* Analyze Your Competition
The banks and funding agencies need to know that you have a firm grasp of how your company stacks up against the competition. Here’s how to show them.

The end result of your work will be a clear overview of and comparison between your company and your competitors, outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each, the market share held by each, and trends and changes over time. You’ll also want to explain what percentage of the market you’re planning on capturing, and how you’ll do it.

* Business Financial Planning
Your financial projections are the heart of your business plan. This section quantifies dollars and cents over months and years, and it had better be built to stand up to scrutiny. The professionals looking at your numbers will bring jaundiced eyes to their review of your forecasts. They’re looking for a specific format and a sense that you’re being realistic in your estimates. Here’s how to do it right.

THE BASICS
Your financial projections must include these fundamentals: profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. While the income is what you’re interested in, your potential funders will want to know how much you plan to leave in the business as retained earnings and how much more financing you’ll need to grow your company.

Learn accounting principles and formats, or hire an accountant familiar with your industry to help prepare this section.

* Exceed the Reviewers’ Expectations
Here are some tips and tricks we’ve gleaned from the experts…advice you can use to make your plan shine.

1. The process is as important as the plan itself. Do it yourself, and you’ll come away from the planning experience with a more in-depth, more organized and more crystal-clear vision of your business. If the investor sees that you’ve invested the time, energy and unified effort to develop your own business plan, you’re already past the first hurdle. When you’re done, you might consider a review by a consultant, who can give you a critique based on the investor’s point of view.

2. Hook them in the first two minutes. The person reading your plan is busy, confronted with dozens of plans each month. Make it look good, with a clean attractive design. Organize it so the reader can find what they’re looking for immediately. And spend a lot of time on your Executive Summary so it hooks the reader into the story of your business and why you’ll be a success.

* Writing a Successful Business Plan
Whatever stage your business is at, a business plan is always an indispensable guide to where you’re heading, a tool to help you measure your progress, and a map to keep you from veering off-course.

With that in mind, we’re giving you a series of tutorials to help you develop a winning business plan.

A good business plan gives models what your business will be, using financial statements and projections alongside verbal descriptions of broad strategic issues and short-term tactical moves.