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Business Unit Strategy Template

What is a Business Unit Strategy?

A business unit strategy is a plan that outlines the goals and objectives of a business unit and outlines the steps needed to achieve them. It identifies the focus areas, objectives, and measurable targets that will help a business unit achieve its goals. It also outlines the actions required to reach the objectives, as well as the resources needed to carry out the actions. The strategy is designed to maximize performance and profitability and help the business unit reach its desired results.

What's included in this Business Unit Strategy template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Business Unit Strategy template for?

The Business Unit Strategy template is designed for business unit leaders and teams who are looking to develop strategies to maximize performance and profitability. It provides a framework for business units to create their own strategies, and the templates provide a structure for each focus area, objectives, measurable targets, and actions needed to reach the desired results.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

Focus areas are the main areas of focus for the business unit in a given time frame. Examples of focus areas could include improving profitability, increasing customer satisfaction, or improving efficiency. It is important to identify the focus areas clearly, as they will be the basis of the strategy and inform the objectives, measures, and actions needed to reach the desired results.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Objectives are specific goals that are outlined to help the business unit reach its desired results. They should be measurable and achievable, and should align with the focus areas. For example, if the focus area is improving profitability, the objectives could include increasing revenue and decreasing costs.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are measurable targets that can help the business unit track its progress towards achieving its objectives. They help to provide a tangible measure of success, and can be used to measure the success of the strategy. Examples of KPIs include conversion rate, average shipping cost, customer satisfaction rate, and average time per session. An example of a KPI for the focus area of Improve Profitability could be: Increase Conversion Rate from 10% to 15%.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Projects, or actions, are the steps needed to reach the objectives. For example, if the objective is to increase revenue, the project could be to increase the conversion rate. It is important to identify the projects needed to reach each objective, as they will help the business unit progress towards its desired results.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

Cascade is a strategy execution platform that helps business units to develop, implement, and track the progress of their strategies. It provides an easy-to-use interface to help teams collaborate and track their progress, as well as tools to help identify and set measurable targets. With Cascade, teams can see faster results from their strategies and reach their desired goals more quickly.

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Business Unit Strategy: Definition, Types, & Development

What is business unit level strategy.

By definition, a business unit (also referred to as a division or major functional area) is a part of an organization that represents a specific line of business and is part of a firm’s value chain of activities including operations, accounting, human resources, marketing, sales, and supply-chain functions. Business units and functional areas help a company organize itself internally. For example, a company may have several strategic business units that each sell different products or provide distinct services. As fully functional segments of a company, business units typically have their own strategic direction and vision.

When it comes to strategy , each business unit has a role to play in the company’s grand plans and enterprise strategy. Each line of business or sector must align with and contribute value to the primary corporate business strategy . In order to optimize results, strategy needs to be part of everyone’s responsibilities. As such, each business unit must develop its own business-unit strategy framework that will define how it will fulfill its part of the primary corporate strategy and make a distinct, value-added contribution to the organization’s long-term success.

What Are the Strategy Level Types?

There are three major strategy level types:

Corporate-Level Strategy: Concerned with the overall scope and direction of an organization across its various businesses. This includes diversification and vertical integration.

Business-Level Strategy: Focuses on competing successfully in individual markets or industries. This involves being an industry leader or differentiating a brand.

Functional-Level Strategy: Deals with optimizing specific departments or functions to support business-level strategy. This level of strategy can include areas like extensive advertising, brand management, and global distribution.

The Importance of Business-Level Strategy

Business-level strategy is important as it defines how a company competes in a specific market, which influences its competitive position and success. It helps differentiate the company from competitors, attract customers, and achieve a sustainable advantage.

How to Develop a Business Unit Strategy Framework

CMOE helps organizations worldwide become more proficient at setting strategy and thinking strategically throughout the organization: at the corporate level, the business-unit level, and even the department, team, and individual level.

Enterprise strategy is a clear and compelling direction for the organization, typically created by senior leaders. It is a “plan to win” and defines the long-term goals, objectives, and initiatives that will secure the future.

Business Unit

Business units determine which parts of the core, enterprise strategy the unit or division will contribute to directly and then formulates a unit or division strategy with their own supporting priorities. This where the division’s strategy intersects with the enterprise strategy. It creates a strategy within the company’s larger strategy. Business unit leaders are responsible for communicating a clear direction for departments, teams, and individuals as well as ensuring their functions adapt and evolve in a dynamic business environment.

For strategy to be effective, it must be cascaded through the organization. Departments need to identify strategic connection points within the business unit’s strategy and formulate initiatives and plans they can operationalize and execute on.

Teams too must have a line of sight to the department strategy that is in alignment with the business unit and enterprise. All team members need to be aligned on how the team will add value to the business and help create competitive advantage. Teams need to take responsibility for delivering results today, while formulating and executing on aligned strategies that shape a promising future.

People bring strategy to life and create the strategic edge businesses need to compete so individual need to define how they will contribute to the strategic priorities of their team. This creates the conditions for people to discover their personal connection to the firm’s future. Individual contributors at all levels need to think about the future in innovative and entrepreneurial ways, especially in their individual areas of responsibility.

It doesn’t matter if you are a leader or an individual contributor: you have to know how to work strategically in order to help move the enterprise or corporate strategic plan along.

The methodology in CMOE’s Strategic Leadership™ Workshop has been expressly designed for leaders who need to develop the ability to create and implement a strategic direction for their part of the business. CMOE also offers the Applied Strategic Thinking® Workshop , which is designed for team leaders and individual contributors who want to develop the ability to think proactively and capitalize on opportunities to make a strategic contribution to the enterprise strategy.

Our business unit strategy and strategic thinking programs and processes improve the strategic capability of the organization at all levels and enhance strategy alignment and effectiveness. No longer is strategy the sole responsibility of senior leaders; business-units must create their own strategic plans that align with and support the enterprise vision.

Why Choose CMOE’s Business Unit Strategy Workshops

Because every organization has different needs, the  Strategic Leadership™ Workshop and the Applied Strategic Thinking® Workshop are available in a variety of learning formats designed to fit your specific needs.

Participants are exposed to real, actionable ways to become more strategic in every part of their work, and they have numerous opportunities to apply the concepts as they begin building strategy for their piece of the business.

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“Think about a whole army of people being more strategic, not just the generals. Imagine the possibilities if everyone in your organization devoted a little extra discretionary effort and thought to the future, to how to achieve the future he or she needs and wants.”

“Moving the strategic needle on some longer term opportunities does take good strategic leadership, alignment, and communication throughout the organization. Every function should strive to achieve better alignment across the business, both in the short term and farther out.”

“Regardless of where you sit in the organization, your job is to sort through all of the signals you receive. This will give you clues about how the broader organization is adapting and shifting and help you develop your own strategic program before you are even asked.”

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Business unit plan template in Google Sheets

All companies encompass several business units (or departments) such as accounting, sales, marketing, R&D, and production. And in a multidivisional organization, each unit may even function semi-independently as a business-within-a-business (BWB). This is a common business structure for chains, hospitality businesses, and parent companies with multiple subsidiaries.

In organizations of this kind, each business unit is usually responsible for planning and controlling their own budget. As well as analyzing performance internally, department managers are also responsible for reporting their unit’s finances to company directors.

Two widely used indicators of a business unit’s financial health are EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) or EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). EBIT reflects the amount of income a company is generating, whereas EBITDA approximates a company’s cash flow.

Calculating EBITDA

You can calculate EBIT/EBITDA and analyze the profitability of your company or individual business units with the help of an accountant or accountancy software. But both of these options are expensive and you don’t actually need to invest any more resources into this process.

Most likely, each unit is already measuring fixed and variable costs, income, and expenses. The major challenge is simply collecting and collating that data correctly. With the help of a Google Sheets template, you can set up an automated system that creates a business unit performance report for you.

This business unit plan template can be used to analyze different units, subsidiaries, or projects. Perhaps you’re an investor with multiple projects or startups that you’ve invested in. Or maybe you want to evaluate the profitability of different products that your company is currently selling. Either way, this system is flexible and can be tailored to your business needs.

Sign up for Sheetgo and start monitoring your business units automatically

Why use google sheets to analyze business unit performance.

• Flexible: Google Sheets lets you manage and analyze financial data from multiple departments in the way that suits your business. When you need to modify the system you can simply change or adapt the spreadsheets, without specialist software or IT support.
• Accessible: Unit managers and administrators can access and update their department’s data at any time, from any location, via laptop or smartphone.
• Compatible with everything: All software packages integrate with Google Sheets, so if your company has data stored in other programs, you can easily import that information straight into Google Sheets files.
• Easy to use: everyone on the team will be familiar with spreadsheets and Google Sheets is user-friendly, even for beginners. Sheets are easy to maintain and it’s simple to train your team how to use them.

How to get started

This spreadsheet-based workflow template is a pre-built system that allows you to analyze and compare budgets and performance across multiple business units.

The template can be used by companies of all sizes, with any number of departments or divisions. It provides unit managers with a user-friendly way to collect and analyze income and expenses while generating automated reports, and dashboard for administrators and company directors.

What’s a spreadsheet-based workflow template?

A regular spreadsheet template is a single file with pre-built charts and formulas, but a Sheetgo workflow template is a complete system. It consists of multiple Google Sheets files that transfer data between them. This allows each unit or department to record and share their financial data privately, while enabling managers to collect and analyze metrics from every department.

A spreadsheet-based workflow template gives you:

• Organization and data privacy: Each file is dedicated to one specific task, for better data protection and accuracy. Instead of working in a shared spreadsheet, each department has their own personal file where they record their financial data. Data from every business unit is exported automatically to the manager’s master sheet and central dashboard.
• Scalability: Google Sheets collaboration functions are powerful, but when you have too many people working in the same spreadsheet it can become large and heavy. Keeping data in separate spreadsheets ensures that the system functions smoothly. If you want to add another business unit, just copy one of the input spreadsheets, connect it to the workflow, and share it with colleagues from that team.
• Integration: Google Sheets is compatible with everything, so accountants and managers can easily import and merge data from other software and departments. In a few clicks, you can connect data from other workflows to build a completely integrated financial management system.

What you get with this template:

When you install the Sheetgo business unit performance analysis template, four Google Sheets files with pre-built Sheetgo connections are saved to your Google Drive:

• Three Business Unit spreadsheets. Share each file with the managers of the different units or departments, and make as many copies as you need for additional divisions. Managers or accountants from that unit use their copy of the spreadsheet to register their forecast or budget as well as their actual income or expenses.
• One Business unit performance analysis master sheet, for the manager or administrator of the parent company. Sheetgo connections import data from all the Business unit spreadsheets directly into this file. The template automatically merges this data and displays key metrics such as gross margin, total variable costs, and EBITDA in the dashboard.

How to install the workflow template

Click the blue button below to install the business unit plan template.

• Login to Sheetgo with your Google, Microsoft, or Dropbox account.
• Click Install template .
• Wait a few moments while Sheetgo creates copies of the files and connects them.

The Business unit performance analysis master sheet opens inside Sheetgo.

How to use the business unit template

Step 1: select a time period for analysis.

In the Business unit analysis master sheet , go to the Instructions tab, and enter inputs in the boxes on the right.

Choose which year you want to analyze, which month , and if you want an Accumulated or Month-only report.

Step 2: Enter account names

Now go to the Configuration tab. In Column A (Account Name) enter the list of categories that you want each business unit to provide data on.

The template contains examples (Sales, Direct Cost, Commissions, etc). You can use these or add your own categories.

Start monitoring your business units automatically

Step 3: transfer the data.

The template contains pre-built connections. Updating the connections will send this list of Account names to each of the Business Unit spreadsheets.

Step 4: Share the files

Now that each Business Unit file contains the correct list of Account categories, your colleagues from each department can start using their spreadsheet.

Step 5: Enter data

Step 6: Automate the workflow

You can transfer the data in the master sheet at any time by clicking Run , but you can also automate another step of the business reporting process.

How to expand the workflow

Once your automated business unit reporting system is up and running, it’s easy to expand and customize the workflow.

You can add more Business Unit files with new connections.

• In Google Drive > Sheetgo Templates > Business Unit Performance Analysis you will find the 3 Business unit spreadsheets that are included in the template.
• To duplicate one of these input sheets, right-click > Make a copy .

3. Open Sheetgo and go to your Business unit performance analysis workflow.

4. Go to Connections . You will see that there are currently 4 connections.

The first connection in the list, Consolidated business registers , combines data from the Business Unit spreadsheets and pulls that information into the master sheet.

The following 3 Configuration connections send the list of account names to the Business Unit spreadsheets. We want to copy this connection for the new (duplicated) spreadsheet that you’ve just created.

As you can see, the source data is the Business unit performance analysis master sheet > Configuration tab. Don’t make any changes here.

2. Scroll down to Destination > Google Sheets.

3. Click on File > Change file.

4. Select the new (duplicated) Google Sheets file from your Google Drive. You will find it inside Sheetgo Templates > Business Unit Performance.

5. Under Tab name , enter the name “Configuration”.

6. Click Finish and save to create the connection.

In the Connections list to the right of the screen, you will see that there are now 4 Configuration connections.

If you click on Workflow , you can see there is now a connection going in one direction, from the master sheet to the new file, Business unit 4.

Now we need to send data back in the other direction.

To do this, return to the Connections list.

Nex to the connection Consolidated business registers click on the three-dots menu ( ⋮ ) and then  Edit connection.

Under Source data > Multiple files you will see the Business unit files that are already connected.

Click +Add another source file > +Select file and select the new spreadsheet.

Under File tab , make sure to select the correct source tab. In this case, that’s Registers .

An all-in-one financial management solution

Looking for an all-in-one solution to control your finances? If you’re looking for an automated system to control your finances, check out our spreadsheet-based solution to automate your financial management and track all your business transactions.

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Creating a Strategic Framework for Business Units

Category: OKR University .

Introduction

For a growing business, structuring teams for maximum efficiency is imperative. An effective business unit model can make a difference in success. A business structure ensures better financial efficiency and organization.

This guide explores what a business unit entails, the types of business units to choose from, and the pros and cons, and informs you how to create an effective strategy framework.

Let’s dive into business units and how implementing a strategic framework could benefit and streamline your organization.

What is a Business Unit?

A business or strategic business unit is a subset or independent division of a larger company. The unit’s processes, success metrics, product lines, market research teams, budget allocations, and strategic objectives align with the overall business policies.

The leaders in the unit report to the top-level executives, and the team members follow the code of conduct established by the overall HR department.

Business units aim to maximize profits by targeting different market segments. Each unit follows its direction, growth strategies, and vision.

What are the Types of Business Units?

There are numerous types of business units that you can adapt to fit your organization’s needs.

Here are three primary types of business units:

1. Geography business units

Such units focus on sales and marketing in particular geographical regions.

2. Customer business units

These units target particular customer groups. For example, you can have a business unit dedicated to selling products to large companies and another focusing on small businesses.

3. Product business units

Such units are in charge of marketing and developing products that fall under a particular category. For instance, if you have different products, you can have a business unit for each type.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people. Steve Jobs

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Business Unit

A business unit has numerous advantages and disadvantages, so comparing and evaluating all relevant factors is essential before establishing one.

Here are the advantages of a business unit:

• Every business unit targets a different customer base and market section, which can help increase profitability.
• Each unit functions independently, so only some permissions require a go-ahead from the central authority, simplifying decision-making
• Bookkeeping is easier for large businesses.
• Business units help companies become more agile and adapt to changing market conditions.
• These units allow you to focus resources on the most productive areas, improving profitability.

Here are the disadvantages of a business unit:

• The setup process can be challenging because every unit requires different aspects, such as goals, vision, and promotional strategies.
• Sometimes high competition among the units negatively affects the parent company.
• Business units can introduce silos and deter cooperation, leading to wasted resources and inefficiency because each unit focuses on individual performance.

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What Are the Characteristics of a Business Unit?

Business units have distinct characteristics that distinguish them from other business structures.

The main characteristics of a business unit are:

1. Unique values and missions

Business units have unique values and missions that assist in creating a broader customer base for the parent company. The unique objectives help every unit target a particular demographic and offer services and products that suit them.

2. Autonomous planning

Business units leverage autonomous planning to strategize business operations, including marketing, developing new products, and expansion. Strategic planning is very important to organizations to align vision and mission to execution. Each unit is a manageable entity that can operate under a different name but remains under the primary company.

3. Unique competitors

Business units focus on their respective markets, so they have different competitors. This structure encourages unique competition, creating an environment that nurtures new marketing techniques and product innovation.

4. Independent cost and revenue tracking

Business units account for revenue and costs separately. They help the parent company track revenue from different services or products like sales revenue making it easier to see which business units underperform.

How Does It Differ from a Subsidiary?

Subsidiaries refer to companies that a parent company partially or wholly owns. You can differentiate a business unit from a subsidiary through aspects such as:

1. Leadership structure

Every business unit has a manager who runs operations and reports to the parent company when necessary. Subsidiaries are under the parent company’s control, so the managers report to the executive team that oversees and coordinates subsidiary programs and initiatives.

2. Share ownership

With subsidiaries, the parent company owns most of the shares and has more say in business operations. A business unit remains independent and has individual shares.

3. Internal structure

Business units have independent internal structures and core business functions. Although subsidiaries can have internal systems, they rely more on the primary company’s structure.

4. Objectives

Subsidiaries and business units develop missions and objectives for different reasons. Subsidiaries form objectives that focus on the primary company’s vision. If the goal is expansion, the subsidiary will focus on expanding the parent company into new markets.

For instance, business units have independent objectives, so if it’s an expansion, they will focus on independent expansion and have separate plans to explore new markets.

What Are the Steps Involved in Creating a Business Unit?

Forming business units is an excellent way to promote business expansion and growth. You can create an efficient unit through the following steps:

• Determine the business unit’s purpose and define its particular responsibilities.
• Allocate business resources, including assets, finances, and people.
• Establish accountability with strategic metrics and determine how to track performance and progress effectively.
• Define goals depending on what you aim to achieve.
• Create communication channels between the parent company and the business unit and determine how the information will flow.
• Establish the unit’s autonomy to enable independent decision-making.
• Plan for regular reviews and embrace adjustments to ensure success.

How Can You Develop a Strategic Framework for a Business Unit?

A strategic framework helps you stay focused on the overall goals by providing clarity and transparency in your strategic processes.

Here are the steps for developing a strategic framework for a business unit:

1. Choose a suitable strategic framework

Some examples of strategic frameworks are SWOT analysis, balanced scorecards, issue-based strategic planning, OKRs, and strategy mapping.

Your choice depends on your goals and current standing, but you can have different frameworks for various elements or stages in the planning process.

2. Integrate the strategic framework into your strategy

Ensure you determine your strategic objectives and how every goal fits into your strategic framework. Decide what you must measure and the respective KPIs to know how your vision, strategic framework, and goals align.

3. Review your plan based on your strategic framework

Having a strategic framework helps you understand how the goals of the business unit contribute to the bigger picture. Strategic consulting helps in the review cycle as a course correction aimed to close the strategy execution gap.

A business or strategic business unit is a subset or independent division of a larger company.

Strategic business units help the parent company focus on potential markets or particular customers. They also bring structure to businesses with several services and products.

A business unit is independent and has separate shares from the primary company. A subsidiary has no individual shares since the parent company owns the share majority.

As a leader, you must always be keen to find new ways to enhance business performance and improve return on investment Creating an effective strategic framework is one effective way to boost performance and revenue generation.

You can use a strategic business unit plan to distinguish various product lines and increase market capitalization. Business units can help with brand recognition, market awareness, research and development, and market analysis if you plan to introduce new products or explore new markets.

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Home > Business Setup > How To Write An Effective One-Page Business Plan + Example

How To Write An Effective One-Page Business Plan + Example

Dec 5, 2023 | Business Setup

Crafting a one-page business plan is a strategic approach to successfully crystallising your business’s direction and objectives. It’s an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs who must communicate their vision and strategy quickly and clearly. In this compact format, every word counts, making it essential to focus on the essentials:

• Your vision
• Your mission
• Your target market
• Your competition
• Your products
• Your services
• Your financial projections

We will literally show you how to maximise your business plan to a single page- concise, consistent and creating your future!

Whether for internal guidance or external stakeholders, a well-structured one-page plan can align your team, attract investors, and be a powerful tool for business growth . This article delves into the intricacies of using one-page business plans and distilling your comprehensive business strategy into a concise, actionable document, ensuring that you keep your enterprise on course without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

Table of Contents

The Purpose of a One-Page Business Plan

A one-page business plan is a concise tool summarising your business’s goals, strategies, and actionable steps, all on a single page or sheet of paper. This streamlined document acts as a beacon, guiding you and your team toward achieving your business objectives. It’s the essence of your broader business strategy, offering a clear overview of where you’re headed and how you plan to get there. Unlike the lengthy traditional business plans, a one-page version is designed to provide just enough information to keep everyone on track without overwhelming them with details.

Simplifying Your Vision

In today’s business world, the concept of a Mission Statement has evolved into what’s now known as the Simplicity Vision Statement. This statement is your pledge to make your business processes and objectives straightforward. Crafting a Simplicity Vision Statement involves introspection and a clear grasp of the importance of simplification in reaching your strategic goals.

By answering critical questions about how simplification can benefit your company, you’ll create a statement that resonates with your team and drives them toward collective success. When each team member understands their role within the grand scheme of the company’s vision, it sets the stage for remarkable achievements.

Setting Clear Objectives

To build a solid one-page business plan , you need to intimately know your target market and the unique value of your product or service. This insight allows you to set realistic and achievable business goals. Including concrete figures related to costs and budgeting in your business plan template ensures that your objectives are grounded in reality.

For some entrepreneurs, it might be beneficial to start with a detailed business plan and then condense the essence of that business plan template into a one-page format. This ensures that the core objectives are clearly communicated and prioritised.

Communicating Your Business to Stakeholders

A one-page business plan isn’t just for internal use; it’s also an effective way to share your business concept with external stakeholders and investors . It backs up your claims with concise, current information, especially in areas like financial projections and marketing strategies. By choosing the most suitable business planning template for your needs and filling it with the latest data, you can quickly prepare a presentation that captures the essence of your business .

Getting to know the different templates available is key to figuring out the most effective way to share your business plan.

Aligning Your Team with Your Strategy

Achieving team alignment means ensuring all members, across various functions, are working together toward the shared vision and goals of the organisation. When a team is aligned, the benefits are numerous: productivity increases, communication improves, and employee engagement and retention improve. Decision-making speeds up, and the organisation becomes more agile in responding to external challenges.

The alignment process starts with clearly expressing the organisation’s purpose and strategy. By understanding your value proposition, you can more accurately predict the service business’s costs, revenue, and profitability . This, in turn, helps steer your team’s efforts toward the long-term strategic objectives of your business.

Essential Components of a One-Page Business Plan

Vision and mission statement.

Your vision and mission statement encapsulate your brand’s purpose and values , guiding your business’s trajectory. It should be a compelling declaration that encapsulates what your company stands for and seeks to achieve, resonating with both team members and customers.

Target Market and Competition Analysis

Understanding your ideal customer’s needs is crucial for tailoring your product development and marketing strategies. Market research , which includes gathering demographic information and employing direct research methods like surveys, is vital for validating market analysis and refining your business concept. A comprehensive competitive analysis is also imperative, offering insights into your competitors’ offerings, market segments, and positioning, which helps identify a competitive advantage.

Products and Services Overview

Here, you describe your offerings and their significance in the market. This part of the plan should highlight the distinctiveness of your products or services and their benefits to your business partners or target audience.

Marketing and Sales Strategies

This strategy outlines attracting and retaining customers , specifying the channels and messaging you’ll use. It should be aligned with the key elements of your sales strategies, which detail converting prospects into customers and the sales goals you intend to achieve.

Financial Projections

These projections are vital, offering a forecast of your business’s financial health. They should be based on historical data or realistic assumptions and include revenue, expenses, profit, and cash flow estimates . They are not only essential for internal planning but also for demonstrating your own business model’s potential to stakeholders.

Crafting Your Executive Summary

Capturing the essence of your business.

An executive summary is your business plan’s gateway, offering a condensed version of its contents. It’s vital to capture the essence of your business within this section, which should be at most two pages. Start your financial summary with a clear and concise mission statement that expresses your company’s purpose.

Follow these bullet points with a brief description of your business, including its location, how long it’s been operating, and the management team’s expertise. You need to convey the nature of your product or service and the market size it addresses. The executive summary is often the only part of your business plan that busy executives and potential investors will read, so it’s got to be compelling enough to encourage them to read further into your plan.

Highlighting Your Unique Value Proposition

Your executive summary must clearly set your business apart from the competition. This means summarising what makes your product or service unique and why it’s better than others in the market. It’s about more than what you do but how you do it differently or better.

This could be through innovation, customer service, a pricing strategy, or other unique selling points. Also, provide an overview of your sales projections and the financial requirements to launch and sustain your business. Use keywords strategically to enhance your business idea’s appeal and ensure that the language used speaks to your audience, whether they’re generalists or industry experts.

Defining Short-term and Long-term Goals

Setting clear business goals is key to your company’s direction and success. In your executive summary, outline both your short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals include immediate objectives like increasing customer satisfaction or expanding the team, which are often achievable within a year.

Long-term goals, however, reflect your vision of where you want the business to be in the future, such as achieving a certain market share or revenue target. These goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-related . By using frameworks like OKRs, you can have business plan templates set measurable goals and track progress with KPIs. This dual focus on immediate and future objectives ensures that your business plan is grounded in the present while also aiming for sustainable growth.

Strategies for Implementing Your Plan

Establishing milestones and metrics.

Establish milestones that delineate the path toward your objectives to ensure your one-page business plan translates into action. These should be specific, with a designated completion date, budget, and an assigned individual. Regular reviews of these milestones facilitate timely adjustments to your marketing plan and approach if necessary.

Metrics that reflect your strategic aims are equally critical. They might encompass objectives such as customer growth , product refinement, and brand development within a specified timeframe. Setting attainable milestones is crucial to maintain enthusiasm and prevent team burnout.

Prioritising these milestones will help you allocate resources wisely and propel your business towards success. Without them, your business lacks the necessary structure to navigate towards its goals.

Assigning Roles and Responsibilities

Defining roles and responsibilities is crucial for team efficiency. Utilising frameworks like the RASI chart can delineate these roles within your organisation. This clarity enhances productivity and job satisfaction, contributing to a more cohesive and effective team.

To establish these roles, consider your business’s specific needs and objectives. Define each role with a detailed description, required competencies, and associated key performance indicators (KPIs). This ensures that each team member contributes strategically to the business’s success. With these definitions in place, leaders can delegate effectively, ensuring that everyone understands their role in the broader context of the company’s objectives.

Budgeting and Resource Allocation

Effective budgeting and resource allocation are crucial for your business’s sustainability. Assess your available assets, including finances, time, and personnel, and distribute them in alignment with your strategic goals. Leveraging partnerships and outsourcing non-core activities can enhance efficiency and allow you to concentrate on your primary competencies.

Incorporating technology can streamline operations while engaging freelancers and contractors, providing agility and specialised expertise. Ensuring favourable payment terms with suppliers and prudent cash flow management are also essential for financial stability.

It’s important to remain flexible, continuously revising your resource distribution to adapt to industry dynamics and maintain your business’s competitive edge.

Tracking Progress and Adapting to Changes

Adopting a dynamic approach to monitoring progress is essential. This involves acknowledging completed milestones and evaluating outcomes against your initial plan. This comparison can reveal discrepancies and areas requiring improvement.

Maintaining transparent communication with your team and stakeholders about progress and any plan modifications fosters a collective dedication to the traditional business plan’s success and facilitates collaboration during periods of change.

As your business evolves and external conditions fluctuate, your one-page business plan should be updated accordingly. This entails reassessing and adjusting your strategies, roles, and resource distribution to ensure continued relevance and efficacy. By remaining vigilant and responsive, you can navigate your own single-page business plans through market complexities and achieve sustained growth and success.

Execute and Evolve Your Plan

Crafting a one-page business plan is more than a mere exercise in brevity; it’s a strategic tool that forges clarity, enables business owners and fosters decisive action within your team. Remember, this succinct plan articulates your business idea succinctly and provides a living document that should evolve with your business. The map directs you while allowing for detours as you navigate the ever-changing landscapes of the business world.

The effectiveness of your own single-page business plan also hinges on its implementation. Be tenacious yet flexible, regularly reviewing and revising your plan to stay aligned with both internal progress and external market dynamics. With your one-page business plan in hand, you’re equipped to chart a clear course to success, invite stakeholders on your journey, and pivot with purpose when the tides of business shift. Let it be your compass to guide your venture to new heights.

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How to Write a One-Page Business Plan

Noah Parsons

5 min. read

Updated January 30, 2024

What’s the most challenging part of writing a business plan? Getting started. That’s why you should create a one-page plan as a starting point.

The one-page business plan is simple to create, easy to update, and built for adaptation. It includes all of the essential components of a traditional plan but is far briefer and more focused.

Think of it like you’re tweeting about your business. You have a limited number of characters to work with and are intentionally making it easy to digest. If you need additional support, try downloading our free one-page plan template .

• What is a one-page business plan?

The one-page business plan is a simplified version of traditional operational plans that focuses on the core aspects of your business. While it may be a shorter business plan, it still follows the structure of a standard business plan  and serves as a beefed-up pitch document.

There’s really not a lot of difference between a single-page business plan and a good executive summary. In fact, as you create a more detailed plan you may even be able to use it as your executive summary .

• What to include in your one-page plan

Here are the eight necessary sections to include when developing your one-page business plan.

Try and keep each section limited to 1-2 sentences or 3-4 bullet points to ensure that you stay within one page. It’s always easier to add more later rather than cutting back from lengthy sections.

The problem

A description of the problem or need your customers have and any relevant data that supports your claim.

The solution

Your product or service and how it solves the problem.

Business model

How you will make money—including the costs of production and selling, and the price that customers will pay.

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Target market

Who is your customer and how many of them are there? Define your ideal customer by starting with a broad audience and narrowing it down. This provides investors with a clear picture of your thought process and understanding of the greater consumer market.

Competitive advantage

What makes you different from the competition? Explain how this will lead to greater success, customer loyalty, etc.

Management team

The management structure of your business, including currently filled roles, ideal candidates, and any management gaps.

Financial summary

Key financial metrics include your profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet, and sales forecast. This section may be the most difficult part to condense, so try and focus on visualization and standard business ratios to get the point across. You can always share broader financial information if requested.

Funding required

Have what funding total you need front and center to clearly display what you are asking from investors.

Why you should start with a one-page plan

There are plenty of good reasons to write a business plan . There are even more reasons why your first step should be writing a one-page plan.

1. It’s faster

Instead of slogging away for hours, days, or even weeks tackling a formal business plan—the one-page format helps you get your ideas down much faster. It removes the complex formatting,

2. A great format for feedback

Need quick feedback from business partners, colleagues, potential customers, or your spouse? Provide them with a one-page plan instead of a lengthy in-depth version for better results.

The one-page plan is more likely to be read and reviewed. And since all of your business information is available at a glance, you’ll receive far more valuable and timely feedback.

3. Easy to update

Entrepreneurs never get things right the first time. You’ll constantly be learning and receiving feedback—requiring you to iterate and revise your business concept. Instead of updating a large document every time, you can do it in minutes with a one-page plan.

4. Direct and to-the-point

Learning to communicate your ideas clearly and directly is critical. You need to be sure that anyone can really understand the essence of your business. Delivering your entire business concept on a single page is a great way to practice this, as it forces you to be succinct.

5. Works as an idea validation tool

Initially, your business is just a set of assumptions that you need to validate. Do your potential customers have the problem you assume they have? Do they like your solution and are they willing to pay for it? What marketing and sales tactics will work?

As you validate these assumptions, you leave them in your plan. But, assumptions that end up being wrong will quickly fall off the page.

6. Becomes an outline for your detailed plan

By “detailed” we don’t mean “long.” If you do need to create a detailed business plan document for investors or business partners, you can use your one-page plan as your core outline. You will just expand and provide more details for each section.

7. No one really reads long business plans

A common problem with traditional business plans is that they are simply too long and overly complex. Even when investors ask for a detailed document, chances are that they won’t actually read every word. They may read certain sections, but often just want to see if you’ve thought through the details of your business, how it will operate, and how it will grow.

8. Useful for any business stage

A one-page plan is useful for business owners that are mulling over ideas, just starting, actively managing, or looking to grow a business. It can help validate a business idea, work as an internal strategy document, or as a flexible management tool that can be adapted over time.

Resources to help write your one-page plan

Check out our guide for quickly writing a one-page plan and download our free one-page plan template to kickstart the writing process.

How to write your one-page plan in under an hour

Still feeling a bit overwhelmed about creating a business plan? Check out this step-by-step guide to write a useful one-page business plan in as little as 30 minutes.

One-page business plan template

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Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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• Why start with a one-page plan

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How to Write an Impressive One-Page Business Plan [Including Templates]

Written by: Olujinmi Oluwatoni

Looking to launch a startup or drive growth for an existing business?

A well-crafted business plan is a valuable roadmap that can increase your chances of success.

According to a survey by Bplans , companies that wrote business plans were twice more likely to expand their businesses, attract investors, or secure loans compared to those who didn't.

Unlike the traditional multi-page business plan, a one page business plan is concise and snackable. It helps you attract investor attention and quickly communicate your vision and strategies without boring them.

So how do you create an impressive one-page business plan?

In this article, we're going to provide you with practical insights on how to create a one-page business plan effectively. We'll also offer you some customizable templates that will jumpstart your planning journey.

Table of Contents

• What is a One-Page Business Plan

Benefits of Using a One-Page Business Plan

• What Should a One-Page Business Plan Include

How to Create a One-Page Business Plan

• 8 One-Page Business Plan Templates
• A one-page business plan is a concise document that provides a quick and clear overview of a business's core aspects.
• One-page business plans are faster to create, serve as an outline for a more comprehensive plan, make it easy to get feedback and are easy to modify and revise.
• Here are the key elements of a one-page business plan: The executive summary, business opportunity, value proposition, team members, industry analysis, target market, marketing plan, revenue model, implementation time, financial summary, funding requirements and contact information.
• To design a startup one pager, you should create an outline, research and gather information, choose a template, write the content, design visual components and share it with investors.
• Visme offers a user-friendly interface with a wide range of customizable templates and features that’ll help you create your one-page business plan seamlessly.

What Is a One-Page Business Plan?

A One-pager business plan is a concise document that summarizes the key elements of a business idea or venture. They serve as a streamlined version of traditional, comprehensive business plans .

With a one-page business plan, you can distill your value proposition, target market, market analysis, strategies and projections on a single page. It is especially useful when seeking to secure funding as it offers a brief overview that can be quickly delivered to stakeholders and investors.

One pager business plans can also be considered a strategy manual for you, your team or any other outside party that wants to gain insight into what your business does.

Here's why creating a one-page business plan is beneficial:

Time Efficiency

Creating a comprehensive, multi-page business plan can take a lot of time and be daunting, especially for business people who have a lot on their plates.

A one-page business plan provides a more time-effective option that enables business owners to describe their business plans without getting bogged down in pointless details.

Investor Engagement

Attracting the attention of investors is difficult since they are always flooded with company pitches.

However, a visually appealing and outstanding one-page business plan can stick out like a beacon. By leveraging the brevity of a one-pager plan, you can pique an investor’s interest by communicating your business potential in a concise manner.

Outline For More Comprehensive Plan

When developing a traditional, in-depth business plan, one-page business plans serve as excellent starting points. It is useful for sketching out concepts before committing significant time to writing a detailed business plan that you'll likely need to revise.

Once you've finished your one-page plan and are satisfied with it, you'll have the right foundation on which to build a more comprehensive version.

Easy to Share and Distribute

One-page documents can be easily shared via print, internet, email, and social media channels.

It's also a handy tool for entrepreneurs to use while presenting their company at conferences or meeting with potential investors. This adaptability makes it easy to share your business idea with stakeholders and investors in a targeted manner.

What Should a One-Page Business Plan Include?

Whether you're in the early stages of developing your business, looking to maintain the growth of your already established business or seeking expansion, your one-page business plan should comprise the following essential elements:

Executive Summary

An executive summary gives an overview of your business story. It is the part of the report where you hook the reader's attention and give a brief overview of your business essence. Your executive summary should be concise and no longer than two sentences.

The Business Opportunity

This section should clearly articulate the precise problem your venture is setting out to solve. You should clearly state the pain points and challenges that your potential users or customers currently face.

Let’s say you’re writing a plan for a logistics software company. Your business opportunity section could look like this:

Many businesses struggle with the complex task of optimizing delivery routes for their fleet, leading to increased fuel costs, longer delivery times, and decreased customer satisfaction. Existing route planning methods often lack real-time updates and fail to account for variables like traffic, weather, and delivery windows. This results in suboptimal routes and operational inefficiencies that hinder businesses from delivering their products in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Value Proposition

In this section of your one-pager, you should briefly describe the unique value of your product and how your company sets out to solve the identified problem.

Using the example above, here’s a value proposition:

Our cutting-edge software harnesses the power of real-time data, predictive analytics, and advanced algorithms to create optimal delivery routes on the fly. By taking into account variables such as live traffic updates, weather conditions, delivery windows, and vehicle capacities, we ensure that every route is not only the shortest, but also the most time-sensitive and cost-effective option available.

Team Members

This is the driving force behind any successful venture. Introduce the key individuals running the operations of the business, including their qualifications and core competencies.

Industry Analysis

Briefly identify your competitors and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Delve into their market share if the space permits.

But most importantly, take the opportunity to emphasize your own competitive advantage. Highlight what sets your business apart from competitors, whether it's unique features, pricing strategy, technology, or other factors.

Target Market

This section should highlight the specific audience or customer segment that your business is aiming to serve. You can include the following specifics when talking about your target audience:

• Geographic location
• Target market size
• Demographics such as age, income, and lifestyle.
• Spending habits

Marketing Plan

This part of the business plan explains how you'll promote your goods and services, generate consumer demand and meet it. You should include information such as your marketing channels and promotional strategy.

Revenue Model

You should explain how your business generates or plans to generate income in this section. Highlight your pricing and revenue strategy, whether it is subscription-based, pay-per-use, advertising, licensing or freemium models.

Implementation Timeline

How will you roll out the business and which phases will be involved? Briefly talk about these roadmaps in this section. You can utilize a visual aid such as a chart, graph or map to provide a clear picture of your implementation timeline.

Financial Summary

Your financial summary section should highlight your vital financial indicators such as profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet and sales projections.

For enhanced comprehension, consider incorporating visual aids to convey the financial data in this section. Fortunately, Visme offers a diverse range of data visualization tools that you can use to visualize various types of data.

Funding Required

In this section, specify the amount of funding you are seeking from potential investors. You should also specify the aspects of your business that the funding will support. Clearly stating your financial needs demonstrates your thoughtfulness in resource allocation.

Contact Information

Include contact details at the end of your plan. This will allow potential investors, partners, customers, and other stakeholders to easily reach out for inquiries, collaborations, or further discussions.

Depending on your purpose for writing this plan, you could leave out certain of the points listed above from your one-page business plan.

Create an Outline

First, list out the essential parts of your business plan. Rank the components and select the ones that are most relevant to your business plan. Then use that to develop an outline.

Research And Gather Information

After determining the sections your one-page business plan should have, the next thing you need to do is gather the information required to fill them.

This may require you to conduct a study on your target demographics, collate past financial statements and identify current market trends. You might also need to conduct customer surveys, analyze competitor performance and collect quotes/estimates for future costs.

The goal of a one-page plan is not to sacrifice accuracy or specificity on the altar of conciseness. So just as with a full-fledged business plan, creating a one-page business plan requires thorough research.

Use a One-Page Business Plan Template

Creating business plans from scratch can prove laborious, especially if you're not a professional designer. However, you can skip all of that grunt work with Visme.

You can choose a template from Visme's collection of one-page business plan templates and adapt it to your specific requirements. Modify the background colors, texts, pictures and font colors, among other things, to reflect your brand identity and taste.

With Visme’s Brand Wizard , you can have all vital brand assets from your website automatically imported into your workspace and applied to every asset you create. Plus, Visme’s sharing and collaboration options make it convenient for teams to work together on creating concise and impactful one-pagers.

Hear what one of our customers has to say about Visme:

“You stumble on some templates and you’re blown away that someone put in such time and effort into creating them. You did not know you needed them in your life until that minute.”

Lorens | Graphic Designer

Write the Content

Condense the gathered information to its core essentials and insert them into the relevant sections that you have previously outlined in step one. Keep each section concise, using no more than two to 3 brief sentences or a bullet list of 2 to 3 key points.

It's important to be mindful of the length here, as trimming down your content when it extends past a single page might be challenging.

Design Visual Components

After filling in all of the text, you might want to add some visual elements to the plan to effectively illustrate information or data.

For instance, you may choose to present market share with the use of a pie chart or depict financial summary using a bar chart, graph or any other data visualization tool. Adding visual components not only makes your design more compelling but can also be an efficient way to manage the space on your page.

Some other visuals you can include are stock photos, 3D graphics, icons, shapes, characters and avatars, ai-generated images, videos and animated graphics.

Share Your One-Pager

It's time to show prospective investors your one-pager now that it's finished. You can download or share the document in a number of ways with Visme.

If your one pager has interactive features, here are some options available to you:

• Download as an HTML5 file
• Share via a private link with password access
• Share via a public link
• Send an invitation with a link
• Embed into a website with a snippet code

However, if it's a static document, you can download it as a PDF or an image or share it right on social media.

8 One Page Business Plan Templates

One page business plan.

Crafted to cater to the needs of both startups and established enterprises, this template will help you pitch investors in a clear and succinct way. From your value proposition to target audience, revenue model and key metrics, every vital detail finds its place.

Just like every other Visme template, this design may be customized in every way imaginable. Insert your company's colors, logo, icons and images into the design to give it a more personalized feel.

If you would like to change the custom images, you can utilize Visme’s AI image generator to create new professional images of your choice or improve on existing ones. Simply type your prompts and watch the magic happen in seconds.

Retail Business One Pager Proposal

Whether you're launching a new retail endeavor or refining an existing one, this template is your key to capturing attention and securing support.

Effortlessly communicate your store's vision, unique selling points, target market and sales strategy in a visually compelling format.

Struggling with content? With Visme's built-in AI writer , creating content is a breeze. This tool's sophisticated text creation, modification and proofreading features will help you save time and energy while producing high-quality work.

Sales Business Plan One Pager

Whether you're seeking investors, aligning your team, or optimizing your sales approach, this template is your go-to solution.

Use this nifty template to put up a professional-looking presentation of your company's data, products and services and more. Also included are sections in which you may provide details about your business, its offerings, special features, statistics and more.

With its eye-catching design, you can present your strategies and numbers in a way that captures the reader's attention instantly.

Use Visme's interactive features , such as clickable buttons and links, to pique the interest of your audience and encourage them to learn more.

Finance Business Plan One Pager

Attract potential investors and partners to your finance business with this stunning one pager template.

Lay out your financial strategies, whether it's investment management, financial consulting, or any other niche. Showcase how you'll stand out in a competitive landscape.

This well-designed one-pager incorporates charts, graphs and visuals to make your financial projections and strategies even more compelling. Investors and stakeholders will be impressed by your data-driven approach.

To quickly find design elements in the Visme editor, use the shortcut key. With a simple click of the forward-slash (/), you can conduct a targeted search or quickly skim through the available options.

Marketing Business Plan One-Pager

Provide your audience with a comprehensive overview of your marketing approach without overwhelming them by using this template. Showcase your target audience, unique value proposition, distribution channels and key performance metrics in a visually compelling format.

Make use of visual aids like charts and graphs to communicate your findings from market research, analysis of the competition and growth estimates. Backed by data, you'll command attention from investors and partners eager to join your journey.

You can also include a link to an explainer video that demonstrates the value you provide. Create videos with ease using Visme and store related files in dedicated brand folders for easy access.

Retail Business Start-Up One Pager

Whether you're seeking investment, sharing your vision with potential partners, or mapping out your start-up strategy, this template offers a way to make a compelling case.

With a focus on clarity, this start-up one pager template enables you to present your business concept, target market, product offerings and initial financial projections on a single, engaging page.

You can keep track of the data for each one pager you send out using Visme analytics . More precise activity tracking is possible when you customize each document and save it separately with the prospect's name.

Tech Business Plan One-Pager

Whether you're seeking funding, aligning your team, or refining your tech strategy, this simple one-pager template is your ultimate tool.

Utilize this template to showcase your product/service, target market, technology stack and key milestones in a visually compelling format.

You can download your design as a JPG, PNG, or PDF to print or share with your team members for collaboration. Sharing Visme projects through live links allows you to track who accessed your work using Visme’s analytics.

Ecommerce Business Plan One-Pager

The vibrant color used in this design is sure to catch the eye of your audience right away. This makes it an excellent option for showcasing the worth of your eCommerce solution to potential investors or business associates.

This one-pager touches on your product range, market analysis, marketing strategy and analysis in a visually captivating format.

Using Visme's collaboration features , you may swiftly solicit input from your partners or mentors while controlling permissions to edit or comment.

To add people to your workspace, follow the short tutorial video below.

Create Winning Business Plans with Visme

One-page business plans are great because they force you to distill your ideas and goals into concise and focused points. This brevity makes it easier to communicate your vision to investors, track progress and adapt to changes quickly.

Creating a professional one-page business plan is seamless with Visme. You can access a wide range of customizable templates, graphics to effectively convey the plan and impress your audience.

Visme's real-time collaboration tools and flexible sharing options allow you to effectively involve all relevant parties in developing and communicating your business plan, even when you're not physically together.

Apart from one-pager business plans, you can make all types of business one pagers , pitch decks, proposals , reports and all kinds of business content in minutes with Visme.

Sign up for Visme today to start creating excellent and compelling business content that’ll help you achieve your business goals.

Create winning one-page business plans with Visme

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Olujinmi is a Content writer for Visme who creates human-first SEO content. She loves helping businesses smash their ROI goals with strategic content development and optimization. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her composing songs.

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A One Page Strategic Business Plan is not a ‘one-hour strategic business plan.’ Each element should be researched and considered to ensure you are giving the business the best chance of success.

Our One Page Strategic Business Plan Template can be used either as a stand-alone document or as an executive summary.

We have developed a guide to support you complete our Strategic Business Plan Template. This includes the following sections:

• Business Purpose = why you exist
• Situation Analysis = what’s happening externally and internally
• Business Priorities = what’s most important
• Future goal = what does the big picture success look like?
• Business Objectives = the results you want to achieve in 1-3 years
• Strategies = management decisions to achieve the objectives

What is a Strategic Business Plan?

A strategic business plan considers three key questions:

• What is the purpose of the business – why do you exist?
• What does success look like for the business – what do you want to achieve?
• How will you achieve success – what decisions need to be made.

Thus, a strategic business plan simply defines what the company wants to achieve and how they intend to achieve it – without compromising its purpose or priorities.

When building the plan, what is left out is just as important as what is included. This creates a focus for business owners and can increase their chance of reaching their main goal.

Is a Strategic Business Plan different to a Business Plan?

Yes. A strategic plan is essentially the “thinking” document. It is a series of decisions made by the business owner and/or management team which guides the “doing”. A business plan (which we refer to as an operational plan) is the implementation side.

Under our model, we recommend businesses have only one overarching strategic plan, with a series of operational plans suited to the business needs. For example, a retail business may have an operational plan, a marketing and communications plan and an employee & WHS plan. However, all these plans should support the overarching Strategic Business Plan.

Our One Page Strategic Business Plan Guide

Our One Page Strategic Business Plan Template has six sections to complete and is to be used as a guide for business owners, consultants, and advisors. Based on the business’s industry and current business model, the one-page plan may require more elements or customisation.

Further, some consultants may use different terminology to The Benchmarking Group, therefore, please follow the below guide to ensure you understand our template.

1. Business Purpose = why you exist

The business purpose is the long-term vision for the business. It captures why the business exists and includes two key elements:

• VISION : the ideal world your business is trying to create
• MISSION : what you aim to achieve every day

The vision should be an aspirational statement that is ultimately the result of 100% of your market using your product or service. For example, a fitness company may have a vision statement as: for all Australians to be at their peak physical fitness.

Whereas a mission is what you aim to achieve every day. Therefore, the same company may have a mission to: optimise a client’s fitness journey through one-on-one training.

2. Situation Analysis = what’s happening externally and internally

The situational analysis is a summary of research undertaken. Our model includes four elements:

• INDUSTRY OPPORTUNITY : what are the key trends happening within the industry that will impact the business? For example, are businesses investing in more innovative technologies? Has there been an increase in the number of businesses? Is there a decline in businesses? In addition, this section reviews external influences impacting the industry, such as: have there been government incentives to grow the industry or what impact has COVID had?
• MARKET NEED : who is the target market segment and what problem/s is your business trying to solve for them?
• COMPANY ABILITY: consider your business strengths and your competitor strengths. What do you do well? What do your competitors do better?
• BUSINESS POSITION : a ‘starting point’ for your plan. The items to insert can be changed pending the business focus. We have suggested reviewing customers/people and the businesses financial position.

3. Business Priorities = what’s most important

Unlike business objectives, priorities are big focus areas that are not designed to be measured. They should reflect what is most important to the company, the brand and align with the overall vision and mission. They set boundaries which can guide business decision making. Examples of priorities may be:

• Launching into export markets
• New innovative product range/s
• Becoming an employer of choice
• Diversifying revenue streams
• Excellence in customer service

Priorities should not be time-bound; however, they should be reviewed annually to ensure they are still relevant.

4. Future goal = what does the big picture success look like?

A Future Goal is a 5-10 year goal the business aims to achieve. It should be challenging, but realistic. The point of a larger goal is to give the business a long term planning target – rather than shorter 1-3 year objectives. However, the goal should be the result of the business achieving its objectives.

Examples of Future Goals may be:

• Achieve $10m net profit in 10 years
• Sell business for $2m in 5 years
• Have 1000 subscribers by 2030

5. Business Objectives = the results you want to achieve in 1-3 years

Our model uses SMART Objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. We recommend setting objectives for 1-3years to ensure there is ample time to achieve, yet not so long they become redundant. We recommend setting 3-5 objectives only.

See our guide on Setting SMART Objectives or visit our examples of 50 SMART Objectives for ideas.

6. Strategies = management decisions to achieve the objectives

The word strategy can be confusing in business planning. To clarify, the Strategic Business Plan is the overall document which considers why the company exists and what it wants to achieve.

The Strategies that are within the document relate directly to the objectives. For each objective, there should be 3-5 related strategies.

They are decisions made to give the company the best chance of achieving the objectives. Strategies must be clear and highlight a choice that has been made. In other words, a strategy should also define what is NOT being done. For example, if a professional services firm has an objective to increase revenue by 20% over the next 12months, they may have strategies to:

• Improve customer retention via a targeted engagement campaign/s
• Focus on cross-selling services to existing customers
• Expand network marketing efforts to grow potential leads
• Reduce number of price discounts given and focus on value-added services.

Once these decisions are made, teams can begin building the implementation plan – which is the daily actions/tasks they do.

Our Benchmark Suite can help you build your client’s Strategic Plan. Find out how!

See our Business Benchmark Report inclusions here.

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How to Write a Business Plan (Plus Examples & Templates)

Have you ever wondered how to write a business plan step by step? Mike Andes, told us: 

This guide will help you write a business plan to impress investors.

Throughout this process, we’ll get information from Mike Andes, who started Augusta Lawn Care Services when he was 12 and turned it into a franchise with over 90 locations. He has gone on to help others learn how to write business plans and start businesses.  He knows a thing or two about writing  business plans!

We’ll start by discussing the definition of a business plan. Then we’ll discuss how to come up with the idea, how to do the market research, and then the important elements in the business plan format. Keep reading to start your journey!

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is simply a road map of what you are trying to achieve with your business and how you will go about achieving it. It should cover all elements of your business including: 

• Finding customers
• Plans for developing a team
•  Competition
• Legal structures
• Key milestones you are pursuing

If you aren’t quite ready to create a business plan, consider starting by reading our business startup guide .

Get a Business Idea

Before you can write a business plan, you have to have a business idea. You may see a problem that needs to be solved and have an idea how to solve it, or you might start by evaluating your interests and skills. 

Mike told us, “The three things I suggest asking yourself when thinking about starting a business are:

• What am I good at?
• What would I enjoy doing?
• What can I get paid for?”

If all three of these questions don’t lead to at least one common answer, it will probably be a much harder road to success. Either there is not much market for it, you won’t be good at it, or you won’t enjoy doing it. 

As Mike told us, “There’s enough stress starting and running a business that if you don’t like it or aren’t good at it, it’s hard to succeed.”

If you’d like to hear more about Mike’s approach to starting a business, check out our YouTube video

Conduct Market Analysis

Market analysis is focused on establishing if there is a target market for your products and services, how large the target market is, and identifying the demographics of people or businesses that would be interested in the product or service. The goal here is to establish how much money your business concept can make.

Product and Service Demand

A search engine is your best friend when trying to figure out if there is demand for your products and services. Personally, I love using presearch.org because it lets you directly search on a ton of different platforms including Google, Youtube, Twitter, and more. Check out the screenshot for the full list of search options.

With quick web searches, you can find out how many competitors you have, look through their reviews, and see if there are common complaints about the competitors. Bad reviews are a great place to find opportunities to offer better products or services. 

If there are no similar products or services, you may have stumbled upon something new, or there may just be no demand for it. To find out, go talk to your most honest friend about the idea and see what they think. If they tell you it’s dumb or stare at you vacantly, there’s probably no market for it.

You can also conduct a survey through social media to get public opinion on your idea. Using Facebook Business Manager , you could get a feel for who would be interested in your product or service.

 I ran a quick test of how many people between 18-65  you could reach in the U.S. during a week. It returned an estimated 700-2,000 for the total number of leads, which is enough to do a fairly accurate statistical analysis.

Identify Demographics of Target Market

Depending on what type of business you want to run, your target market will be different. The narrower the demographic, the fewer potential customers you’ll have. If you did a survey, you’ll be able to use that data to help define your target audience. Some considerations you’ll want to consider are:

• Other Interests
• Marital Status
• Do they have kids?

Once you have this information, it can help you narrow down your options for location and help define your marketing further. One resource that Mike recommended using is the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts Map . He told us,  

“It helps you quickly evaluate what the best areas are for your business to be located.”

How to Write a Business Plan

Now that you’ve developed your idea a little and established there is a market for it, you can begin writing a business plan. Getting started is easier with the business plan template we created for you to download. I strongly recommend using it as it is updated to make it easier to create an action plan. 

Each of the following should be a section of your business plan:

• Business Plan Cover Page
• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Description of Products and Services

SWOT Analysis

• Competitor Data
• Competitive Analysis
• Marketing Expenses Strategy 

Pricing Strategy

• Distribution Channel Assessment
• Operational Plan
• Management and Organizational Strategy
• Financial Statements and/or Financial Projections

We’ll look into each of these. Don’t forget to download our free business plan template (mentioned just above) so you can follow along as we go. 

How to Write a Business Plan Step 1. Create a Cover Page

The first thing investors will see is the cover page for your business plan. Make sure it looks professional. A great cover page shows that you think about first impressions.

A good business plan should have the following elements on a cover page:

• Professionally designed logo
• Company name
• Mission or Vision Statement
• Contact Info

Basically, think of a cover page for your business plan like a giant business card. It is meant to capture people’s attention but be quickly processed.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 2. Create a Table of Contents

Most people are busy enough that they don’t have a lot of time. Providing a table of contents makes it easy for them to find the pages of your plan that are meaningful to them.

A table of contents will be immediately after the cover page, but you can include it after the executive summary. Including the table of contents immediately after the executive summary will help investors know what section of your business plan they want to review more thoroughly.

Check out Canva’s article about creating a  table of contents . It has a ton of great information about creating easy access to each section of your business plan. Just remember that you’ll want to use different strategies for digital and hard copy business plans.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 3. Write an Executive Summary

An executive summary is where your business plan should catch the readers interest.  It doesn’t need to be long, but should be quick and easy to read.

Mike told us,

How long should an executive summary bein an informal business plan?

For casual use, an executive summary should be similar to an elevator pitch, no more than 150-160 words, just enough to get them interested and wanting more. Indeed has a great article on elevator pitches .  This can also be used for the content of emails to get readers’ attention.

It consists of three basic parts:

• An introduction to you and your business.
• What your business is about.
• A call to action

Example of an informal executive summary 

One of the best elevator pitches I’ve used is:

So far that pitch has achieved a 100% success rate in getting partnerships for the business.

What should I include in an executive summary for investors?

Investors are going to need a more detailed executive summary if you want to secure financing or sell equity. The executive summary should be a brief overview of your entire business plan and include:

• Introduction of yourself and company.
• An origin story (Recognition of a problem and how you came to solution)
• An introduction to your products or services.
• Your unique value proposition. Make sure to include intellectual property.
• Where you are in the business life cycle
• Request and why you need it.

Successful business plan examples

The owner of Urbanity told us he spent 2 months writing a 75-page business plan and received a $250,000 loan from the bank when he was 23. Make your business plan as detailed as possible when looking for financing. We’ve provided a template to help you prepare the portions of a business plan that banks expect.

Here’s the interview with the owner of Urbanity:

When to write an executive summary?

Even though the summary is near the beginning of a business plan, you should write it after you complete the rest of a business plan. You can’t talk about revenue, profits, and expected expenditures if you haven’t done the market research and created a financial plan.

What mistakes do people make when writing an executive summary?

Business owners commonly go into too much detail about the following items in an executive summary:

• Marketing and sales processes
• Financial statements
• Organizational structure
• Market analysis

These are things that people will want to know later, but they don’t hook the reader. They won’t spark interest in your small business, but they’ll close the deal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 4. Company Description

Every business plan should include a company description. A great business plan will include the following elements while describing the company:

• Mission statement
• Philosophy and vision
• Company goals

Target market

• Legal structure

Let’s take a look at what each section includes in a good business plan.

Mission Statement

A mission statement is a brief explanation of why you started the company and what the company’s main focus is. It should be no more than one or two sentences. Check out HubSpot’s article 27 Inspiring Mission Statement for a great read on informative and inspiring mission and vision statements. 

Company Philosophy and Vision

The company philosophy is what drives your company. You’ll normally hear them called core values.  These are the building blocks that make your company different. You want to communicate your values to customers, business owners, and investors as often as possible to build a company culture, but make sure to back them up.

What makes your company different?

Each company is different. Your new business should rise above the standard company lines of honesty, integrity, fun, innovation, and community when communicating your business values. The standard answers are corporate jargon and lack authenticity. 

Examples of core values

One of my clients decided to add a core values page to their website. As a tech company they emphasized the values:

•  Prioritize communication.
•  Never stop learning.
•  Be transparent.
•  Start small and grow incrementally.

These values communicate how the owner and the rest of the company operate. They also show a value proposition and competitive advantage because they specifically focus on delivering business value from the start. These values also genuinely show what the company is about and customers recognize the sincerity. Indeed has a great blog about how to identify your core values .

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement communicate the long lasting change a business pursues. The vision helps investors and customers understand what your company is trying to accomplish. The vision statement goes beyond a mission statement to provide something meaningful to the community, customer’s lives, or even the world.

Example vision statements

The Alzheimer’s Association is a great example of a vision statement:

A world without Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia.

It clearly tells how they want to change the world. A world without Alzheimers might be unachievable, but that means they always have room for improvement.

Business Goals

You have to measure success against goals for a business plan to be meaningful. A business plan helps guide a company similar to how your GPS provides a road map to your favorite travel destination. A goal to make as much money as possible is not inspirational and sounds greedy.

Sure, business owners want to increase their profits and improve customer service, but they need to present an overview of what they consider success. The goals should help everyone prioritize their work.

How far in advance should a business plan?

Business planning should be done at least one year in advance, but many banks and investors prefer three to five year business plans. Longer plans show investors that the management team  understands the market and knows the business is operating in a constantly shifting market. In addition, a plan helps businesses to adjust to changes because they have already considered how to handle them.

Example of great business goals

My all time-favorite long-term company goals are included in Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux . These goals were written in 2016 and drive the company’s decisions through 2026. They are the reason that investors are so forgiving when Elon Musk continually fails to meet his quarterly and annual goals.

If the progress aligns with the business plan investors are likely to continue to believe in the company. Just make sure the goals are reasonable or you’ll be discredited (unless you’re Elon Musk).

You did target market research before creating a business plan. Now it’s time to add it to the plan so others understand what your ideal customer looks like. As a new business owner, you may not be considered an expert in your field yet, so document everything. Make sure the references you use are from respectable sources. 

Use information from the specific lender when you are applying for lending. Most lenders provide industry research reports and using their data can strengthen the position of your business plan.

A small business plan should include a section on the external environment. Understanding the industry is crucial because we don’t plan a business in a vacuum. Make sure to research the industry trends, competitors, and forecasts. I personally prefer IBIS World for my business research. Make sure to answer questions like:

• What is the industry outlook long-term and short-term?
• How will your business take advantage of projected industry changes and trends?
• What might happen to your competitors and how will your business successfully compete?

Industry resources

Some helpful resources to help you establish more about your industry are:

• Trade Associations
• Federal Reserve
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

Legal Structure

There are five basic types of legal structures that most people will utilize:

• Sole proprietorships
• Limited Liability Companies (LLC)

Partnerships

Corporations.

• Franchises.

Each business structure has their pros and cons. An LLC is the most common legal structure due to its protection of personal assets and ease of setting up. Make sure to specify how ownership is divided and what roles each owner plays when you have more than one business owner.

You’ll have to decide which structure is best for you, but we’ve gathered information on each to make it easier.

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship is the easiest legal structure to set up but doesn’t protect the owner’s personal assets from legal issues. That means if something goes wrong, you could lose both your company and your home.

To start a sole proprietorship, fill out a special tax form called a  Schedule C . Sole proprietors can also join the American Independent Business Alliance .

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

An LLC is the most common business structure used in the United States because an LLC protects the owner’s personal assets. It’s similar to partnerships and corporations, but can be a single-member LLC in most states. An LLC requires a document called an operating agreement.

Each state has different requirements. Here’s a link to find your state’s requirements . Delaware and Nevada are common states to file an LLC because they are really business-friendly. Here’s a blog on the top 10 states to get an LLC.

Partnerships are typically for legal firms. If you choose to use a partnership choose a Limited Liability Partnership. Alternatively, you can just use an LLC.

Corporations are typically for massive organizations. Corporations have taxes on both corporate and income tax so unless you plan on selling stock, you are better off considering an LLC with S-Corp status . Investopedia has good information corporations here .

There are several opportunities to purchase successful franchises. TopFranchise.com has a list of companies in a variety of industries that offer franchise opportunities. This makes it where an entrepreneur can benefit from the reputation of an established business that has already worked out many of the kinks of starting from scratch.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 5. Products and Services

This section of the business plan should focus on what you sell, how you source it, and how you sell it. You should include:

• Unique features that differentiate your business products from competitors
• Intellectual property
• Your supply chain
• Cost and pricing structure 

Questions to answer about your products and services

Mike gave us a list  of the most important questions to answer about your product and services:

• How will you be selling the product? (in person, ecommerce, wholesale, direct to consumer)?
• How do you let them know they need a product?
• How do you communicate the message?
• How will you do transactions?
• How much will you be selling it for?
• How many do you think you’ll sell and why?

Make sure to use the worksheet on our business plan template .

How to Write a Business Plan Step 6. Sales and Marketing Plan

The marketing and sales plan is focused on the strategy to bring awareness to your company and guides how you will get the product to the consumer.  It should contain the following sections:

SWOT Analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not only do you want to identify them, but you also want to document how the business plans to deal with them.

Business owners need to do a thorough job documenting how their service or product stacks up against the competition.

If proper research isn’t done, investors will be able to tell that the owner hasn’t researched the competition and is less likely to believe that the team can protect its service from threats by the more well-established competition. This is one of the most common parts of a presentation that trips up business owners presenting on Shark Tank .

SWOT Examples

Examples of strengths and weaknesses could be things like the lack of cash flow, intellectual property ownership, high costs of suppliers, and customers’ expectations on shipping times.

Opportunities could be ways to capitalize on your strengths or improve your weaknesses, but may also be gaps in the industry. This includes:

• Adding offerings that fit with your current small business
• Increase sales to current customers
• Reducing costs through bulk ordering
• Finding ways to reduce inventory
•  And other areas you can improve

Threats will normally come from outside of the company but could also be things like losing a key member of the team. Threats normally come from competition, regulations, taxes, and unforeseen events.

The management team should use the SWOT analysis to guide other areas of business planning, but it absolutely has to be done before a business owner starts marketing. 

Include Competitor Data in Your Business Plan

When you plan a business, taking into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to navigating the field. Providing an overview of your competition and where they are headed shows that you are invested in understanding the industry.

For smaller businesses, you’ll want to search both the company and the owners names to see what they are working on. For publicly held corporations, you can find their quarterly and annual reports on the SEC website .

What another business plans to do can impact your business. Make sure to include things that might make it attractive for bigger companies to outsource to a small business.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing and sales part of business plans should be focused on how you are going to make potential customers aware of your business and then sell to them.

If you haven’t already included it, Mike recommends:

“They’ll want to know about Demographics, ages, and wealth of your target market.”

Make sure to include the Total addressable market .  The term refers to the value if you captured 100% of the market.

Advertising Strategy

You’ll explain what formats of advertising you’ll be using. Some possibilities are:

• Online: Facebook and Google are the big names to work with here.
• Print : Print can be used to reach broad groups or targeted markets. Check out this for tips .
• Radio : iHeartMedia is one of the best ways to advertise on the radio
• Cable television : High priced, hard to measure ROI, but here’s an explanation of the process
• Billboards: Attracting customers with billboards can be beneficial in high traffic areas.

You’ll want to define how you’ll be using each including frequency, duration, and cost. If you have the materials already created, including pictures or links to the marketing to show creative assets.

Mike told us “Most businesses are marketing digitally now due to Covid, but that’s not always the right answer.”

Make sure the marketing strategy will help team members or external marketing agencies stay within the brand guidelines .

This section of a business plan should be focused on pricing. There are a ton of pricing strategies that may work for different business plans. Which one will work for you depends on what kind of a business you run.

Some common pricing strategies are:

• Value-based pricing – Commonly used with home buying and selling or other products that are status symbols.
• Skimming pricing – Commonly seen in video game consoles, price starts off high to recoup expenses quickly, then reduces over time.
• Competition-based pricing – Pricing based on competitors’ pricing is commonly seen at gas stations.
• Freemium services –  Commonly used for software, where there is a free plan, then purchase options for more functionality.

HubSpot has a great calculator and blog on pricing strategies.

Beyond explaining what strategy your business plans to use, you should include references for how you came to this pricing strategy and how it will impact your cash flow.

Distribution Plan

This part of a business plan is focused on how the product or service is going to go through the supply chain. These may include multiple divisions or multiple companies. Make sure to include any parts of the workflow that are automated so investors can see where cost savings are expected and when.

Supply Chain Examples

For instance, lawn care companies  would need to cover aspects such as:

• Suppliers for lawn care equipment and tools
• Any chemicals or treatments needed
• Repair parts for sprinkler systems
• Vehicles to transport equipment and employees
• Insurance to protect the company vehicles and people.

Examples of Supply Chains

These are fairly flat supply chains compared to something like a clothing designer where the clothes would go through multiple vendors. A clothing company might have the following supply chain:

• Raw materials
• Shipping of raw materials
• Converting of raw materials to thread
• Shipping thread to produce garments
• Garment producer
• Shipping to company
• Company storage
• Shipping to retail stores

There have been advances such as print on demand that eliminate many of these steps. If you are designing completely custom clothing, all of this would need to be planned to keep from having business disruptions.

The main thing to include in the business plan is the list of suppliers, the path the supply chain follows, the time from order to the customer’s home, and the costs associated with each step of the process.

According to BizPlanReview , a business plan without this information is likely to get rejected because they have failed to research the key elements necessary to make sales to the customer.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 7. Company Organization and Operational Plan

This part of the business plan is focused on how the business model will function while serving customers.  The business plan should provide an overview of  how the team will manage the following aspects:

Quality Control

• Legal environment

Let’s look at each for some insight.

Production has already been discussed in previous sections so I won’t go into it much. When writing a business plan for investors, try to avoid repetition as it creates a more simple business plan.

If the organizational plan will be used by the team as an overview of how to perform the best services for the customer, then redundancy makes more sense as it communicates what is important to the business.

Quality control policies help to keep the team focused on how to verify that the company adheres to the business plan and meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Quality control can be anything from a standard that says “all labels on shirts can be no more than 1/16″ off center” to a defined checklist of steps that should be performed and filled out for every customer.

There are a variety of organizations that help define quality control including:

• International Organization for Standardization – Quality standards for energy, technology, food, production environments, and cybersecurity
• AICPA – Standard defined for accounting.
• The Joint Commission – Healthcare
• ASHRAE – HVAC best practices

You can find lists of the organizations that contribute most to the government regulation of industries on Open Secrets . Research what the leaders in your field are doing. Follow their example and implement it in your quality control plan.

For location, you should use information from the market research to establish where the location will be. Make sure to include the following in the location documentation.

• The size of your location
• The type of building (retail, industrial, commercial, etc.)
• Zoning restrictions – Urban Wire has a good map on how zoning works in each state
• Accessibility – Does it meet ADA requirements?
• Costs including rent, maintenance, utilities, insurance and any buildout or remodeling costs
• Utilities – b.e.f. has a good energy calculator .

Legal Environment

The legal requirement section is focused on defining how to meet the legal requirements for your industry. A good business plan should include all of the following:

• Any licenses and/or permits that are needed and whether you’ve obtained them
• Any trademarks, copyrights, or patents that you have or are in the process of applying for
• The insurance coverage your business requires and how much it costs
• Any environmental, health, or workplace regulations affecting your business
• Any special regulations affecting your industry
• Bonding requirements, if applicable

Your local SBA office can help you establish requirements in your area. I strongly recommend using them. They are a great resource.

Your business plan should include a plan for company organization and hiring. While you may be the only person with the company right now, down the road you’ll need more people. Make sure to consider and document the answers to the following questions:

• What is the current leadership structure and what will it look like in the future?
• What types of employees will you have? Are there any licensing or educational requirements?
• How many employees will you need?
• Will you ever hire freelancers or independent contractors?
• What is each position’s job description?
• What is the pay structure (hourly, salaried, base plus commission, etc.)?
• How do you plan to find qualified employees and contractors?

One of the most crucial parts of a business plan is the organizational chart. This simply shows the positions the company will need, who is in charge of them and the relationship of each of them. It will look similar to this:

Our small business plan template has a much more in-depth organizational chart you can edit to include when you include the organizational chart in your business plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 8. Financial Statements 

No business plan is complete without financial statements or financial projections. The business plan format will be different based on whether you are writing a business plan to expand a business or a startup business plan. Let’s dig deeper into each.

Provide All Financial Income from an Existing Business

An existing business should use their past financial documents including the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to find trends to estimate the next 3-5 years.

You can create easy trendlines in excel to predict future revenue, profit and loss, cash flow, and other changes in year-over-year performance. This will show your expected performance assuming business continues as normal.

If you are seeking an investment, then the business is probably not going to continue as normal. Depending on the financial plan and the purpose of getting financing, adjustments may be needed to the following:

• Higher Revenue if expanding business
• Lower Cost of Goods Sold if purchasing inventory with bulk discounts
• Adding interest if utilizing financing (not equity deal)
• Changes in expenses
• Addition of financing information to the cash flow statement
• Changes in Earnings per Share on the balance sheet

Financial modeling is a challenging subject, but there are plenty of low-cost courses on the subject. If you need help planning your business financial documentation take some time to watch some of them.

Make it a point to document how you calculated all the changes to the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in your business plan so that key team members or investors can verify your research.

Financial Projections For A Startup Business Plan

Unlike an existing business, a startup doesn’t have previous success to model its future performance. In this scenario, you need to focus on how to make a business plan realistic through the use of industry research and averages.

Mike gave the following advice in his interview:

Financial Forecasting Mistakes

One of the things a lot of inexperienced people use is the argument, “If I get one percent of the market, it is worth $100 million.” If you use this, investors are likely to file the document under bad business plan examples.

Let’s use custom t-shirts as an example.

Credence Research estimated in 2018 there were 11,334,800,000 custom t-shirts sold for a total of $206.12 Billion, with a 6% compound annual growth rate.

With that data,  you can calculate that the industry will grow to $270 Billion in 2023 and that the average shirt sold creates $18.18 in revenue.

Combine that with an IBIS World estimate of 11,094 custom screen printers and that means even if you become an average seller, you’ll get .009% of the market.

Here’s a table for easier viewing of that information.

The point here is to make sure your business proposal examples make sense.

You’ll need to know industry averages such as cost of customer acquisition, revenue per customer, the average cost of goods sold, and admin costs to be able to create accurate estimates.

Our simple business plan templates walk you through most of these processes. If you follow them you’ll have a good idea of how to write a business proposal.

How to Write a Business Plan Step 9. Business Plan Example of Funding Requests

What is a business plan without a plan on how to obtain funding?

The Small Business Administration has an example for a pizza restaurant that theoretically needed nearly $20k to make it through their first month.

In our video, How to Start a $500K/Year T-Shirt Business (Pt. 1 ), Sanford Booth told us he needed about $200,000 to start his franchise and broke even after 4 months.

Freshbooks estimates it takes on average 2-3 years for a business to be profitable, which means the fictitious pizza company from the SBA could need up to $330k to make it through that time and still pay their bills for their home and pizza shop.

Not every business needs that much to start, but realistically it’s a good idea to assume that you need a fairly large cushion.

Ways to get funding for a small business

There are a variety of ways to cover this. the most common are:

• Bootstrapping – Using your savings without external funding.
• Taking out debt – loans, credit cards
• Equity, Seed Funding – Ownership of a percentage of the company in exchange for current funds
• Crowdsourcing – Promising a good for funding to create the product

Keep reading for more tips on how to write a business plan.

How funding will be used

When asking for business financing make sure to include:

• How much to get started?
• What is the minimum viable product and how soon can you make money?
• How will the money be spent?

Mike emphasized two aspects that should be included in every plan, 

How to Write a Business Plan Resources

Here are some links to a business plan sample and business plan outline. 

• Sample plan

It’s also helpful to follow some of the leading influencers in the business plan writing community. Here’s a list:

• Wise Plans –  Shares a lot of information on starting businesses and is a business plan writing company.
• Optimus Business Plans –  Another business plan writing company.
• Venture Capital – A venture capital thread that can help give you ideas.

How to Write a Business Plan: What’s Next?

We hope this guide about how to write a simple business plan step by step has been helpful. We’ve covered:

• The definition of a business plan
• Coming up with a business idea
• Performing market research
• The critical components of a business plan
• An example business plan

In addition, we provided you with a simple business plan template to assist you in the process of writing your startup business plan. The startup business plan template also includes a business model template that will be the key to your success.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our business hub .

Have you written a business plan before? How did it impact your ability to achieve your goals?

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Strategic Business Units: Meaning, Types, And Characteristics

Business growth in size and product categories is the desire of every business owner. You cannot discuss business growth without fully understanding the basics of the strategic business unit (SBU).

Top companies like Coca-Cola adopted the SBU strategy to spark business growth into new market growth spaces and better manage their subsidiary products. Business owners use SBUs to analyze processes and allocate resources properly.

Understanding strategic business units go beyond knowing the definition; you need to learn its characteristics, types, and overall SBU structure.

This article will discuss SBU in strategic management and the strategic business unit structure.

Let’s dive in!

What is a Strategic Business Unit (SBU)?

A strategic business unit (SBU) describes an autonomous business entity or a division of a large company that functions as an independent business.

Strategic business units have visions, missions, and objectives. Although they may be distinct from their parent enterprise, they must still conform to the company's long-term goals.

A strategic business unit can be in the form of separate divisions of a parent company, a product line from the divisions, a specific product or service being offered, or a group whose target is a geographical location or another set of people.

Despite being autonomous and independent, SBU still has organizational oversight as it reports directly to its parent company.

There is a need for an organization to set up a strategic business unit; SBU arises when there is a need to expand. The parent company then sets up strategic business units to focus on specific parts of the business so it can direct its focus on other essential areas.

SBU is suitable for organizations with multiple product structures. Companies that want to diversify into smaller units use a business portfolio approach for corporate strategic analysis.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix, designed in 1968 for Boston Consulting Group by Bruce Henderson, is the most popular business portfolio approach for analyzing corporations' production lines or business units.

Examples of a Strategic Business Unit

A strategic business unit, SBU can function as operation units in direct control over its strategy and product lines or as independent businesses.

Irrespective of the form or type of a strategic business unit, they still operate as an independent entity.

Here are some examples of strategic business units.

1. Products

A separate unit can be brought out of a large company solely based on the product categories such a company provides.

An example is a manufacturing company that sets up two product divisions named fashion and equipment with the same brand name and operational functions.

2. Services

Organizations set up strategic business units based on the service they render. For example, a prominent telecom giant can choose to set up a data center division with the sole task of helping the telecom giant provide colocation services to its customers.

3. Location

The location or region category is a way businesses target customers across various geographical locations. It is handy for big multinational corporations looking to expand their reach across new areas.

You can set up a strategic business unit based on the location requirements of an organization far away from the company's corporate headquarters to help pull in more customers.

For example, a European-based fashion brand launching an African-themed clothing line needs to set up a strategic business unit in Africa to help it sell more of its new product line.

4. Customer Segment

The customer segment of a business involves businesses that are in the constant company of servicing high-net-worth individuals.

This practice is pretty standard in the banking sector. Banks and other financial institutions set up a strategic business unit to help these high-net-worth individuals and small businesses with their bookkeeping process and better manage their money and account.

5. Innovation

Innovation is an often tricky aspect for businesses as it pertains to innovative products and services. Beyond ground-breaking technological innovations, there are other innovation types .

Innovative companies tend to experience a considerable inflow of investments that, if not appropriately managed, can lead to mismanagement for your organization.

IT companies divide their technology businesses into strategic business units to help deal with innovation processes and new product launches and to maintain financial controls .

Structure of a Strategic Business Unit

A strategic business unit set up by an organization is composed of operating units functioning as independent businesses.

The corporate headquarters remain at the top of the strategic business unit run, SBUs are next, and the divisions within the SBUs are at the bottom.

Top Corporate Officer

Within the structure of a strategic business unit, the top corporate officer assigns responsibilities of the organization to the division owners f or the onward implementation of their business unit strategy.

Division Owners

The division owners under the corporate officer are responsible for creating and executing a strategic viewpoint for the SBU and creating strategic and financial controls.

Senior Executives

The senior executive works under and reports to the chief executive officer (CEO).

In this structure, senior executives have the explicit right to get involved in the decision-making for each unit since both the divisions of business and strategic business units are interconnected.

Business Unit Leaders

Business unit leaders ensure their employees are open to adapting and evolving in a dynamic business environment. Each business unit should have its own strategic direction and own vision.

Independent SBU

When a strategic business unit is independent, and its divisions are connected and come to a strategic viewpoint, each team is considered an independent business.

SBUs can have their own support functions, such as human resource management and training departments. They function as autonomous businesses.

SBU as a Profit Center

A single strategic business unit in an SBU system is a profit center. It focuses on the market segment and product offering. Corporate officers head it as parent supervisors often focus on strategic planning against operational control.

Without constant checking and interactions between the head company and the strategic business unit, the separate SBU groups and divisions get to respond better to a changing business environment.

Characteristics of a Strategic Business Unit

A strategic unit is independent, autonomous and flexible, consisting of separate teams of individual workforce poised to help the department achieve its goals. This business unit has its particular brand or product line that distinguishes it from its parent company.

SBU shares functional programs, facilities, equipment, and human resources with its parent organization.

Generally, a strategic business unit comprises the following distinctive characteristics:

• A separate business or a group of related divisions or enterprises in control of autonomous planning
• Unique and distinct experiences in management that the parent business might lack
• Work for various markets and target different market segments
• Do not have competitors as their rivals or other businesses as a result of their competitive advantage
• The head of a strategic planning unit is solely responsible for the profitability and performance of its specific unit

Pros and Cons of Strategic Business Units

Even with the numerous benefits that strategic business units offer existing and new business, you still need to consider some drawbacks before setting up a strategic business unit.

Pros of Strategic Business Units

Some advantages creating a strategic business unit tends to afford your business include:

• Improves Coordination: Strategic business units bring improved coordination to an organization due to related divisions focusing on complementing each other rather than competing.
• Decentralized Authority: Creating strategic business units reduces the authoritative control and decentralizes it to created units, motivating the organization's workforce to be more effective.
• Improved Speed and Efficiency: With one person at the helm of a strategic business unit's affairs, formulating a comprehensive strategy for the team is relatively more straightforward. With the head of the SBU in regular communication with management, there is an improved rate related to the groups for effective implementation.
• Assures Accountability: Managers are assigned to each division unit and are tasked with ensuring their assigned division's optimal running and performance. Corporate officers hold managers directly responsible for the regular operations of their separate divisions.
• Easier Bookkeeping: Large volume data organizations get to create a simpler and more efficient means of simplifying their bookkeeping process by creating a strategic business unit to monitor and store their data.

Cons of Strategic Business Units

Here are some of the setbacks of setting up a strategic business unit:

• Bridge in Communication: Keeping the flow of communication between units and upper management becomes more challenging with time. It can negatively affect the unit's operations without a clear focal point.
• Internal Tension: Access to funding often brings about tension in an organization. The same is the case with strategic business units, as access to funding sources can cause internal pressure among unit members.
• Increases Operational Cost: A strategic business unit comes as an additional unit layer to an organization and would have its own operational and administrative costs, ultimately increasing its operating cost.

How to Set Up a Strategic Business Unit

Setting up a strategic business unit offers numerous benefits to an organization as they develop and provide new products, markets, and technologies without the usual bureaucracy of working in a vast business organization structure.

A strategic business unit would comprise a team that manages its operations, brand name, objectives, and geographical location where it conducts its operations.

Organizations work better under a unit structure as they are not bound by the limited available resources that confound the larger organization.

After weighing the benefits you stand to gain from setting up a strategic business unit, you need to consider some requirements that determine how to set up your strategic business unit.

Here are some requirements to consider in setting up a strategic business unit for your organization.

1. Organizational Structure

The first requirement to consider in setting up a strategic business plan is to adapt your current organizational structure and prepare it to accommodate new changes.

Y our organizational structure is likely to be changed to create room for a different strategic business structure to nurture and flourish.

With your organization adapting its organizational structure, strategic business units are free and independent to experiment and test new methods that drive significant changes.

Joining your business units with each other in the long run can lead to creative ideas being suppressed due to issues around process and branding.

Large companies are not flexible and agile enough to adapt to the needed organizational changes. The best bet for your organization is to separate and make business units separate and distinct.

2. Recruitment and Selection Process

In setting up your strategic business unit, ensuring the same management team works in both the parent company and strategic business unit defeats the purpose.

When setting up a strategic business unit, the recruitment and selection process needs to be changed . The goal is to build a new company within an existing market against a developed one.

Applying the strategy gathered during your time in the head company and incorporating it into a new unit would open you up to challenges as a staff with a success rate in the head company.

A strategic business unit would not function optimally if the management team had little knowledge about the strategic business unit under its care.

The interview process for recruiting new members to your strategic business unit should be focused more on the unit's objectives and less on the parent company. It can be an avenue to build a long-lasting internal relationship between your employees and the team.

3. Remuneration System

Creating a remuneration system for your business is essential in encouraging and motivating your employees, significantly when our business has grown and gained more ground and reputation in the market.

Remunerations can be in the form of shares, money, gifts, promotions, or other financial incentives that motivate employees to perform better.

Financial incentives are only one part of motivating your employees, which is limited. Employees can be adequately inspired by their careers.

Recognizing employees' work and impact on your business and appreciating them for their hard work can motivate them.

4. Corporate Culture

Making considerable tweaks to your organization's corporate culture is crucial when setting up a strategic business unit.

As a business's chief executive officer, you must devise intelligent and innovative ways of keeping your unit and team motivated. It should span beyond financial incentives alone.

Making your employees feel listened to and appreciated for their contributions to the business's success needs to be reflected at all times by management. It minimizes disgruntled employees complaining about the working environment and conditions.

You need to listen to the demands and requirements of your employees and do your best to meet them as long as it conforms to the business goals and objectives. Make changes to the corporate culture to incorporate your employees' needs.

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How to Align Business Unit Strategy with Corporate Strategy

As we noted in an earlier article, Strategic Planning: You’re Probably Doing It Wrong , strategic plans center on choice around a company’s most critical go-forward imperatives. They are about saying No more than saying Yes to business-as-usual funding and selective investments, and instead involve making resource tradeoffs that support those imperatives.

If you’ve shepherded a corporate strategic plan that accomplishes these selective imperatives, you then need to ensure each of your Business Unit leaders are executing a similar plan at the functional level. How might corporate leadership and Business Units promote mutual understanding and alignment with the enterprise strategy at each level?

Upfront Involvement of Business Unit Leadership is Essential

It cannot be emphasized enough that corporate strategy must be developed with Business Unit leadership involvement. If corporate strategy is developed in a vacuum, this violates one of HighPoint’s foremost principles: Executive teams consisting of corporate and Business Unit leadership need to agree and commit on the critical, go-forward imperatives. Further, when teams perceive greater choicefulness in a strategic planning effort, they will more effectively align around the down-selected choices within each of their Business Units and Functional areas.

With leadership commitment and alignment around the new corporate strategy, deeper alignment at each layer of your organization is a corresponding necessity. With that goal in mind, there are two vital steps to achieving it: 1) Cascade imperatives and choices with active management, and 2) Ensure organizations are equipped with the talent and tools to support the cascaded imperatives.

Strategy Effectiveness Is in the Execution

Decisive imperatives communicated throughout the organization (alongside compelling vision) are a first step in the right direction. As a sound strategy comes to life with effective execution, below is a non-exhaustive checklist of key success factors HighPoint recommends to ensure imperatives are well-understood, localized, and executed:

1. Cascade imperatives and choices with active management.

• Maintain rigorous choice alignment with flexibility in the enterprise strategy framework

Once the strategic imperatives have been established and aligned at the corporate level and across Business Units, there can be no wholesale “re-votes” at the business level. That said, local empowerment and translation are both critical. Business Unit microstrategies must similarly involve choice but cannot be contradictory to the enterprise-level strategy. While recognizing 100% alignment is rarely the outcome, feedback loops are healthy.

• Measure what matters

Strategic planning metrics are as central to success as the strategic plan itself. Ensure the Business Units have metrics guideposts as they translate their equivalent metrics and milestones at the Business Unit level.

• Identify and call out interlocking interdependencies

Cascade the associated objectives, results, and metrics throughout each organization in the enterprise. A variety of approaches work here, including the Objective Key Result (OKR) annual and quarterly cadence. In that cascading, it is critical as objectives and results are translated to also ensure Business Units and Functional Groups are speaking with one another about interlocking interdependencies. In other words, if one group requires another’s delivery for their own share of the overall strategic imperative, this must be mapped out and agreed to upfront.

• Project Manage the strategic imperatives

For critical strategic imperatives, HighPoint recommends an ongoing Corporate and BU leadership cadence, at least monthly­–but ideally bi-weekly–to address, How are we doing , What obstacles have arisen , and What are sensible, achievable solutions? This will go a long way in maintaining focus and keeping momentum behind the enterprise imperatives.

2. Ensure organizations are equipped with the talent and tools to support the cascaded imperatives.

• Business Unit Leadership activates the new imperatives with visible choices

Small yet visible changes in management practice and direction can either reinforce or undermine the importance of the imperatives. These sometimes subtle cues are an essential overlay to all action. For instance, in one HighPoint client’s strategic imperative meeting in which it was agreed that a new, imperative-affiliated metric would replace an old one, the Business Unit leader changed the agenda of his operational leadership team meeting the next day, centering it on a review of that top metric.

• Talent, culture, structure, systems, and process evolve to fit the new imperatives

Business Unit teams must be able to answer affirmatively to, “Can our organization achieve the strategic imperative(s) ?” As an example, if data analytics will play a role, the right talent or skills training needs to be in place to enable this competency. The 7S Framework and other like models are good references in answering this question.

While a strategic planning effort takes place at the corporate level, it must do so with the upfront, decisive involvement of Business Unit leadership. Without alignment among business leaders, effective communication of the strategic imperatives, ongoing active management, Business Unit localized translation, and appropriate talent and tools, your strategy will struggle to gain a foothold across the organization and achieve its goals.

HighPoint’s change agents have functional expertise and deep experience accelerating processes for better, faster results. Our top-tier consulting team partners with business leaders to execute rapid, meaningful outcomes against strategic imperatives with effective change communications, resourcing, and pace.  Contact us  to start the conversation.

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What Is A Strategic Business Unit? Strategic Business Unit In A Nutshell

A strategic business unit (SBU) is an independently managed division of a large organization with its own vision , mission , and objectives. A strategic business unit is a division responsible for managing its own strategy and bottom line and in some cases, is operated as a completely separate business. In some cases, SBUs encompass teams within an organization that share operational and administrative functions.

Table of Contents

Understanding a strategic business unit

Many strategic business units are large enough to support functional departments such as human resources and training.

Despite enjoying some degree of autonomy, each unit must still report directly to company headquarters.

Some of the main characteristics of a strategic business unit include:

• The competition is clearly and concisely identified.
• A unique objective that differentiates it from the rest of the organization or other business units.
• A well-defined and well-researched target market , and
• The separation of businesses or grouping of similar businesses provided there is scope for autonomous planning and functioning. 

General Electric was one of the first companies to implement SBUs in the 1960s.

Today, the company contains approximately 49 separate strategic business units in energy, finance, software, water, and healthcare, among many others. 

Strategic business unit examples

Strategic business units can be defined according to the following:

Large companies can be split into smaller divisions based on the product category.

For example, an automobile manufacturer may split its product divisions into luxury sedans and off-road vehicles.

This sort of split into business units based on products fits into a sort of functional organizational structure .

Having this kind of division might help to have a dedicated team for each product.

And the advantage of it might be that each of those products gets dedicated resources.

However, depending on the market size the product is tackling, it might lose priority in the organization.

Take the case of a large company launching an experimental product in an area of the business far from its core product.

In that case, no only that business unit will get minimal resources. But they might get utterly de-prioritized as most of the executive team sees the new product line as distracting.

So to work out, this sort of division based on the product must get priority also from top executives.

Strategic business units are also useful for global organizations operating in many different markets.

The same automobile company may have a North American and European SBU to manage each region’s various rules, regulations, and consumer preferences.

This sort of organizational structure tackles different markets with different contexts.

It’s critical, though, that while each market operates independently, there is thought coordination between the various geography, as transfer learning within the organization.

Customer segment

Some companies, such as banks, may have separate business units for high-net-worth customers and small business loans.

This type of organizational structure is also suitable to prevent the company lose track of its core customer base, which finances the business.

Tech companies may also create new SBUs for innovations they do not expect to see a return on in the short term.

This organizational structure is compelling to bet into areas that ultimately move beyond the core business.

They call for a potentially renewed business model .

Like Google does with its other bets .

In general, any organization should have innovation units, which are like small startups within organizations, which not only act independently but also have the freedom to build their own culture.

Indeed, since startups often operate within a counter-culture environment, enabling these innovation units to operate in the proper context is critical for them to succeed.

Advantages and disadvantages of strategic business units

Let’s now take a look at some of the general advantages and disadvantages of strategic business units.

Profitability

When strategic business units can create their own value propositions for their respective target audiences, there is a higher likelihood of profitability.

This likelihood is further enhanced since each SBU operates under a budget based on its own specific requirements.

Decision-making

When faced with challenges or obstacles, management within each strategic business unit can focus on their immediate concerns and make rapid decisions that do not impact the organization as a whole.

With markets become increasingly dynamic, only the most adaptable businesses will survive over the long term.

The SBU structure allows each subunit to evolve as marketplace or consumer demographics evolve.

Again, these changes in strategy can be made without negatively impacting the broader organization. 

Disadvantages

Creating semi-autonomous SBUs that still work to further organizational objectives can be a complex task.

Factors that need to be considered include culture, market conditions, short and long-term goals, brand messaging, and resource utilization.

Competition

In some cases, one strategic business unit may compete with another unit from the same organization.

While it is possible for a company to dominate its market with an umbrella of products, the potential for so-called product cannibalization exists.

Strategic business units are also costly to implement.

With each new unit requiring management, branding, recruitment, accounting, and other personnel, the organization must fill a range of positions many times over.

Key takeaways

• A strategic business unit is an independently managed division of a large organization with its own vision , mission , and objectives.
• A strategic business unit is commonly product, location, customer segment, or innovation -based. A company can create a strategic business unit in any situation provided there is a clear and unique target market and competitive presence. There must also be scope for the separation or grouping of business activities that can function autonomously. 
• Strategic business units improve decision-making, profitability, and increase the likelihood of company longevity. However, they are costly and complex to implement and may result in product cannibalization.

Key Highlights

• Definition : A Strategic Business Unit (SBU) is an autonomous division within a larger organization, equipped with its distinct vision , mission , and objectives. SBUs can operate as separate businesses and are responsible for their strategy and bottom-line results. SBUs can also encompass teams that share operational functions while maintaining independent planning and operations.
• SBUs are often large enough to have functional departments such as HR and training, yet they report to the organization’s headquarters.
• Key characteristics of SBUs include clear competition identification, unique objectives, well-defined target markets, and the ability to operate autonomously.
• The concept of SBUs was pioneered by General Electric in the 1960s, and today, many large organizations use this framework to manage diverse business areas.
• Product-based SBUs : Divisions organized by product category, such as luxury sedans and off-road vehicles in an automobile manufacturer.
• Location-based SBUs : Created by global organizations to manage different markets or regions, like North American and European divisions.
• Customer segment-based SBUs : Division focused on specific customer segments, e.g., high-net-worth customers and small business loans in a bank.
• Innovation-based SBUs : Created for experimental innovations with long-term potential that may deviate from the core business model .
• Profitability : SBUs can tailor value propositions for target audiences, leading to higher profitability due to specific budget allocation.
• Decision-making : SBUs can respond quickly to challenges without impacting the entire organization’s decision-making process.
• Longevity : Adaptability to changing markets or consumer trends allows SBUs to evolve independently over the long term.
• Complexity : Balancing autonomy while aligning with organizational objectives can be complex, considering cultural, market, and resource factors.
• Competition : Competing SBUs within an organization may lead to product cannibalization and market confusion.
• Cost : Implementing SBUs requires substantial resources for management, branding, recruitment, and more.
• An SBU operates as an autonomous division with distinct objectives within a larger organization.
• SBUs can be product, location, customer segment, or innovation -based, offering flexibility in various scenarios.
• SBUs enhance decision-making, profitability, and adaptability but can be complex and costly to implement and may lead to competition or cannibalization.

Case Studies

What are some examples of strategic business units?

Strategic business units can usually be organized based on the following:

• Product : with a company organizing strategic units based on product division.
• Location : with business units organized around various geographies.
• Customer segment : with strategic units organized around high-net-worth customers vs. smaller segments.
• Innovation : this can be a compelling organizational structure where the company has dedicated innovation units focused on bets beyond the core business model .

What are the advantages of strategic business units?

Some of the advantages of strategic business units comprise:

• Increased Profitability .
• Improved Decision-making .
• And Longevity .

What are some disadvantages of strategic business units?

Some disadvantages of strategic business units might be:

• Increased Complexity .
• Competition or cannibalization.
• And increased Costs.

Connected Business Frameworks

Management Functions

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McKinsey’s Seven Degrees of Freedom

Mintzberg’s 5Ps

COSO Framework

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Porter’s Five Forces

Ansoff Matrix

Blitzscaling Canvas

Business Analysis Framework

Gap Analysis

Business Model Canvas

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Organizational Structure Case Studies

Airbnb Organizational Structure

eBay Organizational Structure

IBM Organizational Structure

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Facebook Organizational Structure

Google Organizational Structure

Tesla Organizational Structure

McDonald’s Organizational Structure

Walmart Organizational Structure

Microsoft Organizational Structure

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Business Plan Example and Template

Learn how to create a business plan

What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a document that contains the operational and financial plan of a business, and details how its objectives will be achieved. It serves as a road map for the business and can be used when pitching investors or financial institutions for debt or equity financing .

A business plan should follow a standard format and contain all the important business plan elements. Typically, it should present whatever information an investor or financial institution expects to see before providing financing to a business.

Contents of a Business Plan

A business plan should be structured in a way that it contains all the important information that investors are looking for. Here are the main sections of a business plan:

1. Title Page

The title page captures the legal information of the business, which includes the registered business name, physical address, phone number, email address, date, and the company logo.

2. Executive Summary

The executive summary is the most important section because it is the first section that investors and bankers see when they open the business plan. It provides a summary of the entire business plan. It should be written last to ensure that you don’t leave any details out. It must be short and to the point, and it should capture the reader’s attention. The executive summary should not exceed two pages.

3. Industry Overview

The industry overview section provides information about the specific industry that the business operates in. Some of the information provided in this section includes major competitors, industry trends, and estimated revenues. It also shows the company’s position in the industry and how it will compete in the market against other major players.

4. Market Analysis and Competition

The market analysis section details the target market for the company’s product offerings. This section confirms that the company understands the market and that it has already analyzed the existing market to determine that there is adequate demand to support its proposed business model.

Market analysis includes information about the target market’s demographics , geographical location, consumer behavior, and market needs. The company can present numbers and sources to give an overview of the target market size.

A business can choose to consolidate the market analysis and competition analysis into one section or present them as two separate sections.

5. Sales and Marketing Plan

The sales and marketing plan details how the company plans to sell its products to the target market. It attempts to present the business’s unique selling proposition and the channels it will use to sell its goods and services. It details the company’s advertising and promotion activities, pricing strategy, sales and distribution methods, and after-sales support.

6. Management Plan

The management plan provides an outline of the company’s legal structure, its management team, and internal and external human resource requirements. It should list the number of employees that will be needed and the remuneration to be paid to each of the employees.

Any external professionals, such as lawyers, valuers, architects, and consultants, that the company will need should also be included. If the company intends to use the business plan to source funding from investors, it should list the members of the executive team, as well as the members of the advisory board.

7. Operating Plan

The operating plan provides an overview of the company’s physical requirements, such as office space, machinery, labor, supplies, and inventory . For a business that requires custom warehouses and specialized equipment, the operating plan will be more detailed, as compared to, say, a home-based consulting business. If the business plan is for a manufacturing company, it will include information on raw material requirements and the supply chain.

8. Financial Plan

The financial plan is an important section that will often determine whether the business will obtain required financing from financial institutions, investors, or venture capitalists. It should demonstrate that the proposed business is viable and will return enough revenues to be able to meet its financial obligations. Some of the information contained in the financial plan includes a projected income statement , balance sheet, and cash flow.

9. Appendices and Exhibits

The appendices and exhibits part is the last section of a business plan. It includes any additional information that banks and investors may be interested in or that adds credibility to the business. Some of the information that may be included in the appendices section includes office/building plans, detailed market research , products/services offering information, marketing brochures, and credit histories of the promoters.

Business Plan Template

Here is a basic template that any business can use when developing its business plan:

Section 1: Executive Summary

• Present the company’s mission.
• Describe the company’s product and/or service offerings.
• Give a summary of the target market and its demographics.
• Summarize the industry competition and how the company will capture a share of the available market.
• Give a summary of the operational plan, such as inventory, office and labor, and equipment requirements.

Section 2: Industry Overview

• Describe the company’s position in the industry.
• Describe the existing competition and the major players in the industry.
• Provide information about the industry that the business will operate in, estimated revenues, industry trends, government influences, as well as the demographics of the target market.

Section 3: Market Analysis and Competition

• Define your target market, their needs, and their geographical location.
• Describe the size of the market, the units of the company’s products that potential customers may buy, and the market changes that may occur due to overall economic changes.
• Give an overview of the estimated sales volume vis-à-vis what competitors sell.
• Give a plan on how the company plans to combat the existing competition to gain and retain market share.

Section 4: Sales and Marketing Plan

• Describe the products that the company will offer for sale and its unique selling proposition.
• List the different advertising platforms that the business will use to get its message to customers.
• Describe how the business plans to price its products in a way that allows it to make a profit.
• Give details on how the company’s products will be distributed to the target market and the shipping method.

Section 5: Management Plan

• Describe the organizational structure of the company.
• List the owners of the company and their ownership percentages.
• List the key executives, their roles, and remuneration.
• List any internal and external professionals that the company plans to hire, and how they will be compensated.
• Include a list of the members of the advisory board, if available.

Section 6: Operating Plan

• Describe the location of the business, including office and warehouse requirements.
• Describe the labor requirement of the company. Outline the number of staff that the company needs, their roles, skills training needed, and employee tenures (full-time or part-time).
• Describe the manufacturing process, and the time it will take to produce one unit of a product.
• Describe the equipment and machinery requirements, and if the company will lease or purchase equipment and machinery, and the related costs that the company estimates it will incur.
• Provide a list of raw material requirements, how they will be sourced, and the main suppliers that will supply the required inputs.

Section 7: Financial Plan

• Describe the financial projections of the company, by including the projected income statement, projected cash flow statement, and the balance sheet projection.

Section 8: Appendices and Exhibits

• Quotes of building and machinery leases
• Proposed office and warehouse plan
• Market research and a summary of the target market
• Credit information of the owners
• List of product and/or services

Related Readings

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to Business Plans. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following CFI resources will be helpful:

• Corporate Structure
• Three Financial Statements
• Business Model Canvas Examples
• See all management & strategy resources
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About the one-page action plan

A one-page action plan is a brief overview of the goals you've set for your business and the actions you will take to achieve them. You can include an action plan as part of your overall business plan .

The plan is simple to use. Once you have completed it, post it up somewhere where you and your staff can see it regularly (the fridge in the kitchen or on the notice board). The goals and actions should be front-of-mind for everyone involved in the business.

How to Write a Business Plan Outline in 9 Steps (Example Included!)

Starting a business often begins with writing a business plan , especially if you need funding . It acts as a roadmap, guiding you through each stage of launching and managing your company, and it presents a clear, compelling case to potential investors and partners. But here's the thing: not everyone finds this step intuitive. That's where a business plan outline can be incredibly helpful.

Creating a detailed business plan outline helps you organize your thoughts and ensure you cover all the key aspects of your business strategy. Plus, it might be just what you need to overcome that blank page and start typing.

Below, you'll find an easy-to-follow guide on how to craft your business plan outline, and an example to show you what it should look like.

​​ Build your dream business with the help of a high-paying job—browse open jobs on The Muse »

What is an outline of a business plan?

Think of a business plan outline as the skeleton of your entire business plan. It gives a high-level overview of the main sections you'll need to flesh out later. It's not the final document but a crucial step in getting you there.

Simply put, it's like creating a detailed table of contents for your business plan, showing you exactly what information to include and how everything fits together. A well-structured business plan outline also helps you plan things ahead, saving time and effort.

Writing a business plan outline in 9 steps

Follow these steps to build your business plan outline and learn exactly what each section should include.

(Bear in mind that every business plan is unique, tailored to the specific needs and goals of the business. While the structure below is common, the order of sections may vary—only the executive summary will always come first.)

1. Executive summary

Imagine you have just 60 seconds to convince someone to invest in your business. That's the essence of a strong executive summary. Although it appears first on your business plan, this section is often written last because it sums up the entire plan. Think of it as your elevator pitch . This section gives a quick overview of your entire business plan, highlighting key points that grab the reader's attention.

Keep it clear and concise. Start with a brief overview of your business, including its name and what it offers. Summarize your mission statement and objectives, and don’t forget to mention crucial aspects like financial projections and competitive advantages.

2. Company description

Here's where you provide detailed information about your company. Begin with the business name and location. Describe the legal structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation) and ownership. If your business already exists, share a brief history.

For new ventures, explain the business's nature and the problems you aim to solve. Go into more detail about your vision and mission statements, outlining your goals and the principles guiding your business. This section helps potential investors and stakeholders grasp your company’s identity and purpose.

3. Market research and analysis

This section shares insights into your company’s industry. Start with a landscape analysis to give an overview of the market, including its size, growth rate, and key players.

Next, define your target market and customer demographics—age, location, income, and interests—detailing who your ideal customers are. Identify market needs and trends your business will address, and highlight customer pain points your product or service aims to solve.

Consider conducting a SWOT analysis to evaluate your business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and gain a strategic view of where your business stands in the competitive landscape.

4. Organization and management

Describe how your business is structured and who runs it. Outline the organizational structure, and if helps, include a chart. Introduce the leadership team and key personnel, highlighting their qualifications and roles. If you have a board of directors, mention them and briefly explain their involvement.

Then, outline your production processes, detailing how your product or service is (or will be) created—from sourcing materials to delivery—to give a comprehensive view of your operational capabilities.

5. Products and services

This section of your business plan outline is crucial for showing potential investors what makes your products and services unique and valuable.

Clearly describe what your business offers, emphasizing your unique selling propositions (USPs) and the benefits and features that set you apart from the competition. Talk about the product life cycle, including any plans for future updates.

If your business holds any intellectual property or proprietary technologies, detail them here to underscore your competitive advantages.

6. Marketing strategy

Having a fantastic product or service is just half the battle. The marketing plan section should outline how you'll reach your target market and convert them into customers.

Begin with market positioning and branding, explaining how you want your brand perceived. Detail your marketing and promotional strategies, including specific tactics to reach your target audience.

Discuss your sales strategy, focusing on how you'll convert leads into customers. Lastly, include your pricing strategy and provide a sales forecast, projecting your expected revenue over a certain period.

7. Operations plan

Here, the goal is to give a detailed overview of the physical and logistical aspects of your company. Start with the business location and facilities, describing where it operates and any significant physical assets. Detail the technology and equipment needed for daily operations.

Briefly describe your supply chain and logistics processes to illustrate how you manage inventory, procurement, and distribution. Finish it by outlining your production process and quality control measures to ensure your products or services consistently meet high standards.

8. Financial plan

Use this section of the business plan to show how your company will succeed financially. Include financial projections like income statements and cash flow statements. Specify how much capital you need and how you plan to use it, discussing funding sources.

Conduct a break-even analysis to estimate when your business will become profitable. Be transparent and address any financial risks and assumptions, outlining how you plan to mitigate them.

9. Appendices and exhibits

In this section, include any additional information that supports your business plan. This might be resumes of key personnel to highlight your team's expertise and experience, or even legal documents and agreements.

Include market research data and surveys to back up your market analysis. Add financial statements for a detailed look at your financial plan. Also, provide detailed product specifications to give a clear understanding of your products and services.

Here's a business plan outline example

Not quite there yet? Take a look at this business plan outline example—it will make everything clear for you.

3.1 Executive Summary

• Overview of the business
• Key points of the business plan

3.2 Company Description

• Business name and location
• History and nature of the business
• Legal structure and ownership
• Vision and mission statement

3.3 Market Research and Analysis

• Industry analysis
• Target market and customer demographics
• Market needs, trends
• Customer pain points
• SWOT analysis

3.4 Organization and Management

• Organizational structure
• Leadership team and key personnel
• Roles and responsibilities
• Board of directors (if applicable)
• Production processes

3.5 Products and Services

• Description of products or services offered
• Unique selling propositions, benefits, features
• Product lifecycle and development plans
• Intellectual property and proprietary technologies

3.6 Marketing Strategy

• Market positioning and branding
• Marketing and promotional strategies
• Sales strategy and tactics
• Pricing strategy and sales forecast

3.7 Operations Plan

• Business location and facilities
• Technology and equipment
• Supply chain and logistics
• Production process and quality control

3.8 Financial Plan

• Financial projections (income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements)
• Funding requirements and sources
• Break-even analysis
• Financial risks and assumptions

3.9 Appendices and Exhibits (if applicable)

• Supporting documents and additional information
• Resumes of key personnel
• Legal documents and agreements
• Market research data and surveys
• Financial Statements
• Detailed Product Specifications

Bonus tips on how to write a winning business plan

Once you've done your business plan outline, it's time to fill in the gaps and craft a winning business plan. Here are some bonus tips to keep in mind:

• Tailor it to fit your business : Customize sections to meet industry-specific needs and highlight what makes your business unique.
• Keep it clear and concise : Use straightforward language and support your points with data to ensure easy understanding and avoid any confusion.
• Set actionable and realistic goals : Define measurable objectives with clear timelines and milestones to track your progress.
• Update regularly : Keep your plan dynamic by making regular updates to reflect changes in goals, market conditions, and strategies.
• Seek feedback : Gain insights from mentors and advisors to refine your plan.

Read this next: How to Start a Business in 8 Steps: A Comprehensive Guide from Concept to Launch

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Chancellor Rachel Reeves is taking immediate action to fix the foundations of our economy

In her first speech as Chancellor, Rachel Reeves laid out plans to rebuild Britain and make every part of the country better off.

Good morning.

Last week, the British people voted for change.

And over the last 72 hours I have begun the work necessary to deliver on that mandate.

Our manifesto was clear:

Sustained economic growth is the only route to the improved prosperity that country needs and the living standards of working people.

Where previous governments have been unwilling to take the difficult decisions to deliver growth…

… or have waited too long to act…

… I will not hesitate.

Growth [political content removed]. It is now our national mission.

There is no time to waste.

This morning I want to outline the first steps [political content removed] taken to fix the foundations of our economy.

So we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off.

But first, let me address the inheritance.

I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the Second World War.

What I have seen in the past 72 hours has only confirmed that.

Our economy has been held back by decisions deferred and decisions ducked.

Political self-interest put ahead of the national interest.

A government that put party first, country second.

We face the legacy of fourteen years of chaos and economic irresponsibility.  

That is why over the weekend I instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance so that I can understand the scale of the challenge. And I will present this to Parliament before the summer recess. 

This will be separate from a Budget that will be held later this year – and I will confirm the date of that Budget, alongside a forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility, in due course.

All governments face difficult choices – and I will not shrink from those choices.

Those choices are made harder, however, by the absence of the economic growth necessary to not only balance the books but also to improve living standards.

New Treasury analysis that I requested over the weekend shows that, had the UK economy grown at the average rate of other OECD economies this last 13 years, our economy would have been over £140 billion larger.

This could have brought in an additional £58 billion in tax revenues in the last year alone. That’s money that could have revitalised our schools, our hospitals, and other public services.

Growth requires difficult choices – choices that previous governments have shied away from.

And it now falls to [political content removed] fix the foundations.

We have promised a new approach to growth – one fit for a changed world.

That approach will rest on three pillars – stability, investment, and reform.

Let me turn first to stability.

In the run-up to the general election, I set out the crucial first steps in our economic plans:

To deliver economic stability, so we can grow our economy and keep taxes, inflation and mortgages as low as possible.

And that commitment stands.

I emphasised this commitment in a meeting with the Governor of the Bank of England on Friday, and I will do the same when I meet the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility this week.

These institutions are guarantors of our economic stability and I will not be playing games at their expense.

Over the weekend I made clear to Treasury officials that the manifesto commitments that we were elected on will be kept to and they will be delivered on.

That includes robust fiscal rules.

And it includes our commitments to no increases in National Insurance, and the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.

Now I know there are some who will argue that the time for caution is past.

[Political content removed].

That a large majority in Parliament means we have the licence to row back on the principles of sound money and economic responsibility.

I know that many of you aren’t used to hearing this after recent years. But I believe that the promises that a party is elected on should be delivered on in government and we will do so.

We do not take lightly the trust of voters who have been burned too often by incompetence, irresponsibility, and recklessness.

And to investors and businesses who have spent fourteen years doubting whether Britain is a safe place to invest, then let me tell you:

After fourteen years, Britain has a stable government. A government that respects business, wants to partner with business, and is open for business.

In an uncertain world, Britain is a place to do business.

Let me turn to how we will unlock private investment that we so desperately need.

[Political content removed] …plans to launch a new National Wealth Fund, with a remit to invest – and so to catalyse private sector investment – in new and growing industries.

And in March, the former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, agreed to lead a Taskforce on the establishment of a new National Wealth Fund.

I can tell you today that I have received the report from that Taskforce, and I will be announcing the next steps in short order.

Alongside investment must come reform.

Because the question is not whether we want growth, but how strong is our resolve – how prepared are we to make hard choices and face down the vested interests;

How willing, even, to risk short-term political pain to fix Britain’s foundations.

The story of the last fourteen years has been a refusal to confront the tough and responsible decisions that are demanded.

This government will be different.

And there is no time to waste.

Nowhere is decisive reform needed more urgently than in the case of our planning system.

Planning reform has become a byword for political timidity in the face of vested interests and a graveyard of economic ambition.

Our antiquated planning system leaves too many important projects getting tied up in years and years of red tape before shovels ever get into the ground.

We promised to put planning reform at the centre of our political argument – and we did.

We said we would grasp the nettle of planning reform – and we are doing so.

Today I can tell you that work is underway.

Over the weekend, I met with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to agree the urgent action needed to fix our planning system.

Today, alongside the Deputy Prime Minister, I am taking immediate action to deliver this [political content removed] government’s mission to kickstart economic growth;

And to take the urgent steps necessary to build the infrastructure that we need, including one and a half million homes over the next five years.

The system needs a new signal. This is that signal.

First, we will reform the National Planning Policy Framework, consulting on a new growth-focused approach to the planning system before the end of the month, including restoring mandatory housing targets.

And, as of today, we are ending the absurd ban on new onshore wind in England. We will also go further and consult on bringing onshore wind back into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime, meaning decisions on large developments will be taken nationally not locally.

Second, we will give priority to energy projects in the system to ensure they make swift progress…

… and we will build on the spatial plan for Energy by expanding this to other infrastructure sectors.  

Third, we will create a new taskforce to accelerate stalled housing sites in our country…

…beginning with Liverpool Central Docks, Worcester Parkway, Northstowe and Langley Sutton Coldfield, representing more than 14,000 homes.

Fourth, we will also support local authorities with 300 additional planning officers across the country.

Fifth, if we are to put growth at the centre of our planning system, that means changes not only to the system itself, but to the way that ministers use our powers for direct intervention.

The Deputy Prime Minister has said that when she intervenes in the economic planning system, the benefit of development will be a central consideration and that she will not hesitate to review an application where the potential gain for the regional and national economies warrant it.

… and I welcome her decision to recover two planning appeals already, for data centres in Buckinghamshire and in Hertfordshire.

To facilitate this new approach, the Deputy Prime Minister will also write to local mayors and the Office for Investment to ensure that any investment opportunity with important planning considerations that comes across their desks is brought to her attention and also to mine.

The Deputy Prime Minister will also write to Local Planning Authorities alongside the National Planning Policy Framework consultation, making clear what will now be expected of them…

…including universal coverage of local plans, and reviews of greenbelt boundaries. These will prioritise Brownfield and grey belt land for development to meet housing targets where needed.

And our golden rules will make sure the development this frees up will allow us to deliver thousands of the affordable homes too, including more for social rent.

Sixth, as well as unlocking new housing, we will also reform the planning system to deliver the infrastructure that our country needs.

Together, [political content removed] we will ask the Secretaries of State for Transport and Energy Security and Net Zero to prioritise decisions on infrastructure projects that have been sitting unresolved for far too long.

And finally, we will set out new policy intentions for critical infrastructure in the coming months, ahead of updating relevant National Policy Statements within the year.

I know that there will be opposition to this.

I’m not naïve to that;

And we must acknowledge that trade offs always exist: any development may have environmental consequences, place pressure on services, and rouse voices of local opposition.

But we will not succumb to a status quo which responds to the existence of trade-offs by always saying no, and relegates the national interest below other priorities.

We will make those tough decisions, to realise that mandate. 

Be in no doubt – we are going to get Britain building again.

We are going to get Britain’s economy growing again.

We will end the prevarication and make the necessary choices to fix the foundations:

We will introduce a modern industrial strategy, to create good work and drive investment in all of our communities.

We will reform our skills system, for a changing world of work.

We will tackle economic inactivity and get people back to work.

We will take on the hard work of reforming our public services, to make them fit for the future.

We will work closely with our national, regional and local leaders to power growth in every part of Britain.

And we will turn our attention to the pensions system, to drive investment in homegrown businesses and deliver greater returns to pension savers.

I know the voters’ trust cannot be repaid through slogans or gimmicks – only through action, only through delivery.

The Treasury I lead is proceeding on that basis.

I was appointed to this post less than 72 hours ago.

Upon my arrival, I told Treasury staff that the work starts straight away.

That work has begun.

I have commissioned and received economic analysis from HMT officials on the lost growth of the past 14 years, which I have set out today.

I have instructed Treasury officials to prepare an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance, to be presented to Parliament before the summer recess.

I have started working with the Prime Minister, to make the necessary preparations for the establishment of a Growth Mission Board, and that board will meet before summer recess, focused squarely on reviving our country’s economic growth and prosperity

I have established a new Growth Delivery Unit here, at the heart of  the Treasury.

I have received the recommendations of the National Wealth Fund Taskforce, and will shortly be announcing next steps.

There is much more to do.

More tough decisions to be taken.

You have put your trust in us.

And we will repay that trust.

The work towards a decade of national renewal has begun.

And we are just getting started.

Thank you very much.

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