Even if you are not planning to utilize a government grant, business plan development is necessary for success. A business plan is an important tool to help you understand how to build your business. Just like a building needs blueprints, a business needs a business plan to lay out the various components of your business. Smart entrepreneurs use their business plan to monitor their progress and to hold themselves accountable. A business plan is also needed if you want to get a business loan or to solicit investors.

A written business plan helps you see the totality of your business all in one document. The operations, financial plan, staffing plan, marketing assumption, projected sales and overall value of your company is laid out in your financial plan forcing you to take a realistic look at whether or not your business can and will be profitable.

An example of why a business plan is necessary would be this: your new business will need 5,000 clients/customers per year to cover your operations and staff expenses plus garner a 30% profit margin, however you only intend to employee two full time sales people besides you. With only 250 work days in a year, and some of those days will be worked by only two people due to vacations, sick time and employee turnover, it doesn’t seem possible for three people to be able to close more than 1,000 client sales per year each. You would need to either: hire more employees and reduce your profit margin; reduce your operational costs and target fewer clients; partner with another company and split your profits or implement a dozen other adjustments that will help your business to succeed.

A comprehensive business plan is the key to success. It outlines your marketing strategy so that you can successfully target and achieve your client goals and track your progress toward achieving your profit objectives.

A well written business plan also helps you attract talent to your company because it forces you to create an operations manual that lays out what is expected from each employee and helps you to assess whether those employees are achieving the goals set for them.

The Staten Island Business Outreach Center has been assisting Staten Island entrepreneurs with business plan development for the past 35 years. We know how to write a business plan and will assist you in creating one that will help you achieve your business goals. Call us today for more information on business plan development. Let us help you be the best that you can be.