have supported both Windows and Macintosh technology for CPUs, although we've switched vendors many times for the Windows and previously DOS lines.
We are also supporting Novell, Banyon, and Microsoft networking, Xbase database software, and Claris application products. We must remain on top of emerging technologies because this is our bread and butter. For networking, we need to provide better knowledge of cross-platform technologies. We are also under pressure to improve our understanding of the direct-connect Internet and related communications. Finally, although we have a good command of desktop publishing, we are concerned about improving integrated fax, copier, printer, and voicemail technology into the computer system, business plan prepared month year.
AMT focuses on local markets, small business, and home office, with a special focus on the high-end home office and the five-to unit small business office. The segmentation allows some room for estimates and nonspecific definitions.
We focus on a small-medium level of small business, and it's hard to locate data to make an exact classification, business plan prepared month year. Our target companies are large enough to require the kind of high-quality information technology management we offer but too small to have a separate computer management staff such as an MIS department. We say that our target market has 10 to 50 employees, and requires five to 20 connect workstations in a local area network, business plan prepared month year, however, the definition is flexible.
Defining the high-end home office is even more difficult. We generally know the characteristics of our target market, but we can't find easy classifications that fit into available demographics. The high-end home office business is a business, not a hobby. It generates enough money to merit the owner's paying real attention to the quality of information technology management, meaning that both budget and productivity concerns warrant working with our level of quality service and support.
We can assume that we aren't talking about home offices used only part-time by people who work elsewhere during the day and that our target market home office needs powerful technology and sufficient links between computing, telecommunications, and video assets. We are part of the computer reselling business, which includes several kinds of businesses:.
Small business buyers are accustomed to buying from vendors who visit their offices. They expect the copy machine vendors, office products vendors, and office furniture vendors, as well as the local graphic artists, freelance writers, or whomever, to visit their office to make their sales.
There is usually a lot of leakage in ad-hoc purchasing through local chain stores and mail order. Often the administrators try to discourage this but are only partially successful. Unfortunately, our home office target buyers don't expect to buy from us. Many of them turn immediately to the superstores office equipment, office supplies, and electronics and mail order to look for the best price, without realizing that there business plan prepared month year a better option for them at only a little bit more.
The small business buyers understand the concept of service and support and are much more likely to pay for it when the offering is clearly stated. There is no doubt that we face stiffer competition from box pushers than from other service providers.
We need to effectively compete against business plan prepared month year idea that businesses should buy computers as plug-in appliances that don't need ongoing service, support, and training. Our focus group sessions indicated that our target home office buyers think about the price but would buy based on quality service if the offering were properly presented. They think about the price because that's all they ever see. Availability is also very important. The home office buyers tend to want immediate, local solutions to problems.
Chain stores:. Other local computer stores:. The home offices in Tintown are an important growing market segment. Our estimate in this plan for the home offices in our market service area is based on an analysis published four business plan prepared month year ago in the local newspaper. There are several types of home offices, business plan prepared month year.
For the focus of our plan, the most important are those that are real businesses offices from which people earn their primary income. These are likely to be people in professional services such as graphic artists, writers, and consultants, some accountants—and the occasional lawyer, doctor, or dentist, business plan prepared month year. We will not be focusing on the market segment that includes part-time home offices with people who are employed during the business plan prepared month year but work at home at night, people who work at home to provide themselves with a part-time income, or people who maintain home offices relating to their hobbies.
Small business within our market includes virtually any business with a retail, office, professional, business plan prepared month year, or industrial location outside of the home, and fewer than 30 employees.
We estimate there are 45, such businesses in our market area. The employee cutoff is arbitrary. We find that the larger companies turn to other vendors, but we can sell to departments of larger companies, and we shouldn't give up such leads when we get them.
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May 18, · We found that on average, the most successful entrepreneurs were those that wrote their business plan between six and 12 months after deciding to start a business. Writing a plan in this timeframe Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins Who the business plan was prepared by. The name of any other owners or key partners. Project your sales for a period of two or three years, going one month at a time. Include seasonality whenever applicable. your expected CLV would be $ You know each average customer will make 3 purchases per year, for 3 years, at $ each. 3 section of the business plan. Then expand on that statement by telling more about each item in the text that follows. There is no set length to a business plan. The average length seems to be 30 to 40 pages, including the supporting documents section. Break the plan down into sections. Set up blocks of time for work with target dates for
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