Writing a business plan may seem like a lot of hard work for little return especially for small business owners who probably need a business plan as much as anyone does. A well constructed and well written business plan on its own will not take your company to greatness. However a poorly written business plan or no plan at all will certainly take your business down the road to failure. So what makes a good business plan?

There is a similarity between writing a company business plan and designing a company website. Some of the most successful and most profit generating websites on the internet are simple in design but contain exactly the right information people are looking for. The same applies to your business plan. It doesn’t need to be fancy leather bound with gold leaf printing but it must contain the right information. Every business, large or small, needs to know exactly where they are today, where they want to go, how they are going to get there and how they are going to communicate that to those involved.
The first step in writing a good business plan is to take a very objective look at where your business is now. This analysis should consider four elements that will have a significant impact on the success or otherwise of your business.
Those elements are Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats. Many of you will probably recognize this as a SWOT analysis.
Although you (and your decision making team) want to take a cold hard look at each of these four elements as they apply to your company and your business they are by no means mutually exclusive when determining what should go into writing a good business plan.
For example if you take broad terms such as:

• Competition
• Operating Environment
• Current Market Trends
• Information Technology
• National and International Economy
• Skills
• Consumer Confidence
• Industry technology
• Legislation and The Environment

You will be able to apply a SWOT analysis on any of those terms that are relevant to your business. To illustrate the point, if you were to analyze the skills and competencies of those within your organization at this point in time, and armed with the knowledge of the direction you wish your business to take, your business plan might include:

• How you will capitalize on the strengths of the people within your organization.
• What you need to do to address any weaknesses or lack of skills.
• What opportunities are there to be exploited?
• What threats can have a serious impact on your business success.

After answering all the questions you should know exactly how these will negatively or positively influence your business performance.

Now that you know what you have and what you need to compete profitably in your chosen marketplace your business planning should continue by defining your operating objectives.

There should be absolutely zero ambiguity when defining your business objectives. This is exactly what you want to achieve in the period covered by your business plan and whoever needs to know what they are should understand what they are and what their role is in achieving them.

To use another well known acronym each objective needs to be SMART. That is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and targeted.

Can you see how your business plan is becoming more detailed at each stage? Can you see how you are developing a clear picture of what you need to do? Now you can define the strategies – how you are going to achieve those objectives.

To make each strategy work, your business plan needs to include all of the resources needed. These resources can be staff, capital, equipment, information technology, or whatever else is needed to achieve your objectives.

Every good business plan will also include your full financial projections for the period covered by the business plan as well as contingencies to cover the eventuality that either your business performs far better than you had expected or you don’t quite achieve the objectives as defined in your business plan.