Business Plan Mills Turn Out Documents

The Business Plan, and the process involved in crafting these essential documents, is one of the most maligned areas in all of small business. Many start-up firms and entrepreneurs reflexively believe that a plan of some sort is crucial to developing their project. They proceed to download internet templates and fill in the blanks with half vetted due diligence and guesstimates. Others retain reputed business plan writers to craft their documents from incomplete guidance they provide. In both cases, the plans are useless at best, and often harmful to the project.
In its simplest definition a Business Plan is a series of assumptions that are well qualified, well quantified and well narrated. No more. No less.
Assumptions are the skeleton of the plan. Realistic assumptions that can support revenue and financial projections are mandatory. The only way to verify your assumptions is by doing the best possible job of researching every element of the product category, competition and trends in the space you seek to enter. This can be easily accomplished but not by taking the shortcuts we see in almost every amateur plan new review. The homework, preparation and detail that professionals provide is what makes a quality Business Plan work and drives the reader at investment and funding sources to want to read and learn more about an opportunity.
Well qualified assumptions are supported by hard data that can withstand the harshest scrutiny. How did you support the market penetration for year one, two and three that you project? How did you project annual sales turnover? What schedule are you using to define expenses? These are just a few of the assumptions that must be made, then qualified in order to present an exciting, well supported strategy.
The ability to quantify numerical projections is another chasm that most amateur plan writers cannot overcome. Investors are number skeptics. They will hold the most brutal light to the assumptions used to create the income statements, cash flows and balance sheets provided to support the financial underpinnings of the plan. The key to quantifying a Business Plan starts with knowing (really knowing, not guessing) the dead net cost of the good or service you are seeking to offer. We almost never see this type of specificity in amateur plans and this sinks the whole edifice.
In order to produce a well narrated plan you will need excellent writing and communication skills. There are many excellent copy writers that purport to produce professional Business Plans. Unless they understand the process involved in crafting a series of assumptions that can be well qualified, quantified and narrated, they will most assuredly produce a document that falls short of the needed mark. Good writing as opposed to good Business Plan writing is as similar as Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. Your product story should be brisk, interesting (without gratuitous cheerleading) and make the reader want to learn more.