{photo of the cutest little desk ever by Quaint Handmade - see full studio tour on Modish!}
We've had a couple of really excellent
questions on the last few Business Plan Challenge posts that we wanted
to answer today. We're sure that others probably had the same questions
and we want to make sure everyone reads the answers. Plus, we get to
feel like the Dear Abby of business plans! Next week we'll be back with
a post on Operations!
To start, Mallory has a general question about preparing the business
plan:
When we created our business plan we used Microsoft Office (Word
and Excel) and did not purchase any business plan software. I'm sure
there are lots of Office equivalents for Macs, and you probably know
more than I do Mallory, but if you need an Excel-like program try Open
Office.
As for the structure of your business plan, its important to remember
that this is a professional document. And like all professional documents,
it is not going to be an example of your most creative writing! The
structure that we have been formatting our posts for Modish BIZtips
is actually the structure we used in our own business plan. Though it
seems very basic and sometimes repetitive, addressing each topic as
its own paragraph will allow you to fully explain that aspect of your
business as well as making it easy for your reader to understand. Also
remember, if a topic doesn't fit with your business, don't include it
in your business plan!
An example of how our business plan was formatted using the last post, Marketing and Sales Part
2:
Marketing and Sales (Main Section Header, largest and bold)
The Marketing Strategy (Subsection Header, large and bold)
Company Image (Topic Header, Italicized and Bold)
texttexttexttexttexttexttextte
Advertising and Promotion (Topic Header, Italicized and
Bold)
texttexttexttexttexttexttextte
Sales Strategy (Subsection Header, large and bold)
Sales Forecasts (Topic Header, Italicized and Bold)
texttexttexttexttexttexttextte
Using this example, all you need to do is elaborate on the topic and
fill in the information in the texttexttext areas.
When you have your business plan completed you'll also want to create
a Table of Contents page of your topics that includes your financials
and the appendix if you decide to include any supporting materials.
You will also want to create a cover page with your business name, address
(if your business is located in your home, use that), contact information
and date.
I hope this helps Mallory! No need for expensive business plan software!
You have all you need!
Our next question from Julie regarding that tricky Industry Information:
Ok, so I'm not quite keeping up with the challenge. I am writing, but I'm still stuck on the Industry Overview section and exactly how to write this. First off is there a Canadian equivalent to NAICS codes and descriptions? And secondly I still don't quite understand how to incorporate this into the business plan.
I know you guys have done a tone of work on these posts already, and I TOTALLY appreciate it, but maybe an example would help?
Thanks!
Desperately trying to catch up for next Thursdays post!
There are a number of items to discuss
in your question Julie. To start, the NAICS code or North American Industry
Classification System covers both Canada, Mexico and the United States.
As you may have noticed, we too are in Canada. Finding the NAICS or
statistic information is much harder in Canada than it is in the the
States. In the US, the government is funded by large companies to collect
this information. The cost is covered and the United States makes the
information available to everyone. From our understanding, in Canada,
the government pays for collecting the information itself and then charges
the user for the information, or, in our case, the very detailed information
seems to not be available at all, even paid. In that case, we used the
best we could which was often a more general statistic.
We found the Industry Overview difficult to understand as well. It might be helpful to think of this section as more of a research paper and not about your business at all. You use your business to determine what topic your research paper is going to be about. That topic is your NAICS code. For our business, it was "Sewing, Needlework, and Piece Goods Stores". Once we knew that, we set out to find all the information we could. Through trade articles, the Internet, our local small business center (similar resource centers located across North America) and library databases, we discovered average sales, growth and the average size of companies plus much more.
Here is a summary of how it looked for our business. This is all the information we gathered, if you are able to find more, include it!
Industry Description:
Our business is part of the Retail
Industry. Total sales for the Retail Industry in Canada in 2007 were
XXXX. There were XXX establishments with XX% having less than 100 employees.
Industry Segment: (This is the only
section you'll reference the NAICS code by name)
Our business is classified under the XXXX code. This segment is XXXX (explain in your own words). Retail sales in Canada for this segment were XXXX and according to XXX rose XX% over the last year.
Growth and Trends: This is where the research paper comes in. This section is less analytical and uses less statistics than the others. With this section you want to share your knowledge of the Industry, which hopefully will be improved and substantiated by researching your NAICS code!
We hope this information helps!
Lili Nedved and Henry Sinha are opening a brick and mortar retail store
in Vancouver, Canada. With lots experience staying up late and working
on Lili’s handbag business, iglubu,
Henry was recently promoted from an Electrical Engineer to Director of
Fabric Organization. Lili hopes her Finance degree will give her the
edge in the competition for Employee of the Month.
