Business plan: What, how and why

A business plan is not necessarily a comprehensive business project of an independent entrepreneur or an entire company. Even managers create business plans in the context of corporate planning when they focus on individual areas of their companies' operations.

No matter what position you hold when submitting a business plan, you should ask three fundamental questions that are often completely ignored by many business plan authors. What specifically should you ask?

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According to Forbes.com, it doesn't matter which of the many publicly available business plan templates you use if you omit the following questions while writing and presenting your plan.

1. The assessors' communication style

You should always think about the audience you will present your plan to in advance. It always pays to tailor the plan to person or people who will judge it.

Some people want to see numbers, some want detailed overviews and some want good stories. A CFO, for example, will probably want to see hard data, while a CMO will be more interested in emotions.

2. What you should stop doing

Business plans mostly focus only on the new activities to be started. The most common cause of failure is, however, only an excessive number of new activities without limiting some of the current activities.

Get ready for the fact that every assessor of average intelligent will ask you this question if you don't answer it in your plan: So, what will you have to stop doing to have enough time and resources for your new plan?

3. Why now

Every good plan naturally raises the question of why it wasn't implemented a long time ago. Are you ready to answer?

Sometimes the answer is simple. You didn't have the necessary technology or money. However, if you want to change something that hasn't been working, even though you had all the necessary technology, money and other resources, you must be able to explain clearly how you want to achieve the changes and why now.

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Article source Forbes.com - prestigious American business magazine and website
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