So you've decided you need to write a business plan - now what? Where do you start? Here are four quick tips that will help you get going right away. The main thing is to GET STARTED. Here's how:

A business plan is in essence a creative writing project. You want the plan to be an interesting read, not a long pedantic discussion. When you're approaching lenders or investors, you have to put on your marketing hat and make your company's future sound exciting.

So write your plan as an exciting description of the opportunity you see that lies ahead. Are you excited (you should be!). Then let that excitement shine through in the narrative of your business plan. You want to infect the reader with the same excitement you have, don't you?!

WRITE YOUR PLAN IN LANGUAGE THAT FITS YOUR INDUSTRY AND YOUR OWN STYLE
The business plan for a consulting company would need to sound much different than a plan for a sporting goods store. Make your plan sound like you; Include some of your personality and philosophy so after reading the plan, an investor would feel as though he/she knows you.

BE ENTHUSIASTIC IN YOUR APPROACH When you talk to entrepreneurs about their company, they usually get so enthusiastic that they almost wear you out. Then you get their business plan and it reads like the operations manual that came with your DVD player. The purpose of the business plan is to create excitement in the minds of the investors, in other words to activate the area of their brains devoted to greed. If you aren't enthusiastic about your plan, who will be?

AVOID GETTING MIRED IN INDUSTRY JARGON Internet companies, medical companies and computer companies all tend to dwell on minute details about their technology and don't adequately develop the business reasons why they are going to make money for themselves and the investors. Explain the technology in laymen's terms and then focus on why your company will make money and how it will make money.

BE OPEN ABOUT THE RISKS AS WELL AS THE OPPORTUNITIES There are downsides to every business venture, recognizing those risks shows that you've considered all the alternatives. In the discussion come up with how your company will react to certain risks. That demonstrates smart management.

A CD ROM CAN'T REPLACE YOUR MIND! More and more entrepreneurs are relying on business plan writing software. These products are sometimes helpful in formatting the plan and creating the financial schedules, but they can't formulate your strategies for you. The heart of the business plan is explaining how you are going to sell more of your product or service than your competitors, and operate your business at high enough profit margins to generate a superior rate of return for investors.

The CD-ROM you might purchase has no idea how to do any of this. It's been in a box on a shelf for all of its life. How exciting is that?

The main idea here is that, to engage the reader of your plan, you need to share your sense of excitement about the opportunity. Yes, you will have lots of analysis, SWOT, financials and the like, but you want to make sure that your reader is engaged and interested from the first paragraph - so get excited, already!

Copyright (c) 2008 Schauffler Associates LLC