proprietary position business plan example

• Billionaires
• Entrepreneurs

Preparing a Proprietary Position Business Plan

When preparing a proprietary position business plan, you should include sufficient details on the product and the company. Your description should be enough to determine whether your product is viable and how far along it is in development. You should also discuss the scope of the invention and how much work is needed to commercialize it. Highlight the background of your key personnel, and explain how your product will be better than competing products and services. It is imperative to include a sustainable competitive advantage.

When writing a business plan, it is important to be as detailed and accurate as possible. Make sure that your information is factual and backed by facts and figures, which will make your plan more credible to lenders and investors. Your plan will not be as effective if it does not support the claims it makes. If you have made claims in the previous section, make sure that you back them up with facts and figures. This will help you avoid any misunderstandings later.

You should always include a table of contents in your business plan, which should be at the end of the document. You should also have a summary, which is the first section of your plan. This should tell the reader what the rest of the document is about. Moreover, the summary should be short and to the point. The executive summary should be no longer than a page and should focus on the most important aspects of your business.

If your business is not based on a patent, it might not be profitable. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you have a solid business plan. Even though your idea is unique, your idea will be less appealing if no one knows about it. A good business plan should be clear and concise, and should avoid using industry jargon. It should focus on the most important facts about your concept and why it is a viable business.

The executive summary is a key element of your plan. It is the first element to read, and it should be clearly written. It should be factually accurate, and it should include any supporting data you have. If you are selling a product or service, the executive summary should be short and to the point. Ultimately, you should be able to sell the product or service to your potential customers. Your plan must provide value to the market and profit your buyers.

An executive summary should be a major part of your business plan. An executive summary is typically placed at the front of your plan. It is usually the first element you read and is the last element you write. It should be between two and three pages and highlight the more extensive categories of the plan. It should also state the benefits your company will achieve by using your product or service. The financial forecast should be a comprehensive analysis of your market.

The executive summary should be one of the most important parts of your business plan. It should highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your management team, and should be short and to the point. It is also essential to include a section that contains the company’s management team. The executive summary should contain a brief biography of the owners and key employees. It is advisable to provide a resume for each of these individuals in the appendix.

The executive summary should be the last element of your plan. It should be the first element to be read and is the most important part of your plan. It should also be well-written. If you have any questions or concerns, the executive summary should be well-written. In addition to the executive summary, the other elements of your business plan should be included. There are several important sections of a proprietary position business plan. You can create a table of contents by following a simple format and organizing it the way you want.

The executive summary is the most important part of a business plan. It should be well-written and concise, and it should be as short as possible. Despite the importance of this element, the executive summary is the most important part of the plan, and should be written as a standalone document. It is not a replacement for the entire plan, but a useful supplement to your other elements. Once you have completed the other elements, you can then begin writing the executive summary.

Establishing a Proprietary Position in Your Business Plan

Your business plan should be focused on establishing a proprietary position. This type of business involves introducing a product to the market and selling it at a profit. The product description should be sufficient to demonstrate the viability of the idea and the stage of development. You should also discuss the extent of your invention and the necessary development to commercialize it. You should mention the key personnel that are responsible for developing the concept. Finally, explain why your product is better than competitors’ products. Your goal is to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Your business plan should also include an executive summary. This is the first element of the document and should be the last element to be written. This section is typically two pages long and highlights the more detailed categories of your plan. You will write this section after you’ve finished writing the rest of the plan. To make the most of it, write a brief biography of the owner or founder, as well as a summary of key employees.

The executive summary is a crucial part of your business plan. Investors and lenders will want to see the management team and the business model. The executive summary should include brief biographies of the company’s key employees, as well as their resumes. You should also summarize the experience and skills of these people, and highlight the relevant skills and experience. When writing your executive summary, you need to make sure that the details are correct and that you have backed your claims with facts.

Your business plan should also contain an executive summary. The Executive Summary is the first element of your plan that prospective investors and lenders will read. The Executive Summary should make the reader excited about the business idea and make them want to read the rest of the plan. It is also important to keep in mind that the Executive Summary is often the last part of your business. If you’re planning on writing a long business, it is important to include an executive summary.

The executive summary should be included in your business plan. It should include the company’s history and major goals. The company’s management team is essential to the success of the project, so a brief biography of the owners and key employees is essential. Your executive summary should be two to three pages long. This section should be an outline of the entire business. In addition, you should highlight the most important skills and experience of each key employee.

Your business plan should also contain a management team section. This is an important element for investors and lenders, and it is an important element of your business plan. The management team is crucial, as it is the backbone of your company. It is imperative that the management team has the experience and qualifications to run a successful business. The management team should be well-qualified and have a solid track record in the industry. This section should be a brief overview of the key employees.

Your management team section is important. Many investors and lenders will be interested in the management team of your business. The executives of your company should have experience in the same industry and be knowledgeable about their work. They should have knowledge of the current market, which is crucial for a successful startup. The executive summary should also include the company’s management team and the products and services they will offer. The management team should be an important part of your business plan.

Besides the executive summary, your business plan should also include the company description. Lenders and investors look for qualified management teams when they evaluate your company. Therefore, you should highlight the skills and experience of your management team. Your business plan should not only be about the product or service; it should also describe the company’s culture. The other elements of your business plan should include the people and the team. These components should not be neglected because they will help you in securing financing.

The executive summary is the first element of your business plan. It should be as short and as concise as possible, but it must include all of the important information and figures. In addition, the executive summary should also have a table of contents. This is an essential part of your business plan, as investors and lenders are likely to want to know who is behind the company. The executive summary should summarize key points and emphasize the skills and experience of the company’s management team.

Also Check:

How to pronounce business correctly.

• proprietary position business plan

LEAVE A REPLY Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

WellHealthOrganic Buffalo Milk Tag

Wellhealthorganic buffalo milk tag: a dairy delight revolution, unveiling the enigma: the mysterious world of the känätääj, 02045996870 who called me, what is amm77x, what is 7off7roo.

Related articles

Latest news, popular news, block title.

© 2024 - 26 Blinkorg. All Rights Reserved. Made with Blinkorg.com

How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated April 17, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

Free business plan templates and examples

Kickstart your business plan writing with one of our free business plan templates or recommended tools.

Free business plan template

Download a free SBA-approved business plan template built for small businesses and startups.

Download Template

One-page plan template

Download a free one-page plan template to write a useful business plan in as little as 30-minutes.

Sample business plan library

Explore over 500 real-world business plan examples from a wide variety of industries.

View Sample Plans

How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan
• Templates and examples

Related Articles

7 Min. Read

How to Write a Laundromat Business Plan + Example Templates

13 Min. Read

How to Write a Nonprofit Business Plan

6 Min. Read

How to Do a SWOT Analysis for Better Strategic Planning

12 Min. Read

Do You Need a Business Plan? Scientific Research Says Yes

The Bplans Newsletter

The Bplans Weekly

Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

How to write the structure and ownership section of your business plan?

Business planning is vital to the success of any entrepreneur because it helps them secure funding and find competent business partners. The document itself contains a variety of key sections, including the presentation of the legal structure and ownership of the business.

This section details the legal structure of your business and helps interested parties such as lenders and investors understand who they will be doing business with if they decide to go ahead and finance your company.

In this guide, we’ll look at the objective of the structure and ownership section, deepdive into the information you should include, and cover the ideal length. We’ll also assess the tools that can help you write your business plan.

Ready? Let’s get started!

In this guide:

What is the objective of the structure and ownership section of your business plan?

What information should i include when presenting the legal structure and ownership of my company in my business plan.

• How long should the structure and ownership section of your business plan be?
• Example of structure and ownership in a business plan

What tools should I use to write my business plan?

The objective of this section is to provide potential investors, lenders, and strategic partners with a clear and transparent view of your business's legal form, ownership distribution, and registration details. 

It aims to build credibility and trust by showcasing your commitment to openness and compliance with regulations. Let's take a look at some of the key objectives:

Communicate the legal form and registration details

• You should explicitly state your business's legal form. For example, your business might be corporation, sole proprietorship, or limited liability company (LLC). 
• Clearly explaining your chosen legal form helps stakeholders understand your entity's liability, taxation, and management implications.
• It is also essential to disclose where your company is registered. This information is vital as it provides clarity on the jurisdiction under which your business operates. 
• It also helps investors and lenders assess any legal and regulatory implications specific to the location of registration.

Identify shareholders

• Potential investors and lenders need to know who owns the company and the percentage of ownership each party holds. 
• By providing this information, you instill confidence in your business and help identify what needs to be verified as part of Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (ALM) checks down the line.

Transparency is the cornerstone of credibility for businesses. By openly presenting the legal structure and ownership, you signal to potential investors that your business operates with integrity and adherence to regulations. 

Notably, anti-money laundering regulations require investors to verify the identity of all shareholders before committing funds. By providing a clear picture of the parties involved, you can facilitate this process and build trust with investors.

Venture capitalists (VC) firms and angel investors in particular, may have specific criteria such as location and ownership mandates governing the companies they can finance. Being transparent about your company's structure and ownership enables potential investors to assess whether your business aligns with their investment preferences and requirements.

Need a convincing business plan?

The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

The structure and ownership subsection arrives quite early in your business plan as it is the first part of the company section which is the second section of the document (after the executive summary) if you are following a standard business plan outline .

At this stage, the reader is still in the process of getting familiar with your business, and this section serves as a crucial foundation for potential investors and partners and helps them understand the core aspects of your business’s structure.

Here's what you should include:

Company registration details and registered office address

Provide information about when and where your company was registered and its registration number. This enables readers to understand the jurisdiction under which your business is operating and helps verify its legal existence.

Also, mention the registration date to showcase the company's longevity or recent establishment.

Include the registered office address of your company. This is the official address where the company can be contacted, and legal notices can be served. Providing this address demonstrates your commitment to compliance and transparency.

The information above needs to repeated for each subsidiary or joint venture owned by your business in order to provide a clear map of the coporate structure.

Overview of ownership

Offer a concise overview of the ownership structure of the company. Identify the shareholders, and specify their ownership percentages or shares. 

If there are numerous shareholders, list individuals or entities owning 5% or more, and highlight those with a controlling interest in the company or on the board.

If the business is controlled by another business, such as a holding company for example, it is also useful to explain who controls that business as well.

Roles and responsibilities of shareholders

In case of multiple shareholders, explain their respective roles and responsibilities within the organization. 

Differentiate between passive investors, board members, and executive or non-executive directors. 

Shareholders' agreement (if applicable)

If the business plan is presented for investment purposes, it is useful to clarify if a shareholders' agreement is in place between the existing investors. 

This agreement outlines the rights and obligations of shareholders and adds an extra layer of legal protection for investors and shareholders.

Expertise of co-shareholders

Highlight any shareholders who contribute more than just financial capital to the company. 

If, for instance, a shareholder is an industry expert and brings valuable advice, contacts, and credibility, emphasize this aspect. 

Doing so demonstrates the added value these shareholders bring to the business.

Group or franchise structure

If your company operates as part of a group or franchise, provide this information for each individual company receiving funds. 

Clarify the relationship between the main company and the individual entities within the group and their respective legal structures.

Addressing geographical restrictions

If some investors have geographical restrictions on their investments, clearly indicate whether your company meets their eligibility criteria. 

This helps investors quickly assess whether your business aligns with their investment mandates or not.

How long should the structure and ownership section of your business plan be? 

The length of your business plan's structure and ownership section requires a delicate balance. 

While a general rule of thumb suggests that it should be about 2 to 3 paragraphs, the actual length depends on several factors, including the complexity of your corporate structure and the number of shareholders involved.

The complexity of your corporate structure 

• A concise presentation may be sufficient if your company's legal structure is relatively straightforward, with a single owner or a small number of co-founders. 
• In such cases, aim to provide the necessary information without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary details. A paragraph or two may convey the key points effectively, ensuring clarity and brevity. 
• However, if you have a complex business structure, aim to provide details about members who play a key role in business continuity and profitability. 

The number of shareholders involved

• If your business involves multiple shareholders, each with significant ownership percentages or unique roles, you may need to dedicate more space to this section. 
• Do this by providing a comprehensive breakdown of ownership distribution and outlining each shareholder's contributions. 
• This may take up more space as you need to add additional information. However, if you have a pretty straightforward ownership structure, a paragraph or two will be sufficient enough.

Regardless of the complexity, striking the right balance between providing sufficient detail and avoiding excessive technical jargon is crucial. The structure and ownership section should be reader-friendly, allowing potential investors and stakeholders to understand the core aspects of your company without feeling overwhelmed by intricate legalities.

Repetition can dilute the impact of your message and unnecessarily lengthen the section. Ensure that you don't reiterate information that has already been covered in other parts of the business plan. Instead, focus on providing unique insights and details that enhance the reader's understanding of your corporate structure and ownership.

When crafting this section, prioritize the most critical points that investors or partners need to know about your company's structure and ownership. 

Focus on aspects that directly impact decision-making, such as the majority shareholder's influence, board composition, different classes of shares in issue, or any unique arrangements that set your business apart.

Need inspiration for your business plan?

The Business Plan Shop has dozens of business plan templates that you can use to get a clear idea of what a complete business plan looks like.

Example of structure and ownership section in a business plan 

Below is an example of what the structure and ownership section of your business plan might look like. As you can see, it is part of the overall company section and precedes the location and management team subsections.

The structure and ownership section of a business plan provides a detailed overview of how your company is organized and who holds ownership stakes in the business.

This example was taken from one of  our business plan templates .

In this section, we will review three solutions for creating a business plan for your business: using Word and Excel, hiring a consultant to write the business plan, and utilizing an online business plan software.

Create your business plan using Word and Excel

This is the old-fashioned way of creating a business plan (1990s style) and using Word and Excel has both pros and cons.

On the one hand, using either of these two programs is cheap and they are widely available. 

However, creating an error-free financial forecast with Excel is only possible if you have expertise in accounting and financial modeling.

Because of that investors and lenders might not trust the accuracy of your forecast unless you have a degree in finance or accounting.

Also, writing a business plan using Word means starting from scratch and formatting the document yourself once written - a process that can be quite tedious - especially when the numbers change and you need to manually update all the tables and text.

Ultimately, it's up to the business owner to decide which program is right for them and whether they have the expertise or resources needed to make Excel work. 

Hire a consultant to write your business plan

Outsourcing your business plan to a consultant can be a viable option, but it also presents certain drawbacks. 

On the plus side, consultants are experienced in writing business plans and adept at creating financial forecasts without errors. Furthermore, hiring a consultant can save you time and allow you to focus on the day-to-day operations of your business.

However, hiring consultants is expensive: budget at least £1.5k ($2.0k) for a complete business plan, more if you need to make changes after the initial version (which happens frequently after the first meetings with lenders).

For these reasons, outsourcing the plan to a consultant or accountant should be considered carefully, weighing both the advantages and disadvantages of hiring outside help.

Ultimately, it may be the right decision for some businesses, while others may find it beneficial to write their own business plan using an online software.

Use an online business plan software for your business plan

Another alternative is to use online business plan software .

There are several advantages to using specialized software:

• You are guided through the writing process by detailed instructions and examples for each part of the plan
• You can be inspired by already written business plan templates
• You can easily make your financial forecast by letting the software take care of the financial calculations for you without errors
• You get a professional document, formatted and ready to be sent to your bank
• The software will enable you to easily track your actual financial performance against your forecast and update your forecast as time goes by

If you're interested in using this type of solution, you can try our software for free by signing up here .

To sum it up, a well-written structure and ownership subsection is key to ensuring that the reader is clear on who controls the business, and whether or not it fits their investment criterias.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

• How to do a market analysis for a business plan
• How to present your management team in your business plan?
• Where to write the conclusion of your business plan?
• Executive Summary - The most crucial part of your business plan
• How to write the location section of your business plan?
• How to present the management team in your business plan?

Know someone who needs help writing-up their business plan? Share this article with them and help them out!

Founder & CEO at The Business Plan Shop Ltd

Guillaume Le Brouster is a seasoned entrepreneur and financier.

Guillaume has been an entrepreneur for more than a decade and has first-hand experience of starting, running, and growing a successful business.

Prior to being a business owner, Guillaume worked in investment banking and private equity, where he spent most of his time creating complex financial forecasts, writing business plans, and analysing financial statements to make financing and investment decisions.

Guillaume holds a Master's Degree in Finance from ESCP Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management from Paris Dauphine University.

Create a convincing business plan

Assess the profitability of your business idea and create a persuasive business plan to pitch to investors

500,000+ entrepreneurs have already tried our solution - why not join them?

Not ready to try our on-line tool ? Learn more about our solution here

Need some inspiration for your business plan?

Subscribe to The Business Plan Shop and gain access to our business plan template library.

Need a professional business plan? Discover our solution

Write your business plan with ease!

It's easy to create a professional business plan with The Business Plan Shop

Want to find out more before you try? Learn more about our solution here

Once you have assessed your organization’s market position and developed your organization’s business model , it is time to create your organizational business plan. A business plan is an important tool for identifying and communicating your core capabilities, the value proposition of your products and services, and the customers to whom you will provide products and services. It also explains your financial structure, including costs to run your organization and revenue sources.

A business plan is a living document. Your business plan explains your organization’s strategy and operations: refer to it regularly when you are faced with decisions about priorities or where to invest resources. Update it when your strategies, resources, and underlying assumptions you made in developing the plan change.

Drawing on your market assessment , goals and objectives , identification of partners , and business model , your business plan will provide detailed answers to the following questions:

• What are your mission and vision?
• What is your unique value proposition?
• What assets and infrastructure do you have available?
• What additional assets and infrastructure do you need?
• What products and services will you offer? How will you deliver them?
• Who are your customers? How will you reach them?
• Who are your partners? Who are your competitors?
• Who will make which organizational decisions and how?
• How will your organization stay financially sound?
• Where will your revenue come from, what major costs do you have?
• What are your forecasted revenues and costs—when will you break even or become profitable (depending on which is revelant to your business model)?

How Does a Business Model Relate to a Business Plan? A business model, covered in the Market Position Develop a Business Model  handbook, describes the value your organization provides to the market and how you are compensated for your work. It includes information on the following: The services you provide The customers you will serve The assets and infrastructure you will need Your financial model Your governance structure. A business plan, as covered in this handbook, explains how you implement your business model in order to achieve your mission, vision, and goals . It details the organizational and financial structures and processes that you need in place to be able to operate in the capacity you choose.

Your business plan plays an important role in attracting funders, investors, and partners. It is also a key foundation for your organization’s ongoing operational and management functions and plays a large role in informing your program design .

The key aspects of a business plan covered in this handbook are your organization’s:

• Assets and infrastructure
• Products and services
• Market and customers
• Partners and competitors
• Financial structure.

The last section of your business plan you should write is the executive summary, which succinctly rolls all of the other sections into an overview focusing on the highlights and strengths of your overall plan.

These handbooks provide more detail on designing and implementing a cohesive and balanced residential energy efficiency program.

Marketing & Outreach – Develop Implementation Plans

Financing – develop implementation plans, contractor engagement & workforce development – develop implementation plans.

The steps below describe an approach for organizing your development of a business plan and provide useful resources and examples. Each of the steps corresponds to a section of the plan itself.

You will need to have a clear vision for your business model before you draft your business plan.

Key Resources For in-depth information about business planning and business models, refer to the following resources: Overview of Business Planning and Business Models , developed by the U.S. Department of Energy Understanding Costs and Revenues , developed by the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina Create Your Business Plan , developed by the Small Business Administration. Download an example of a business plan from DOE’s website to get started, or visit Bplans , a free resource for business planning, to access an online collection of sample business plans. For business plans specific to delivering building energy efficiency upgrades, you can refer to plans developed by Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance , a Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partner. The Market Position & Business Model Implementation Plan Template , developed by the U.S. Department of Energy, can also help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating your business planning activities.

Develop or revise business, financial, and staffing plans

This section of the business plan should describe the assets and infrastructure that allow you to start and run your organization—and the capital and other resources needed to pay for them. It should outline the capabilities required to implement your business model and include:

• An overview of your organization —your name, mission, vision, and goals as well as a brief summary of your organization’s services and staff.
• Your organization’s legal designation —whether it is for-profit, nonprofit, utility, etc.; its other key characteristics (e.g., tax-exempt status).
• The Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Business Model Guide provides information on a typical breakout of costs for non-utility organizations.
• Facility description —the location and quality of facilities, equipment, and other materials needed to operate.
• Milestones —a summary of important milestones, expected start and end dates, managers in charge, and budgets for each of the milestones. Experience from many programs suggests that it takes at least one to two years for a new residential energy efficiency program to be fully operational, depending on funding, human resources, availability of qualified contractors, and other factors. That timeframe can be shorter if services are more targeted (e.g., offering insulation installation only, rather than a full suite of energy efficiency upgrades) or are being added to existing efforts.

This section should detail the bundle of services or products your organization will offer, including:

• Service/product descriptions —an elaboration of the services described in your business model and the purpose and functions they are intended to address.
• Complementary products and providers —based on your market assessment, a description of complementary or alternative products from other organizations, and why yours are unique or meet specific needs of your market.
• Sourcing —information about the product and service supply chain, including a description of how your organization intends to obtain its products (i.e., home energy upgrades) and access needed services (e.g., qualified contractors to perform upgrades), as well as whether there are risks to the availability of your inputs (e.g., if only one manufacturer of a particular product is accessible in your market).
• Technology —information about what types of technology will be used, such as project tracking software or tools, to support product or service delivery.
• For example, the Bonneville Power Administration has a standard process for identifying, screening, and assessing emerging technologies for potential adoption in regional energy efficiency programs.

This section should describe the market for the service or product your organization intends to offer. It will draw upon both your organizational and program market assessments and the description of the customers in your business model . It will provide the foundation for a more detailed analysis of customers as part of your strategy for marketing and outreach . This section should address:

• Market identification, size, and trends —a description and analysis of the target market, including sector (e.g., residential, multi-family, commercial), the number of potential customers, trends (e.g., whether home remodels are including home energy upgrades; whether people are converting to different types of heating or cooling sources), and the potential for growth in demand over time, all of which you will have identified during your market assessment .
• Market segmentation —the subset of target customers within the market who have common characteristics and needs and for whom you will provide products and services. You should describe how your organization will tailor products and services to meet the specific needs of your market segments.
• A specific market segmentation strategy to target customers in each of the market segments.
• A pricing method that best aligns with the needs and behaviors of customers and clients.
• Specific promotional tactics, such as advertising and direct marketing. These strategies are outlined in the Marketing and Outreach component .
• Value proposition and competitive edge —a description of what makes your product unique and worthwhile investments for consumers and contractors, and why it is better than alternatives, if any, already offered. This section should also describe how your products and services compare with those provided by successful organizations in other places.

This section should identify and describe existing and potential partners and potential competitors. Among other things, this will help you understand how partners can help you establish relationships with your customers and enable effective communications strategies for reaching your target market segments.

• Partners —a description of current and future partners , the value they can contribute to your organization, and reasons for engaging them. Highlight any strategic alliances that have been or could be formed and the benefits of doing so.
• Competitors —a description of possible competitors and brief descriptions of related products or services, as identified in your market assessment . Highlight the most significant competitors and justifications for competing with them.

This section should introduce the management team responsible for running your organization, define personnel requirements, and describe how your organization will be organized to conduct its activities. It includes:

• Organizational structure —a description of how your organization is structured in order to coordinate and conduct its activities and achieve its aims, drawing on your business model .
• Management team —names, roles, and responsibilities of leaders. Note any gaps in your organization’s managerial resources and activities, along with the solutions to overcome them.
• Personnel plan —personnel requirements, staffing approach, and payroll information. This should include projections of future personnel.

This section of the business plan should comprehensively describe your organization’s current and projected financial structure, including capital and operating costs and revenue forecasts. Defining your financial structure will help you clear a path toward financial sustainability and help you communicate your organization’s financial strength and value to potential funders, investors, and partners.

The descriptions and analysis should include, but not be limited to:

• Assumptions —a description of any assumptions in the financial analysis, including assumptions used to project future financial performance. Financial assumptions are critical to business planning because they provide information about your projected revenues and capital and operating costs.
• Analysis of alternative assumptions —the financial plan should include a worst case financial scenario, a best case financial scenario, and an expected financial scenario. These scenarios should outline projected surpluses or deficits. The plan should also include a break-even analysis to show the point at which revenues will cover costs. As part of the projection process, you should analyze the impacts of alternative assumptions (e.g., number of upgrades, number of participating contractors) on your organization’s costs and revenues. This will help you understand the sensitivity of results to key assumptions. Any assumptions that cause wide variation may warrant additional analysis and discussion among the organization’s management or other decision-makers. Several methods for analyzing financial scenarios are provided in the presentation Understanding Costs and Revenues , by the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Fundraising strategy and forecast —a forecast of anticipated funding resources over a defined period of time, and a strategy for obtaining these funds.
• Financial statements —relevant financial statements presented in a structured and easily understood way. The three basic financial statements that are fundamental to any organization’s business plan are described below along with illustrative examples of each: a balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. If your organization is not yet operational, use projected financial statements.

Balance Sheet A balance sheet , also known as a statement of financial position, shows detailed information about your organization’s assets and liabilities. A balance sheet will help your organization ensure that your sources of funds (i.e., your assets) can cover what you owe suppliers, creditors, and others (i.e., your liabilities), which is critical to sustaining your organization over time. Companies use balance sheets to calculate and report their financial condition at a point in time (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually). Balance sheets are essential when closing out a fiscal year. A standard balance sheet usually has three categories: assets, liabilities, and equity (with the organization’s assets balanced by its liabilities and equity). Each category might have many items within it. On the asset side, these may include cash, accounts receivable, and tools and equipment. On the liabilities side, these may include accounts payable, corporate credit card debt, and any bonds the company has issued. The specific items in each category differ by organization and business sector, but every balance sheet must “balance”—that is, the total value of all assets must be equal to all the liabilities and equity. The following example (for illustration only) is the 2012 annual balance sheet for Coca-Cola Enterprises. All figures are in millions, except share data. Sample Annual Balance Sheet Source: 2012 Annual Balance Sheet, Coca-Cola Enterprises, 2013.

The Income Statement: Revenues, Costs, and Profits An income statement, also known as a profit and loss statement, is a report of a company’s income, expenses, and profits over a period of time. As part of revenue forecasting, an organization should prepare a projected income statement spanning at least three years. These estimates describe how the organization might perform over time and, when updated and verified, can serve as a tool for future planning and projections. Income statements allow organizations to track profitability over time. They can also be used as management tools for day-to-day work and as planning tools for the future of your organization. They give funders and partners an understanding of your financial position, needs, and where applicable credit-worthiness. Income statements detail your organization’s: Amount and sources of revenue (e.g., grants, foundations, private investors) Cost of goods and services sold, which are the direct costs attributable to the production of the goods or services sold by your organization (e.g., contractor training, cost of loan buy-down) Wages based on salary plus benefits packages Marketing expenses, which might include advertising and direct community outreach campaigns Administrative expenses Interest expenses associated with borrowing funds, e.g., interest on loans or lines of credit (note that these are not as applicable for government- or ratepayer-funded organizations) Net income (or net profit), which is the total amount an organization makes after all expenses have been accounted for; positive net income is critical for an organization to stay viable over time. Sample Income Statement An income statement will help you define all of your costs and revenues. Costs are largely determined by the types of services you will provide. Certain fixed costs should be expected regardless of size or performance—such as salaries and benefits, office expenses, and marketing. Other costs vary depending on the success of the organization and volume of work. These include financial incentives and subsidies (e.g., rebates, loan buy-downs, contractor training costs) and salaries and benefits for employees who provide demand-sensitive consumer services (e.g., time dedicated to energy concierge services). The chart below illustrates a residential energy efficiency program cost allocation from the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Business Model Guide. This is for illustrative purposes only; cost allocations will vary by program. Residential Energy Efficiency Program Cost Allocation Source: Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Business Models Guide , U.S. Department of Energy, 2013. You can estimate revenues by estimating market demand for your services or products. Every revenue source has a basic set of factors that will determine its amount. The better you understand these, the more accurate the estimates will be. For example, factors that influence the revenue from charging contractors a fee for participating in a residential energy efficiency program include: Demand for home energy upgrades The amount charged by the contractor to provide upgrades The level of market penetration achieved by the program The number of participating contractors.

Statement of Cash Flows A cash flow statement reports on a company's operating, investment, and financing activities. It is reported on a cash basis , which means that it includes only inflows and outflows of cash and cash equivalents. This is in contrast to the balance sheet and income statement, which are reported on an accrual basis that matches revenues to expenses. For example, under a cash-based accounting system, income is counted when cash or a check is received from a customer. Under an accrual-based accounting system, income is counted when a sale is made, even if payment for that sale does not occur until a later date. The cash flow statement provides information on a firm’s liquidity; an indication of the amount, timing, and probability of future cash flows; and additional information for evaluating changes in assets, liabilities, and equity. A simple example of an annual projected cash flow, adapted from page 26 of the example business plan from Bplans, is below. It is for illustrative purposes only. Sample Annual Projected Cashflow Cash received Cash funding $27,270 Cash from receivables $2,770 Subtotal $30,049 Expenditures Cash spending $24,000 Bill payments $14,566 Subtotal $38,566 Net cash flow ($8,517) Cash balance $6,932 Source: Example Business Plan , Bplans, 2011.

The executive summary encompasses the important points of the entire business plan in no more than two pages. It should highlight the strengths of your business plan and therefore should be the last section of the plan you write. It is usually placed at the beginning of the business plan document.

At a minimum, it should include:

• A description of your organization, its mission, objectives, and keys to success
• A brief introduction of the management structure
• A definition of the industry in which the organization operates
• An outlook on the potential future of the organization.

A business plan developed by the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance provides an example of an executive summary.

In recent years, hundreds of communities have been working to promote home energy upgrades through programs such as the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, utility-sponsored programs, and others. The following tips present the top lessons these programs want to share related to this handbook. This list is not exhaustive.

In order to craft a sustainable financial model, organizations need to identify long-term sustainable revenue sources. As with the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, grant funding can be a great way to get an effort off the ground; however, grant funding does run out, leaving the need to secure alternate revenue sources. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners overcame this challenge by aligning revenue opportunities with gaps or untapped potential for business in their local market. In some cases, several years were needed to gain trust and demonstrate results before funding was secured, so the sooner you begin considering options, the better the chances are of finding and securing one that is viable. Consider a wide range of options and pursue those opportunities that best match what your organization and local market have to offer. See a detailed list of potential funding sources in the Market Position - Develop a Business Model handbook .

• In 2010, St. Lucie County in Florida was awarded an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant and created the Solar and Energy Loan Fund (SELF), expecting that property assessed clean energy loans (PACE) would be an integral part of the residential loan structure. When Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae challenged the residential PACE system nationwide, SELF shifted direction. They evolved through a multi-year process into a certified community development financial institution (CDFI) focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades for the residential sector. They targeted low and moderate income populations that had been especially affected in Florida by the economic crisis in 2009.
• The change meant that SELF no longer had access to capital from investors seeking highly secured and profitable investments through PACE; however, becoming a CDFI allowed SELF to diversify its products and receive new types of support in the form of grants for technical assistance and loan capital. By becoming a certified CDFI, SELF was able to attract capital from banks as Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) investments and establish legitimacy in the eyes of other socially responsible investors.  For example, in the last year of operating under the Better Buildings grant, SELF contacted faith-based foundations that seek to make socially responsible community investments. Over the year and a half after the Better Buildings grant, SELF raised an additional $835,000 from 5 different religious organizations.
• Under their business model, SELF faced some challenges limiting their ability to attract capital. For example, even though they implemented new policies to have Uniform Commercial Codes and a more strict collections process, capital providers are still wary of the fact they provide “unsecured” loans. Nevertheless, SELF’s portfolio results of less than 1% default and less than 3% delinquency helped prove that they had a good evaluation method and their risk management procedures were effective. The new CDFI business model allowed SELF to become self-sufficient by providing a platform to offer financial and non-financial services that could generate diversified revenue streams. These revenue sources include interest and fees earned on their investments; fees from off balance sheet portfolios such as commercial PACE; and fees from partnering with other financial institutions to sell their financial product and other activities such as contractor training. 

The following resources provide topical information related to this handbook. The resources include a variety of information ranging from case studies and examples to presentations and webcasts. The U.S. Department of Energy does not endorse these materials.

Business Plan Example - Catering for Kids Business Plan

Greater cincinnati energy alliance: strategic plan, southern california gas company energy efficiency business plan.

This business plan introduces Southern California Gas Company (SoCal Gas) and the company's vision and goals. It provides detailed strategies and approaches for achieving goals, as well as budgets for activities.

Southern California Edison Company's Energy Efficiency Rolling Portfolio Business Plan For 2018-2025

This business plan is organized into nine chapters. Chapter I provides background on the business plan concept and describes the organization of Southern California Edison Company's (SCE's) plan. Chapter II presents SCE's vision of EE in California, including discussion of important policy issues. Chapter III provides a summary of SCE's proposed EE portfolio including: SCE's vision and goals; drivers of EE; high-level strategies to achieve its vision; how SCE will comply with the requirements for statewide administration and third-party solicitations; key portfolio data such as budget, forecast energy and demand savings, cost-effectiveness; and proposed metrics.

PG&E's Energy Efficiency Business Plan

This business plan outlines Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E's) high-level approach to achieving state energy efficiency policy goals through 2025.

CA Central Coast REN Residential Energy Efficiency Business Plan

This business plan outlines California Central Coast Regional Energy Network's (3C-REN) core design elements - the crucial component of a phased implementation approach to overcome potential barriers, forecasted budget requirements - and shows how measuring success with a comprehensive set of metrics and tools will lead to the anticipated program improvement outcomes and market transformation goals.

BayREN Energy Efficiency Business Plan 2018­-2025

This business plan outlines the Bay Area Regional Energy Network's (BayREN) ten-year vision, with goals, strategies, and tactics to increase the access and availability of energy efficiency services to a broad range of ratepayers and sectors, including moderate income residents, multifamily property owners, small and medium commercial businesses, and local government municipalities.

Turning Around Your Residential Program: Lessons Learned - City and County of Denver

Overview of business planning and business models, understanding costs and revenues.

Presentation aimed at program administrators that highlights the elements of an income statement, methods for forecasting costs and revenues, the importance of performance measurement, and potential revenue streams.

Better Building Residential Program Implementation Plan Template - Market Position & Business Model

The Market Position & Business Model Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating your business planning activities.

Pro Forma Resources: Draft Contractor Pro Forma Tool

Tool to evaluate contractor impacts on program revenue.

Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Business Models Guide

This report serves as a resource for program administrators and building contractors who are or may be interested in starting or expanding their services into the residential energy efficiency market.

How to describe your product and service in a business plan like a pro

It’s deceiving.

You’d think that this part of a business plan does exactly what it says on the tin–describe your product & service offering– right ?

And yes, you are partially right. 

But there’s a very specific way in which this description should be written to make sure that your business has the best chance of succeeding – in real life and under the eagle eye of a potential backer (if you’re preparing a business plan for external financing purposes).

Keep reading to find out the secret sauce to writing a winning product and service description:

WHAT is the Product and Service Description in a Business Plan?

This business plan section is also known as:

• Product and/or Service Overview

HOW Do You Write a Product and Service Description in a Business Plan?

So, what should a good product/service overview contain?

Here are some items to consider including into this section:

1.     Portfolio:

The range of products and/or services that a business offers to potential and current customers.

2.     Features and benefits (value proposition):

Explain what the product/service does and how it works.

3.     Problem and solution (value proposition cont.):

The problem(s) the product or service solves. Every business needs to solve a problem that its customers face. Explain what the problem is and how the product or service solves it.

4.     Innovation:

If the company is doing something new and different, explain why the world needs the innovation.

5.     Proprietary advantages:

Any proprietary features that contribute to a competitive advantage. This could include: intellectual property (e.g., copyright, trademark, patent filings, trade secret), exclusive agreements with suppliers or vendors, exclusive licenses (e.g., for a product, service or technology), company’s own research and development activities.

6.     Development stage:

Current stage of development of the product / service (e.g., idea, development, testing, prototype, already on the market).

7.     Product life-cycle:

Estimate the life span of the product or service.

Specify whether the product or service under consideration is a short-lived fad or has a long-term potential.

8.     Future:

Mention plans for changes and new additions to the current portfolio of products / services.

Describe any plans to move into new markets in the future (e.g., serving different types or sizes of customers, industries, geographic areas).

Make your best guess at when the business will be ready to address these markets and what it needs to do first to be ready.

9.     Limitations:

If applicable, explain any risks or limitations associated with the product (e.g., liability issues like guarantees or returns), along with any legal advice received regarding these issues.

10.  Visual aids:

Use photos, images, diagrams and other graphics to help the reader visualize and learn about the products / services.

If the business is tackling several distinct problems through different products / services, describe the solutions individually .

However, for a large line of products / services, there is no need to list each one, just identifying the general categories will suffice.

How LONG Is the Product and Service Chapter of a Business Plan?

This part of a business plan can be very short, just a couple of paragraphs, or it can spread over multiple pages, depending on how many products/services you offer and how much explanation they require.

If your products or services are particularly complex , technical , innovative , or proprietary , you will want to provide more information and spend considerable time describing them.

This is especially true if you are seeking funding for a new product or service, particularly one that is not immediately understandable to the business plan readers, and if potential funders are likely to be motivated by the specifics.

In any case, when describing a product or service, provide just enough information to paint a clear picture of what it is and does . A brief explanation of what you will be making, selling or doing is appropriate here.

Excessive detail makes this section cumbersome for a reader to wade through. Reserve detailed descriptions (e.g., production processes) for the Appendix.

In any case, it is a good idea to first summarize the value proposition of each product or service into a one short sentence, and only then continue with a more detailed description of the product or service.

If any images or graphics are available that would contribute to the understanding of the product or service, the writers of a business plan should use them.

Otherwise, include any product or service details , such as technical specifications, drawings, photos, patent documents and other support information, in the Appendix section of the business plan document.

TOP 4 TIPS for Writing a Product and Service Overview

Tip #1: features v. benefits.

Don’t just list the features of the product / service.

Instead, describe the specific benefits it will offer to customers – from their perspective.

Make it clear what your customers will gain through buying your product or service. Include information about the specific benefits of your product or service – from your customers’ perspective.

Features are not the same thing as benefits. And you need to understand both.

Confused? Let’s clarify:

What Is the Difference Between Features and Benefits?

Tip #2: problem v. solution.

If at all possible, present the information in the Problem >> Solution format.

Start by describing the key problem that your customers have, immediately followed by the solution with which you will address this need for your target market.

Tip #3: Competitive Advantage

You should also comment on your ability to meet consumers’ key problems or unmet needs in a way that brings your product or service advantages over the competition.

For example:

• If you have a common business, such as a restaurant:

Explain why your customers need your particular restaurant. Do you offer lower prices? More convenient hours? A better location? A different concept, such as a vegan ice-cream pop up store? A specialty that is not otherwise available in your area, such as a Peruvian ceviche or Hungarian goulash?

• If your company is doing something new and innovative :

What is it about the existing solutions that is subpar? Maybe you are improving on a mediocre product category, such as creating better medical uniforms for healthcare workers (e.g., more flattering cut, trendy designs, sustainable materials). Or perhaps your new blockchain solution has the potential to entirely eliminate the middle-men in an entire industry.

Although the subject of competitive advantage regarding the business as a whole will be fully explored in the Market and Competitor Analysis part of a business plan, it is advisable to touch on it here also – in the context of the company’s products and service.

Tip #4: Validating the Problem and Solution

Speaking of which, when you are doing market research and analysis for your business plan, remember to validate the problem and solution your product or service is addressing.

There is a plethora of minor issues out there that people are perfectly fine with just tolerating. To build a solid business, though, you need a problem that a sufficient number of people are motivated to solve. That is, that they recognize it as a problem that’s worth paying you to solve. Even if they didn’t realize it was solvable until they were presented with your solution.

So, how do you get evidence that prospects are willing to pay for your solution?

Validation of Problem

Describe what you’ve done so far to confirm that the problem you are focused on is a real problem for your customers.

• Existing Business:

For an established business, this is probably just a matter of recapping your success in the marketplace. Your customers have already voted with their wallets.

• New Business:

For a startup, it is important to survey and have conversations with as many potential customers as possible about where they are having problems, how they solve them today, and validate that they are interested enough in addressing those problems to pay for a good solution.

Validation of Solution

Describe how you have tested your ideas with existing or potential customers to confirm that there is a good market for the products or services you plan to offer. Summarize the positive customer feedback or market traction that you have achieved with your solution so far.

For an established business, the answers probably lie in your paying customer base – their existence itself, combined with their repeat business, word-of-mouth referrals, follow-up customer surveys, and other indicators of customer satisfaction.

For a new business, you can start validating your solution immediately by trying it out with potential customers, even informally or at no charge, to get their opinion. If your product or service does not exist yet, talk to prospects about what you plan to offer and measure their feedback.

In summary, this section should answer the million dollar question:

What makes you think that people will buy, be satisfied with, and recommend your products or services?

Related Questions

What are products and services.

Products and services are items that businesses offer for sale to a market. While services are intangible, meaning that they do not exist in a physical form, products are of tangible nature, in other words – you can touch them.

What is a Product Line?

Product line is a group of related products that are all produced or sold by one entity and typically marketed under one brand name.

What is a Service Line?

Service line is a group of related services that are all produced or sold by one entity and typically marketed under one brand name.

Sign up for our Newsletter

Get more articles just like this straight into your mailbox.

Related Posts

Recent Posts

• Search Search Please fill out this field.
• Building Your Business
• Becoming an Owner
• Business Plans

How To Write the Management Section of a Business Plan

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Ownership Structure

Internal management team, external management resources, human resources, frequently asked questions (faqs).

When developing a business plan , the 'management section' describes your management team, staff, resources, and how your business ownership is structured. This section should not only describe who's on your management team but how each person's skill set will contribute to your bottom line. In this article, we will detail exactly how to compose and best highlight your management team.

Key Takeaways

• The management section of a business plan helps show how your management team and company are structured.
• The first section shows the ownership structure, which might be a sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation.
• The internal management section shows the department heads, including sales, marketing, administration, and production.
• The external management resources help back up your internal management and include an advisory board and consultants.
• The human resources section contains staffing requirements—part-time or full-time—skills needed for employees and the costs.

This section outlines the legal structure of your business. It may only be a single sentence if your business is a sole proprietorship. If your business is a partnership or a corporation, it can be longer. You want to be sure you explain who holds what percentage of ownership in the company.

The internal management section should describe the business management categories relevant to your business, identify who will have responsibility for each category, and then include a short profile highlighting each person's skills.

The primary business categories of sales, marketing , administration, and production usually work for many small businesses. If your business has employees, you will also need a human resources section. You may also find that your company needs additional management categories to fit your unique circumstances.

It's not necessary to have a different person in charge of each category; some key management people often fill more than one role. Identify the key managers in your business and explain what functions and experience each team member will serve. You may wish to present this as an organizational chart in your business plan, although the list format is also appropriate.

Along with this section, you should include the complete resumés of each management team member (including your own). Follow this with an explanation of how each member will be compensated and their benefits package, and describe any profit-sharing plans that may apply.

If there are any contracts that relate directly to your management team members, such as work contracts or non-competition agreements, you should include them in an Appendix to your business plan.

While external management resources are often overlooked when writing a business plan , using these resources effectively can make the difference between the success or failure of your managers. Think of these external resources as your internal management team's backup. They give your business credibility and an additional pool of expertise.

Advisory Board

An Advisory Board can increase consumer and investor confidence, attract talented employees by showing a commitment to company growth and bring a diversity of contributions. If you choose to have an Advisory Board , list all the board members in this section, and include a bio and all relevant specializations. If you choose your board members carefully, the group can compensate for the niche forms of expertise that your internal managers lack.

When selecting your board members, look for people who are genuinely interested in seeing your business do well and have the patience and time to provide sound advice.

Recently retired executives or managers, other successful entrepreneurs, and/or vendors would be good choices for an Advisory Board.

Professional Services

Professional Services should also be highlighted in the external management resources section. Describe all the external professional advisors that your business will use, such as accountants, bankers, lawyers, IT consultants, business consultants, and/or business coaches. These professionals provide a web of advice and support outside your internal management team that can be invaluable in making management decisions and your new business a success .

The last point you should address in the management section of your business plan is your human resources needs. The trick to writing about human resources is to be specific. To simply write, "We'll need more people once we get up and running," isn't sufficient. Follow this list:

• Detail how many employees your business will need at each stage and what they will cost.
• Describe exactly how your business's human resources needs can be met. Will it be best to have employees, or should you operate with contract workers or freelancers ? Do you need full-time or part-time staff or a mix of both?
• Outline your staffing requirements, including a description of the specific skills that the people working for you will need to possess.
• Calculate your labor costs. Decide the number of employees you will need and how many customers each employee can serve. For example, if it takes one employee to serve 150 customers, and you forecast 1,500 customers in your first year, your business will need 10 employees.
• Determine how much each employee will receive and total the salary cost for all your employees.
• Add to this the cost of  Workers' Compensation Insurance  (mandatory for most businesses) and the cost of any other employee benefits, such as company-sponsored medical and dental plans.

After you've listed the points above, describe how you will find the staff your business needs and how you will train them. Your description of staff recruitment should explain whether or not sufficient local labor is available and how you will recruit staff.

When you're writing about staff training, you'll want to include as many specifics as possible. What specific training will your staff undergo? What ongoing training opportunities will you provide your employees?

Even if the plan for your business is to start as a sole proprietorship, you should include a section on potential human resources demands as a way to demonstrate that you've thought about the staffing your business may require as it grows.

Business plans are about the future and the hypothetical challenges and successes that await. It's worth visualizing and documenting the details of your business so that the materials and network around your dream can begin to take shape.

What is the management section of a business plan?

The 'management section' describes your management team, staff, resources, and how your business ownership is structured.

What are the 5 sections of a business plan?

A business plan provides a road map showing your company's goals and how you'll achieve them. The five sections of a business plan are as follows:

• The  market analysis  outlines the demand for your product or service.
• The  competitive analysis  section shows your competition's strengths and weaknesses and your strategy for gaining market share.
• The management plan outlines your ownership structure, the management team, and staffing requirements.
• The  operating plan  details your business location and the facilities, equipment, and supplies needed to operate.
• The  financial plan  shows the map to financial success and the sources of funding, such as bank loans or investors.

SCORE. " Why Small Businesses Should Consider Workers’ Comp Insurance ."

16 Examples of Positioning Statements & How to Craft Your Own

Published: June 20, 2023

Picture this: You're preparing to launch your new product. You've spent countless hours, days, weeks, months, even years determining what sets the product apart from the competition and developing your brand identity.

But how can you ensure your marketing efforts are aligned with the brand?

The answer? Positioning .

Your positioning impacts all aspects of your branding and how your market sees you. It influences everything your business presents and shares about your product and brand with your target audience. Your internal teams benefit greatly from effective positioning, too — it helps sales reps, marketers, and service and support teams create more delightful and on-brand experiences for customers.

When consumers visit your company website, view an ad, or check out your Twitter page, each piece of content should communicate the business' core values and brand and a positioning statement helps you do exactly that.

What is a positioning statement?

A positioning statement is a brief description of a product or service and an explanation of how it fulfills a particular need of the target market. The goal of a positioning statement is to align marketing efforts with a company's brand and value proposition.

Positioning statements are internal tools that help marketers appeal to their buyer personas in a relevant way. They're a must-have for any positioning strategy because they create a clear vision for your brand .

Having a clear and concise positioning statement is important because it gives potential consumers the ability to understand your business at first glance. Buyers want to know how your product and purpose differentiate you from the rest of the market, without buying the product first.

10 Positioning Statement Templates

Everything you need to create a stand-out positioning statement.

• Defining a positioning statement
• 6 tips for writing a positioning statement
• 10 industry specific positioning statement templates

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

What is the purpose of a positioning statement?

The purpose of a positioning statement is to convey a brand's value proposition to its ideal customers. It also frames the brand's identity, goals, and distinguishing features within the context of the buyer’s experience.

To craft your positioning statement, you'll need to get clear on a few key facets of your business:

• Who you serve
• What value you offer
• How you position your offer
• Why you're in business
• What makes you different from the competition

Next, let's talk about how a positioning statement differs from some other common guiding principles in a business marketing strategy.

Fill out the form to access free positioning statement templates.

Positioning statement vs. mission statement.

A mission statement is the purpose your business serves in the market — it's an inherent part of the organization that guides every business function. When considering the “what, why, and how” of your business, a mission statement answers the question “why” while the positioning statement answers the “what.”

(If you’re curious about what the "how" looks like, here it is .)

Unlike a mission statement , a positioning statement isn't public-facing.

At its core, your business’s positioning statement summarizes the value that your brand, products, and services bring to the target market.

Value Proposition vs. Positioning Statement

The value proposition and positioning statement are both key elements in a business' marketing strategy, however, there are differences between these two. A value proposition describes what sets your product or service apart from competitors. It gives an overview of the benefits a product or service offers.

A positioning statement is broader and it’s created after you've developed your business' value proposition. It also identifies the primary customer benefits — why someone needs your product or service.

Now that you understand the differences among some common business and marketing elements, here are the core elements of strategic marketing positioning that you'll need to know.

The Core Elements of Strategic Market Positioning

As mentioned earlier in the article, if you want to craft your positioning statement, you must first have a good understanding of your positioning as a whole. This includes defining the following core elements:

• Target market
• Market category
• Customer pains
• Brand promise
• Brand identity and values

Target Audience

Your target audience is the "who" aspect of your positioning. Simply defined, it's the group of consumers you're targeting with your product or services.

They say that "the riches are in the niches." This comes down to the idea that, even if anyone can use your product or service, you should still be targeting specific buyers to maintain integrity and differentiation within your brand.

One of the best ways to define a solid target audience is by creating a buyer persona — also known as your ideal customer.

Product Positioning

Product positioning should lead with the product's benefits rather than its features . A smart way to do this is to imagine your customer’s life before and after using your solution. Then, tell the story of what happens to them when they make that decision. That’s the benefit you’ll include in your product positioning.

Market Category

A market includes buyers and sellers. A category defines a specific segment of that market. Market categories can be as broad as "grocery store" and as niche as "vegetarian health food store." Market categories usually start out broad and get more niche as the businesses occupying that market expand their product and service offerings to the consumers in the market.

Whether your market category is developed or you're part of an emerging or niche market, you'll need to define who the buyers are in the space, where they're searching for goods and services, and who has their attention. You'll want to define what your competition offers and how you can position your brand apart from those competitors .

Customer Pains

Customer pains are the problems or issues your target audience is experiencing that could be solved with products or services available in your market category. Your product or service should aim to address customer pains and offer a solution.

Brand Promise

Your brand promise is ultimately what the target audience or buyer persona stands to gain from using your product or service. It's what success looks like to them if their pain or problem is resolved.

Brand Identity

Brand identity is the personality of your business and includes both visible factors (such as logo design) and invisible ones (such as values or voice). Brand identity is one aspect of strategic market positioning that will set you apart from competitors and help you gain recognition from your target audience.

Values guide how your business makes decisions within the context of your brand. They create the culture of your organization and leave a favorable impression on your target audience. They are the intangible methods with which you execute your mission and vision.

Featured resource : 50 Examples of Company Values

Once you have a solid understanding of these core elements, you can begin crafting the positioning statement.

Pro Tip: Before you get started writing your positioning statement, make sure you've developed your business' value proposition . You'll want to figure out your target audience and their pain points before describing how your product or service can be the best solution for those challenges.

How to Write a Positioning Statement

• Create a vision board.
• Keep it brief.
• Make the statement unique and memorable.
• Remain true to your business’s core values.
• Include what the brand delivers to consumers.
• Differentiate your business from the competition.
• Keep it simple.
• Consult a colleague.

When writing and evaluating your positioning statement, keep the following tips in mind:

1. Create a vision board.

Positioning statements are written documents. Since they don’t include images, video, or other visuals, it can be challenging to communicate what your business is, who it serves, and why that matters in just a few sentences.

To bypass the initial blank page syndrome , create a vision board instead. This works because, in a recent study, researchers at Columbia University found that emotional response is linked to the visual characteristics of an image .

To leverage this response, look for images that represent your customer in the environment where they need your product or service the most. Notice the emotions in the images, who is around your ideal customer in the image, and what they’re doing in the image to solve the problem.

Image Source

Creating a vision board that represents your target audience when they need your product the most can help make your positioning statement come to life.

2. Make it brief.

Your brand’s positioning statement should be concise and to the point. Aim for no more than three to five sentences, if possible.

The wordier that your statement gets, the less factual it becomes. It then risks becoming more aspirational than what your business is, with more elements that are more inflated than grounded in truth.

3. Make it unique and memorable.

This statement should be unique to your company and the problems you aim to solve. When crafting your positioning statement, be sure to emphasize the distinctive qualities of your brand.

Buyers should be able to see the special value that your business can offer or solve for. Many markets are already saturated with products or services that are similar to your offering, so your statement should be able to capture their attention against the noise.

4. Remain true to your business’s core values.

The positioning statement isn’t the time to get fancy and pitch a new angle for the business. Your brand’s positioning statement should accurately reflect the core values of your business.

Clear core values in your positioning statement also send messages to your internal team. They help new employees with better alignment. Besides letting consumers know your stances, core values help existing team members stay on the right track and continue to deliver on your brand’s promises.

5. Include what the brand delivers to consumers.

Your brand offering is a vital part of your positioning statement. It’s the main reason that customers are seeking you out, so when crafting your own, you need to cover these two bases:

• Who does your company serve?
• How does your company serve this group?

Succinctly state who your customer is and how you will help them in your positioning statement.

6. Differentiate your business from the competition.

An effective positioning statement should articulate what differentiates a brand from its competition. Highlight your company’s unique qualities and how those qualities help serve your customers. You can even consider a niche marketing strategy .

Does your brand have cause-related campaigns? Differentiate your brand by highlighting your goals to give back.

Does your brand serve a previously underrepresented target audience? Let them know clearly and proudly that you fill that gap. If you’re not sure how to separate your product offer from your competitors, these competitive analysis templates can help you out.

There are so many different ways to stand out against the crowd, you just have to survey your competitors and see how you do it better .

7. Keep it simple.

In almost any circumstance, your team should be able to align key business decisions with your brand’s positioning statement due to its simple and easy-to-understand nature .

The more complicated your statement becomes, the less convincing or engaging it will be. Make sure your business’ value and offering is unmistakable and buyers will understand and seek to learn more about it in their buyer’s journey.

8. Consult a colleague.

Once you’ve written your positioning statement, your eyes might deceive you. After spending several hours perfecting every word, you’ll think what you’ve written is wonderful, when in reality it’s full of jargon, acronyms, and features that aren’t clear to someone outside of your company.

Just because positioning statements aren’t public-facing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be easy to understand. Investors, new hires, and external agencies who work closely with your businesses will need to use this document, too.

Pro Tip: To jargon-proof your positioning statement, have a colleague who is unrelated to your business review the statement for you and give feedback. They’ll make meaningful observations that you may have overlooked.

Positioning Statement Template

For [your target market] who [target market need], [your brand name] provides [main benefit that differentiates your offering from competitors] because [reason why target market should believe your differentiation statement.]

The template above can be used to help you form a positioning statement for your startup or small business . Add the details of your target market, company, and the main points that make your product or service stand out from competitors. You can also download 10 more position statement templates for free below.

Download Now: 10 Free Positioning Statement Prompts

Each business is unique, and it's alright if your statement doesn't fit the template exactly, but be sure to include the main points below:

• A description of the target market.
• A description of the target market needs.
• How your business will meet their needs.
• What differentiates your product or service from the competition.
• Why consumers in your target market should believe your brand's claims.

You might need a little more inspiration before taking pen to paper and creating your own positioning statement. Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing.

Positioning Statement Examples

Since positioning statements are meant to be kept from the public eye, you’ll rarely find one floating around the internet.

Using this positioning statement template , we’ve crafted a few example statements for recognizable brands using the information we know about them.

Below are examples of positioning statements of well-known brands to give you a feel for how to create one for your business.

HubSpot Positioning Statement:

"Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 100,000 customers in more than 120 countries use HubSpot's award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. Composed of HubSpot's CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, and Operations Hub, HubSpot gives companies the tools they need to grow better."

Why It Works:

It starts with a clearly defined mission and track record to capture the attention of prospects. Then, HubSpot’s positioning statement notes its trustworthiness and variety of products to better service businesses looking to grow and scale for the future.

• Connects with the target audience by showing global businesses its breadth of scalable solutions.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique wa y by showcasing that these products are made to scale.
• Highlights core values by emphasizing its focus on customer success and innovation.
• Offers a clear and focused message by leaning into its value proposition and services.

2. Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Positioning Statement:

"For quality beverage seekers, Coca-Cola offers a wide range of the most refreshing options. Each creates a great experience for customers when they enjoy a Coca-Cola brand drink. Unlike other beverage options, Coca-Cola products inspire happiness and make a positive difference in customers' lives, and the brand is intensely focused on the needs of consumers and customers."

While its product offering is literally beverages, Coca-Cola leads its positioning statement with the positive experience they want to offer. It appeals to people's emotions, telling consumers they're buying from a company that wants to better their lives — even with something as small as a cold drink.

• Connects with the target audience by focusing on beverage consumers looking for quality and satisfaction.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by focusing on positive impact and using phrases like "inspire happiness" and "make a positive difference."
• Highlights core values with a focus on quality products and customer experience.
• Offers a clear and focused message that is easy to understand and highlights benefits without feeling salesy.

3. White Dog Distilling

White Dog Distilling Positioning Statement:

"Founded in 2016 by the husband/wife team of Carlo and Alecia Catucci, White Dog Distilling stands for passion, spirit, and the journey from grain to glass. Bolstered by Carlo's background in physics and Alecia's culinary and product development experience, they set forth with one goal in mind: to produce high-quality distilled spirits that could appeal to both novice spirit drinkers and longtime aficionados alike."

White Dog leads its positioning statement with the quality it delivers to customers. Offering locally sourced and sustainable ingredients attracts customers looking for good value versus price, with delicious taste. This statement also makes the brand accessible to those who aren’t well-versed in spirits.

• Connects with the target audience by using the founders' story to connect with both novice and expert customers.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by focusing on quality, craft, and innovation.
• Highlights core values by showing how and why it's committed to using quality materials and processes.
• Offers a clear and focused message by using the value proposition as the center, then highlighting how the founders create that value.

4. Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines Positioning Statement:

"We are creating an airline people love. Each day, we're guided by our core values of own safety , do the right thing , be kindhearted , deliver performance , and be remarkable at work and in our communities. Alaska Airlines also fosters a diverse and inclusive culture and is an Equal Opportunity Employer."

Alaska Airlines leads its positioning statement with love and heart. It introduces prospects to the brand feeling as though they’re more than typical transactions. Instead, it focuses on each customer as a unique individual who's worth delivering great service and inclusive experiences to.

• Connects with the target audience with values that emphasize community, diversity, and inclusivity.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by putting customers and their experience in the spotlight.
• Highlights core values that matter to customers, like safety, ethics, kindness, and reliability.
• Offers a clear and focused message by reinforcing its brand identity instead of creating a new set of benchmarks or expectations in the positioning statement.

5. Organic Bath Co.

Organic Bath Co. Positioning Statement:

"If you're seeking clean and healthy ingredients in your body care routine, Organic Bath Co. offers a line of organic and natural skincare products that you can feel good about using. Trust in Organic Bath Co. for clean uncomplicated ingredients that will leave you feeling rejuvenated and cared for."

Organic Bath Co.’s positioning statement successfully conveys its focus on quality ingredients, health, and the value of rest. Prospects could be looking for a soap brand that not only has organic and safe ingredients, but also encourages its customers to indulge themselves in the relaxing experience of using its product line.

• Connects with the target audience by finding a priority (clean, natural ingredients) and showing how the product meets that need.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by emphasizing the feeling it gives customers as well as how the brand makes its products.
• Highlights core values by focusing not only on company values , but the core values its target audience feels are most important.
• Offers a clear and focused message by starting with what its audience is looking for, then sharing how the product meets those needs.

Amazon Positioning Statement:

"For consumers who want to purchase a wide range of products online with quick delivery, Amazon is a one-stop online shopping site. Amazon sets itself apart from other online retailers with its customer obsession, passion for innovation, and commitment to operational excellence."

Amazon cuts straight to the chase in this positioning statement. It clearly outlines that its store is a quick way for its customers to find everything they need, to better help the customer achieve their goals.

• Connects with the target audience by speaking to the needs of busy customers who prioritize convenience.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by emphasizing its commitment to customers, experience, and operational excellence.
• Highlights core values by selecting the most relevant brand values and weaving them into the positioning statement.
• Offers a clear and focused message by summarizing the value proposition of the platform.

IMPACT's Positioning Statement:

"Empower your business to thrive with IMPACT. Our They Ask, You Answer approach and consulting services in content marketing, video sales, website strategy, design, and more help you take ownership of your digital sales and marketing. Find out how you can achieve remarkable results and become a trusted voice in your industry with IMPACT."

IMPACT ’s positioning statement explains how it goes against the grain to better serve its customers in the market, by eliminating the cycle of dependency. This approach is unique and will attract many prospects to want to learn more about its solutions.

• Connects with the target audience by speaking directly to business owners and marketers who are seeking a solution to marketing dependencies.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by clearly outlining what it does and how it accomplishes goals with clients.
• Highlights core values like empowerment, innovation, and trust with a quick explanation of the process and desired outcomes.
• Offers a clear and focused message by packing the most useful terms and ideas into one powerful paragraph.

8. Beautycounter

Beautycounter Positioning Statement:

"One by one, we are leading a movement to a future where all beauty is clean beauty. We are powered by people, and our collective mission is to get safer products into the hands of everyone. Formulate, advocate, and educate—that’s our motto for creating products that truly perform while holding ourselves to unparalleled standards of safety. Why? It’s really this simple: beauty should be good for you."

Unlike other beauty brands that strive to fix or perfect customers’ complexions without much focus on ingredients, Beautycounter takes the unique stance that beauty should be good for more than your looks. The focus on cleaner, safer ingredients will really attract customers looking to maintain their complexions, instead of temporarily fixing them.

• Connects with the target audience by advocating for cleaner, safer products on behalf of beauty lovers.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by communicating higher-than-average safety standards.
• Highlights core values like education and safety, and supporting people looking for clean beauty products.
• Offers a clear and focused message by outlining a clear and easy-to-understand goal, then sharing how it plans to meet that goal.

9. Bandwagon Fan Club

Bandwagon Fan Club Positioning Statement:

"Experience the future of fandom with Bandwagon Fan Club. Our Proof of Experience™ blockchain technology connects sports and entertainment lovers directly with their favorite artists, teams, and entertainers. Choose Bandwagon Fan Club to create, own, and preserve history with cutting-edge technology."

This product could be difficult to understand, because it uses a new technology to capture moments at public events. When a product is tough to understand, doubt can quickly creep in. But this positioning statement is direct and clear, showing how its new technology connects fans directly to their favorite performers and teams.

• Connects with the target audience by centering on the people who will want this product — sports and entertainment super fans.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way with exclusive technology mentions.
• Highlights core values by emphasizing its customer focus and innovation.
• Offers a clear and focused message — that fans can use this technology to own a unique piece of event history.

10. Gro Intelligence

Gro Intelligence Positioning Statement:

"Develop a holistic data-driven understanding of your impact as a business in the agriculture or climate science industries with Gro Intelligence. We offer live data, machine learning, and domain expertise to provide honest answers where ecology meets economy."

This positioning statement starts with the problem it solves — helping businesses see their impact with data. Then, it explains the technology it uses to show that impact, which builds trust with those potential customers.

• Connects with the target audience by targeting businesses in the agriculture and climate sciences industries.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by naming the technologies it uses to collect data insights.
• Highlights core values with terms like honest, holistic, economy, and ecology. This word choice quickly communicates what is most important to this brand.
• Offers a clear and focused message by focusing on product benefits and how the brand delivers those benefits.

Nike Positioning Statement:

"For athletes in need of high-quality, fashionable athletic wear, Nike offers customers top-performing sports apparel and shoes made of the highest quality materials. Its products are the most advanced in the athletic apparel industry because of Nike's commitment to innovation and investment in the latest technologies."

This positioning statement for Nike clearly outlines its range of products to better serve athletes. It also uses inclusive language to define what an athlete is. By doing so, people that enjoy hobbies and professionals alike can derive value from its product line.

• Connects with the target audience by identifying who uses these products and what they need.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way through emphasis on innovation and technology in athletic gear production.
• Highlights core values by combining how this brand differentiates itself with a diverse range of customer needs.
• Offers a clear and focused message that is straightforward and covers the most important qualities of its products.

12. Thrive Market

Thrive Market Positioning Statement:

"Thrive Market is an online, membership-based market making the highest-quality, healthy, and sustainable products available for every budget, lifestyle, and geography."

Short and to the point, Thrive Market lets prospects know exactly what it has to offer in a single sentence. Prospects won’t have to guess what type of product they can find from it, and they also know that their line must be extremely versatile, too.

• Connects with the target audience by leading with health and sustainability.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by highlighting the membership aspect of its offer.
• Highlights core values by emphasizing quality, health, budget, lifestyle, and location.
• Offers a clear and focused message with a single-sentence positioning statement that is both well-defined and easy to understand.

13. Gig Wage

Gig Wage Positioning Statement:

"Gig Wage uses proprietary technology for payroll services and compliance to offer control and flexibility to contractor-dependent businesses. This platform is specifically for the 1099 economy to manage, pay, and support happy independent workers."

This statement narrows its focus to a collection of employers that need a solution for 1099 workers. Then, it covers what it offers to solve a set of common problems for that audience.

• Connects with the target audience by talking about the needs of both employees and independent contractors.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by emphasizing proprietary technology and how that tech can help.
• Highlights core values with a focus on a desired outcome — happy independent workers.
• Offers a clear and focused message . Some positioning statements need to include industry-specific terms that not everyone is familiar with. But this statement pairs those terms with simple language that makes it easy for anyone to read.

Mural Positioning Statement:

"For organizations who need visual collaboration at scale, Mural helps you bring imagination to work from anywhere with agile and design thinking methodologies, sales and consulting, and research and design, all in one platform. Join a growing network of global enterprises, consultancies, schools, and nonprofits using Mural to innovate."

Leading with the primary value your business offers is a smart strategy. This positioning statement quickly lets consumers know you can use this product to visually collaborate from a range of locations. It also offers proof that you can trust this product because it's used by a diverse network of businesses.

• Connects with the target audience by making the need for visual collaboration a priority, then sharing what kinds of companies are already using this tool.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by highlighting specific ways businesses and individual users can get value from this product .
• Highlights core values with terms like innovate, collaboration, and imagination. This emphasizes those values for this brand and for companies who want to make those core values a priority.
• Offers a clear and focused message by focusing the first sentence on what the product is and how to use it, then using the second sentence to show who is already using the product.

Apple Positioning Statement:

"For individuals who want the best personal computer or mobile device, Apple leads the technology industry with the most innovative products. Apple emphasizes technological research and advancement and takes an innovative approach to business best practices — it considers the impact our products and processes have on its customers and the planet."

This positioning statement for Apple appeals to people of all different backgrounds. It inspires them to expect quality products made with intent to innovate in a way that helps people and the environment. It also gains prospects' trust by emphasizing its industry authority.

• Connects with the target audience by aligning itself with people who want "the best." It also emphasizes the brand's leadership in the industry.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way with emphasis on innovative approaches to research and technological advancement.
• Highlights core values by mentioning the customer and environmental impact its products and processes have.
• Offers a clear and focused message that quickly communicates the most important aspects of the brand and products.

16. McDonald's

McDonald's Positioning Statement:

"McDonald's is a leader in the fast-food industry, with quick, friendly service and consistency across thousands of convenient locations. McDonald's' dedication to improving operations and customer satisfaction sets it apart from other fast-food restaurants."

McDonald’s doesn’t narrow its target audience, but instead panders to individuals of all sorts looking for a fast and satisfying service. It also leads with its position as an industry leader to gain prospect trust.

• Connects with the target audience by highlighting the qualities a person might seek in a fast food restaurant. This strategy is effective because it appeals to a broad audience in a specific situation.
• Sells its product(s) in a unique way by mentioning how its operations and customer satisfaction goals differ from a set of competitors. It doesn't compare itself to every restaurant, only fast-food spots.
• Highlights core values by leading the positioning statement with speed, service, convenience, and consistency.
• Offers a clear and focused message in just two simple sentences, this statement shares what is most important to this brand in a compelling way.

Craft a Positioning Statement for Your Business

Competition online makes crafting a great positioning statement more important than ever. You can use it to make your business stand out, boast your unique value, and connect with your audience. With the tips above, you can create a positioning statement to create a clear roadmap for business growth.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

What is a Go-to-Market Strategy? GTM Plan Template + Examples

300+ Business Name Ideas to Inspire You [+7 Brand Name Generators]

The Importance of Having a Startup Exit Strategy

10 Top Tech Startups To Watch

The Biggest Pros and Cons of Working for a Startup

15 Startup Newsletters for Entrepreneurs

12 Top Startup Consulting Firms To Improve Your Business

What Is a Startup Founder

Series Funding for Startups and How It Works

Home-Run Pitch: Five Steps To Wow VCs and Land Funding

Craft your own positioning statement to help promote your business with aligned brand messaging.

Powerful and easy-to-use sales software that drives productivity, enables customer connection, and supports growing sales orgs

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

How to Write a Business Plan [Complete Guide]

Last Updated on – Aug 8, 2023 @ 3:22 pm

Preparing to write your business plan? You’re already one step ahead of other entrepreneurs who don’t see its value.

A well-thought-out and well-written plan for starting and running your business helps you focus on what you need to do to make your business idea work. It can also boost your chance of getting investments and loans to finance your business .

Did you know that half of small businesses fail in their first four years? Planning is such a crucial step to reducing the risks of managing an enterprise. Turn your business idea from something abstract and uncertain into a successful venture. It starts with drafting a good business plan.

Here’s your definitive guide to writing a business plan that speaks for itself.

What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a written document that details what a business is, what direction it will take, and how you’ll get it there.

Practically speaking, the business plan evaluates your business’ viability. As the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) puts it , the document allows entrepreneurs to find out whether or not their business idea will bring in more money than how much it costs to start and run it.

More than just a document, the business plan helps business owners to figure out the key aspects of an enterprise, including the following:

• Business goals and strategies to meet them
• Competitive edge and how to leverage it
• Potential problems and how to solve them
• Funding required to start the business
• Equipment, facilities, and manpower needed for operations

Who Needs a Business Plan and What Is It Used For?

Every aspiring entrepreneur who will spend a great amount of money, time, and energy to earn a profit needs a business plan.

Business planning is a crucial part of starting an entrepreneurial journey, no matter how small or big a business is. Never skip this step—as they say, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Here are some examples of business types that benefit much from business planning:

Founders of startup businesses seek funds to begin their new venture. Business plans help them persuade investors and lenders to provide the funding they need.

For startups, a business plan explains the nature of the new venture, how it will achieve its goals, and why the founders are the best people to lead the company. The startup business plan should also specify the capital needed to jumpstart the new business.

Related: Fast-Growing Startups in the Philippines

Existing Businesses

Not only do startups gain advantage from a business plan—existing enterprises need it, too.

But business plans for growing businesses serve a different purpose. Usually, a business plan helps a middle-stage business raise funds for additional facilities, equipment, manpower, and others needed for expansion. This document also defines strategies for growth and allocates resources based on strategic priorities.

Growing businesses also use business plans to communicate their vision to various stakeholders such as customers, business partners, potential investors and lenders, employees, and suppliers.

For such needs, a business plan for existing businesses lays out the goals, strategies, metrics to evaluate success, responsibilities, and resource allocation.

Social Enterprises

Social enterprises may not be as profit-driven as other business types, but that doesn’t mean they need business planning any less.

A social enterprise needs to prepare a business plan to achieve its social objectives and keep empowering the communities it’s supporting. This document is what government agencies and donor agencies require and evaluate when approving grants for funding a social project .

A social enterprise business plan determines the social issue that a business idea will solve, its beneficiaries, products or services, target market, and sales projections, among many others.

Non-Profit Organizations/NGOs

Like social enterprises, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can also use business plans to source funds for their campaigns and projects.

A nonprofit business plan discusses the problems an NGO is trying to solve through a certain project, as well as how it will do that and how much resources are needed.

It also helps the organization and its board members to prepare for risks by making projections on how likely the activities will push through and how the current sources of funds will continue to yield a certain level of revenue. Most importantly, the business plan defines the Plan B if the original plan ends up failing.

Business Plan Format and Its Components

How does a business plan exactly look like? There’s no recommended universal format for business plans. Ideally, yours is customized according to the nature of your business and what you’re going to use the plan for.

However, all business plans have sections in common. Here’s a quick walkthrough of the six components that make up a business plan.

1. Executive Summary

Like an abstract of a college thesis or a foreword of a book, the executive summary is meant to provide a brief overview of the document. It presents the highlights of a business plan in a page or two.

The executive summary the first thing that readers see, so keep it short yet engaging and compelling enough to make them want to view more details in your plan.

2. Company Profile

The company profile is your chance to introduce yourself and your business to people outside your company. It’s also called the company summary, company information, business description, and business profile.

This section quickly answers the five Ws and one H of your business: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Think of it as your business calling card. Being the shortest section of the business plan, the company profile provides a quick overview of the business—who the owner and founder is, management team, business goals, business address, product or service, and what makes it unique.

3. Operations Plan

The operations plan explains how you’ll run your business, focusing on the different aspects of manufacturing your product. This section includes the following information, among many others:

• Type of business (sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation , or non-profit)
• How the product is made or the service completed
• Necessary materials, equipment, and facilities to manufacture the product or complete the service
• Any subcontractors needed
• Quality control system

4. Organizational Plan

Your people should play a major role in your business plan, just as how they’re important to your business success . The organizational plan includes a chart that shows how your company is structured according to key departments or functions such as administration, production/manufacturing, marketing, and finance. This organizational chart not only presents the levels of authority in a company but also clarifies who is responsible for which people and function.

Aside from the organizational chart, the organizational plan also includes these details:

• Number of employees to hire
• Responsibilities of each job role
• Qualifications of workers who will perform each role
• Salaries and benefits per job assignment

5. Marketing Plan

The marketing plan and the succeeding chapters are the heart and soul of your business plan, explaining the things that will make your business work. This section details how you plan to promote your product or service in the market.

Specifically, the marketing plan covers the following:

• How the product or service will work and how it will benefit customers
• Target market and its profile
• Strategies for packaging, advertising, public relations, and distribution
• Competitive advantage

6. Financial Plan

A critical section in your business plan, the financial plan helps you assess how much money you’ll need to start or grow your enterprise and identify your funding sources to get your business off the ground and sustain its operations. This is where you’ll provide financial estimates that cover at least one year of running your business.

Investors and lenders specifically look for these financial details in business plans:

• How much you’re going to borrow, what you’ll use the loan for, and how you’ll pay it back
• How much profit you’re expecting to make (through an income statement and balance sheet)
• How you can finance your business operations (through a cash flow statement)
• Whether to keep the business going or close it down to cut losses (through a break-even analysis)

Related: How to Write a Business Proposal

Should You Use a Business Plan Template?

Business plan templates identify what information to put into each section and how it should be structured.

They provide instructions to guide entrepreneurs through the process. This way, nothing is missed out while writing the plan.

Thus, using a business plan template is a great idea, especially if this is your first time to prepare a plan for starting or growing your enterprise.

Helpful as it as may be, a business plan template doesn’t make business planning 100% effortless. While it provides the outline that makes writing the plan easy and quick, you still need to do your homework.

For example, a template won’t compute the financial projections for you—it’s a task you have to complete either on your own or with the help of a professional.

So before you use a business plan template, manage your expectations first and be prepared to do a lot of math!

8 Free Business Plan Templates

Yes, you read it right—you can download free online business plan templates. Some of these templates are designed for a specific niche, while others offer sample business plans for a wide range of business categories and industries.

Start off by choosing any of these free templates that suit your business planning needs.

1. Business Plan Format by the DTI

DTI has a wealth of useful information for micro, small, and medium businesses in the Philippines. Of course, it’s free to access since it comes from the government.

On the DTI website, simply look for the Business Planning section and download the business plan format in a PDF file. This document not only lists down all the information to be included in every section of a business plan, but it also provides guide questions per section—making business planning easier for first-timers.

If you want a more detailed discussion of what should go into each component of your business plan plus sample scenarios, check the DTI’s Negosyo Center e-book that fleshes out things for small business owners.

2. Simple Business Plan Template by The Balance Small Business 

The Balance is an online resource for small business owners. It has a free business plan template that’s simple and easy to understand for beginners, with instructions on how to use it. Broken down into sections, the simple business plan template tells you what to include in each component of the plan.

Simply copy the free template and paste it into a word document or spreadsheet. From there, you can start drafting your business plan with the template as a guide.

3. Free Sample Business Plans by Bplans

This website features a collection of over 500 free business plan samples for various industries, including restaurants, e-commerce, real estate, services, nonprofit, and manufacturing.

Under each category are links to many sample business plans for specific types of business. Each sample comes with a plan outline, too. For example, under the Services category, you’ll find sample plans for businesses like auto repair shops, advertising agencies, catering companies, health spas, photography studios, and more.

4. Business Plan Samples by LivePlan

More than 500 free sample business plans are available at the LivePlan website, so you’re likely to find one that suits your business best. The samples allow users to know how other businesses structured and worded each component of their business plans. You can copy and paste the sections into your own plan.

To download a full business plan sample, you’ll have to sign up by submitting your name and email address through the website.

5. Business Plan Templates by PandaDoc

PandaDoc offers free business plan templates for NGOs, startups, restaurants, cafes, bakeries, hotels, and salons. These documents can be downloaded in PDF format.

But if you want a customizable template, you can download the PandaDoc template for a 14-day free trial. This template allows you to edit the document, choose a theme that matches your branding, and add pictures and videos.

The website also has free templates for executive summaries and business letters.

6. The One-Page Business Plan by The $100 Startup

If your business has a simple concept, then a one-page business plan template is ideal to use. This downloadable PDF file is a very simple outline made up of a few sections with questions that you have to answer in just a short sentence or two.

7. Business Plans by Microsoft

Microsoft provides a broad selection of templates for its users, including business plan templates in Word, business plan presentations in PowerPoint, and business plan checklists in Excel.

• Sample business plan template (Word) – Provides the steps in writing a complete business plan
• Business plan presentation template (PowerPoint) – Consists of slides for different sections of a business plan that highlight the key points for viewers
• Business plan checklist template (Excel) – Enumerates the important things to do when writing a business plan, using the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) analysis framework

The advantage of using a template from Microsoft is having a professional-looking document, slideshow presentation, or spreadsheet. No need to do the formatting by yourself because the template is already formatted. All you have to do is enter the necessary information into the template to complete your business plan.

8. Social Business Plan Guidelines by the Ateneo de Manila

This free business plan format for social entrepreneurs comes from the Ateneo de Manila University’s John Gokongwei School of Management. In a glimpse, it provides the basic information you need to plan a social enterprise.

It also has more detailed business plan guidelines you can refer to. Simply click the link to the word document at the bottommost part of the page.

Related: 11 Best MBA Programs & Schools in the Philippines

How to Write a Business Plan

An outstanding business plan covers everything your stakeholders need to know about your business. So don’t just wing it—put a lot of thought into this critical document.

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of drafting a business plan, whether you’ll use a template or not.

1. Brainstorm about your business idea

You may have a very promising business idea, but it won’t fly unless you develop it into a clear-cut concept.

Brainstorm with your team about everything you can think of about starting and running the business. Then list them all down.

Be as creative as possible. No need to be too critical at this point.

While brainstorming, aim to answer these key questions:

• Why do you want to start the business? What has inspired you to go for it?
• What product or service do you plan to sell?
• Who will be your target customers? What are their problems that you’re hoping to solve through your product or service? How will you promote your offerings to them?
• What will be your business branding ? How will you position your brand in the industry?
• What is your competitive advantage? What makes your business unique?
• Where do you see your business within a year?

2. Validate your business idea

Research on the specifics of your business idea—paying special attention to your product or service, target market, and competitors.

According to entrepreneurship experts, it’s best to spend twice as much time on this step as spending the time to the actual drafting of the business plan.

Here are some ways to validate your business idea:

• Read studies and research to find information and trends about your industry .
• Conduct market research to gather insights from industry leaders, potential customers, and suppliers . You can do this through surveys, focus group discussions, and one-on-one interviews with your stakeholders.
• Collect data about your competitors , especially the product or service they offer and how they reach their customers. Consider buying from them or visiting their store to get a feel of their products and customer experience.

Gather all relevant information and analyze your findings to assess whether the business idea is feasible or not. You may need to tweak your business idea based on your evaluation of its feasibility.

3. Define the purpose of your business plan

It’s extremely difficult to carry out anything if you aren’t sure about why you’re doing it in the first place. Without a clear purpose, you’re like driving a car without knowing where you’re headed to.

When it comes to writing your business plan, you should have its purpose in mind from the get-go. It can be one or more of the following:

• Create a roadmap to provide the directions the business must take to achieve your goals and overcome challenges. This is ideal for bootstrapping or self-funding startups.
• Seek investments and loans to finance a business. If this is your purpose for making a business plan, it should be compelling enough to attract investors and lenders.
• Set your targets, budget, timelines, and milestones. When you put them all in writing, it’s so much easier to evaluate and measure your business’ actual performance versus your goals.
• Communicate your vision and strategic priorities with the management team. With this purpose, your business plan must establish specific goals for your managers so that they have something to commit to, you can track progress, and get them to follow through on their commitments. Also, having a business plan for this purpose ensures that everybody involved in running your business is on the same page.
• Minimize risks. Running a business in itself involves a lot of risks, and it gets riskier with a poorly researched business idea. A business plan can help entrepreneurs mitigate them by organizing activities and preparing for contingencies.

4. Create an outline for the executive summary

The first section of any business plan is the executive summary. You don’t have to draft it yet at this point, but it helps to write an outline for it before you proceed with the rest of the sections.

In a sentence or two, describe these key aspects of your business:

• Product or service
• Target market
• Competitors
• Unique value proposition (how you set your business apart from the competition)
• Management team
• Short-term and long-term business goals
• Possible sources of revenue

5. Describe your business

The next step is to write your company profile. Get your readers to become familiar with your business and realize why they should be interested in it.

If you have no idea what specifically goes into this crucial business plan section, you can check the company profiles of businesses in your industry. Usually, you can find them on their websites at the About Us or About the Company page. Take note of the information included and how they’re written.

Here are the must-haves of a great company profile:

• Brief history of the company
• Mission and vision
• Product or service lineup
• Target market and audience
• How the business will address the customers’ pain points
• What makes the business unique

6. Provide details about your operations and organizational structure

Anyone who will read your business plan needs to know what they should expect when they deal with you. They need to see a solid plan for your operations and the people who make up your team. So give your operations plan and organizational plan a careful thought.

For your operations plan, choose carefully the right legal structure for your business. Will you be a sole proprietor? Or will you partner with someone or form a corporation? Your choice will have an impact not only on your business operations but also on the taxes you’ll pay and your personal liability .  

As for the organizational plan, it’s where you put your organizational chart that shows a glimpse of the hierarchy within your organization. You can easily create this chart in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

Also introduce the people who comprise your management team—their relevant experience, qualifications, and expertise . The organizational plan must also include information of the support personnel, as well as who reports to whom and who manages whom.

If you’ll be outsourcing some of your business functions, add them to your organizational plan, too. These may include consultants , accountants , lawyers , logistics specialists, and IT specialists. This way, you’re showing that you’re planning to fill in any expertise and skill gaps in your in-house team.

Also Read: Business Process Outsourcing to the Philippines [Complete Guide]

7. Compose your marketing plan

Make this section of your business plan as comprehensive and detailed as possible. You’d want to prove that you’ll take a strategic and aggressive approach to reach your target customers and promote your brand and product or service to them.

Divide your marketing plan into five subsections: objectives, product/service description, target market profile, competition profile, and promotional activities.

A. Objectives

Zero in on the what and the why of your marketing activities. Under the marketing objectives section, list down all your goals and the strategies you’ll implement to meet them.

Your marketing goals can be any of the following:

• Raise brand awareness
• Introduce a new product or service
• Regain or get more customers for an existing product or service
• Secure long-term contracts with your ideal clients
• Increase sales in a certain market, product, or price point
• Improve product manufacturing or product/service delivery
• Increase prices without affecting sales

B. Product/Service Description

Describe each product or service you’ll offer, including its features and benefits. You can use storytelling , images, charts, tables, or any visual element that best illustrates how each item will work to the benefit of your target customers.

C. Target Market Profile

Present as much relevant data as you can about your potential customers. Make sure to include the following:

• Demographic profile: age range, gender, income level, education, interests, etc.
• Buying behaviors
• Factors that influence their buying decisions: purchasing power, personal preferences, economic conditions, marketing campaigns, social factors (such as peer pressure and social media influencers ), cultural factors, etc.

D. Competition Profile

Your marketing plan must focus not only on your own business but also those of your competitors. List down the similar products or services that they offer to your target customers.

Also, provide an assessment of your competitors’ performance. Which areas are they doing well? How can you improve on their strengths and weaknesses? How can your business stand out? Is it your more competitive pricing? Better customer service? Superior product quality?

To come up with a good competition profile, take the time to research about your competitors. When interviewing your target customers, ask them about the brands they use or businesses they deal with.

You can also do an online search of your competitors. For example, if you’ll run a pet supplies store in Pasig, search for “pet stores Pasig” on Google. The search engine results page may show you the different stores that sell the same products as the ones you plan to offer. Read customer reviews online to get deeper insights on how these businesses serve their clients.

Consider doing a “secret shopping” in your competitor’s store. This way, you can experience firsthand how they treat their customers and how they market and sell their products or services. You might even be able to get information about their product lineup and pricing.

E. Promotional Activities

The last subsection of your marketing plan must discuss how you’ll promote your brand and products or services and connect with customers. Also, be ready to allocate budget for each marketing activity you identify in your plan.

Create a list of marketing activities you plan to implement. Will you reach your audience through SEO (organic online search), paid advertising, and/or social media? Or will you go the traditional route through print and TV advertising or joining expos, exhibits, and trade shows? The right choice depends on the nature of your business and the type of audience you’re trying to reach.

8. Develop your financial plan

The financial plan is the section where you’ll crunch the numbers. Unless you’re really good at math, it’s best to hire an accountant or business consultant who will work with you to develop a foolproof financial plan.

Put simply, a financial plan explains how a business will spend money and make more money. It also estimates the amount of time it will take for the business to earn a profit.

Here are the specifics of a good financial plan:

• Total capital requirement
• Business financing plan and any loan requirement
• Collateral to put up for a business loan
• Schedule for loan repayment
• Financial statements : cash flow statement, income statement/profit and loss statement, and balance sheet
• Break-even analysis
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Financial analysis

Ultimately, these financial projections answer the question, “Is your business financially feasible?”

9. Back up your business plan with supporting documents

Books and theses have an appendix section at the end that provides additional resources. Your business plan should have one, too. This final section consists of documents, surveys, studies, charts, tables, images, and other elements that provide supporting data.

Depending on the information you’ve presented in the other sections of the plan, your appendix may include these things:

• Market research data and findings
• Resumes of the management team
• Relevant financial documents
• Lease agreements
• Bank statements
• Licenses and permits

10. Review and refine your business plan

Your business plan is almost done at this point. Now all you have to do is go over the document once more to ensure you’ve covered everything and nothing crucial is left out.

Check your final draft and be sure it has the following:

• Sound business idea – If you’ve done Step 2 properly (validating business idea), you can be confident that you have a sound business idea.
• Comprehensive and in-depth look into your business in a professional format
• Thorough understanding of your target customers , their behaviors, interests, and needs
• Competent management team – The people who make up your team must possess the skills and expertise that complement yours.
• Business focus or specialization

Aside from yourself, ask a business partner, proofreader, and accountant or financial expert to review your business plan and spot any errors and inconsistencies. You’d want to make sure that it looks professional and is accurate.

11. Write the executive summary

Lastly, get back to the outline you created in Step 4 and write it based on your final draft. Make sure to craft an engaging executive summary that hooks people into reading the rest of the plan.

6 Actionable Tips on Writing a Business Plan

Anyone can write a business plan—but it takes more than great writing skills to create an exceptional one.

Here are some tips to help you prepare an effective business plan that goes beyond the ordinary.

1. Write with your audience in mind

When drafting your business plan, you’re writing not for yourself but for people who will play key roles in starting and running your enterprise. This is why it’s important that you know whom you’re writing for and keep them in mind while preparing your business plan.

If you think you can’t create a plan that caters to all your audience groups, consider having different versions of the document. For example, you can come up with a business plan for investors, another for lenders, one for employees, and so on. But keep the data consistent across all versions.

To write a business plan that suits a particular audience, you have to use the right language, highlight the parts that interest them, and adjust the format accordingly.

A. Use the Right Language

One of the most important rules in business writing: use the language that your target audience easily understands. If you’re writing for engineers, finance people, or lawyers, your language can be technical—meaning you can use jargons and terminologies familiar to them.

However, if you’re writing for investors who barely have technical knowledge, tweak your language in simple terms that are easy to grasp and appreciate.

Likewise, if you’re writing a business plan to communicate internally with managers and employees your company’s direction and strategies, it’s best to use more casual language than you would when writing for high-level, external stakeholders.

B. Appeal to Your Audience’s Interests

It also helps to understand what interests your audience because they will influence how you’ll write your business plan.

Your management team, for instance, will be interested in knowing your business goals and strategies so that they can help you steer the company in the right direction.

Investors and lenders look at the business plan differently—they’ll be more interested in your financial statements to determine your financial health, like if your business is worth investing in or has the ability to pay back a loan.

C. Adopt a Suitable Business Plan Format

There’s no one-size-fits-all format for business plans because it depends mainly on your audience, aside from the nature of your business.

Let’s say you’ll set up a restaurant, and you’re drafting a business plan to apply for a business loan. To convince lenders that your business is viable, details such as your restaurant’s location and possible renovations are crucial.

Meanwhile, if you’re writing the plan for potential big-time investors, you’ll take a different approach. A good restaurant business plan focuses on the business aspects that will lead to growth and profitability (Remember that investors are interested in how they’ll make money from partnering with you).

2. Keep it concise

How long should a business plan be? According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) , it depends on various factors such as the specific audience it’s written for and the nature of a business. The SBA cites surveys that found the ideal length to be at least 25 to 100 pages.

Sounds a lot? If you have a simple business idea and you’re writing a business plan for busy people who don’t have time to pore over hundreds of pages, then one page up to 20 pages should be fine.

However, you may need to provide more explanation (which will take up more pages in your business plan) if you’re planning to build a new kind of business, and a risky one at that.

The size of your business also affects the length of your business plan. Business plans for small businesses need not exceed 30 pages. Corporate business plans are expected to be longer.

What matters more than length is how concise your business plan is. Meaning, it provides all the necessary information—including solid research and analysis—using the fewest words possible. No place for wordiness here!

3. Document everything related to your business

Support your claims in the business plan with solid facts and proof. Investors, for instance, need an assurance that they won’t lose their investment when they trust you with their money. This is where documenting your business thoroughly plays a crucial role.

What kinds of documentation can you include in your business plan?

• Industry forecast or projections
• Licensing agreements
• Location strategy
• Prototype of your product or service
• Survey and FGD results
• Resumes of your management team

4. Show your passion and dedication to your business

Although business plans have straightforward, matter-of-fact content, you can still establish an emotional connection with your readers through your plan. After all, your readers are humans with feelings and motivations.

No need to be dramatic about it—you can show your passion and dedication while still sounding professional in your business plan. Write about the mistakes you’ve had (like a failed business in the past), what you’ve learned from the experience, the values you hold, and the problems of your customers you want to solve through your product or service.

5. Know your competition and how you’ll stand out

Your business won’t be the single player in your industry. Other businesses in the same niche have started way ahead of you, and some new ones will also compete for business in the future.

Write your business plan in such a way that you know your competitors so well. Identify all of them and what makes your business unique compared with the rest without belittling them.

6. Be realistic and conservative in all your estimates

In any aspect of your business, it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around. This also holds true when writing a business plan. You wouldn’t want to set unrealistic expectations that will lead to disappointments and worse, losses, when you fail to deliver on your promise.

There’s no place for too much optimism in your business plan. Your budget allocation, timelines, capital requirements, sales and revenue targets, and financial projections must be reasonable, realistic, and conservative. These will lend credibility to your business plan and yourself as an entrepreneur. Because there are a lot of factors beyond your control, always assume that things will get completed longer and cost more ( consider inflation over time! ).

This is where your research prior to writing the draft comes extremely helpful. You have something solid and factual to benchmark against. For example, if your analysis based on the facts you’ve gathered indicates that you’ll be able to get 40% share off the market in your first year of operations, consider making your estimates a bit more conservative and attainable.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Business Valuation in the Philippines

10 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Business Plan

Now, let’s explore the mistakes entrepreneurs often commit when writing a business plan. Listing them all down here to let you know what to avoid.

1. Prioritizing Form Over Substance

Spend most of your time and energy on building solid research and facts rather than obsessing about which font type or background color will look best for your document.

2. Overthinking

Many entrepreneurs take too long to complete their business plans because they worry too much about it. Don’t get intimidated by business planning—you don’t have to be an expert or a degree holder in business management or business administration to be able to write an outstanding business plan. Overthinking will just lead to analysis paralysis and get nothing done.

As long as you know your business well and are passionate about it, then writing a business plan won’t be as difficult as you think, especially if you’re using a template.

3. Submitting the Document Without Proofreading It

If your business plan is filled with typos and grammatical errors, readers will get distracted even if you’re presenting substantial information. It may also give your audience an impression that you’re careless—and who wants to deal with a person who isn’t professional and careful enough?

Even if it costs you money, pay a professional proofreader to check your work and correct any errors so that the message you wanted to convey through your business plan will get across.

4. Making Empty Claims

Any statement that isn’t sufficiently supported by solid research or documentation has to go. For example, if you want to claim to be the top player in your industry but you don’t have any evidence to back it up, rethink about including it in your business plan.

5. Writing an Overly Long and Wordy Plan

Make sure that everything you put into your business plan is relevant and serves your purpose. Otherwise, remove unnecessary statements that just add fluff to the document.

Also, don’t waste your readers’ time by using too many words—including highfalutin ones. Remember, your goal is to make your audience understand your business, not to impress them with beautiful or complex prose.

6. Using Too Many Superlatives

Even if you really feel that your business, business idea, or projection is incredible, amazing, the best, great, fantastic, or one of a kind, avoid using these superlatives because they aren’t appropriate for formal documents like a business plan.

7. Doing the Financial Projections on Your Own

Unless you’re an accountant yourself, it’s best that you get a professional to do the job for you. It will save you time and the headache of dealing with numbers and formatting your financial plan properly.

8. Overestimating Your Projections

The business plan is not a place to make impossible promises—while they look good on paper, you might run into trouble fulfilling them. To avoid this mistake, always do your research. Find out how other businesses do it and what the typical timeframes and financial projections are before you come up with your estimates.

9. Long-Term Business Planning

As much as possible, limit your projections to only a year. A lot of things can happen and make your business different from how you initially planned it. Stick with your short-term or one-year targets and estimates, then just tweak your business plan as time goes by.

10. Including Unfounded Rumors About Your Competitors

Not only do rumors make your business plan look unprofessional, but they also distract your readers from your intended message, which is to highlight what makes your business different from the competition. Avoid including details based only on hearsay. Everything in your plan must be backed up by solid, quantifiable facts.

Key Takeaway

A business plan is more than just a document that you prepare once and will never look at again. Rather, it’s a strategic tool that you should use from time to time to guide your business operations, get the buy-in of your stakeholders, and grow your business over time.

Once you’re done with writing your business plan, make the most of it for your business. Use it and modify it as often as needed!

Ready and confident to start writing your business plan? Share your thoughts and questions below!

Other Useful Business Resources from Grit PH:

• How to Sell a Business in the Philippines

About Venus Zoleta

Venus Zoleta is an experienced writer and editor, specializing in personal finance and digital marketing.

She has been a regular columnist for some of the biggest business & finance publications in the Philippines, such as MoneyMax.ph and Filipiknow.net.

Hoping to retire early, she started investing and bought a home in her early 20s. This crazy cat mom eats ramen like there's no tomorrow.

Education: University of the Philippines (B.A. Journalism) Focus: Personal Finance, Personal Development, and Entrepreneurship

Reader Interactions

March 3, 2020 at 10:00 am

I like it, and i want to learn more about for business

March 6, 2020 at 9:46 am

Hello Ms. Venus, Rise Against Hunger Philippines, N.G.O. , branching out into a new high ways… and i am newly hired as a social enterprise development officer… whose main tasks to launch a product line; an up-cycled tarpaulin bags.. manufactured by a group of community women (skills training’s, coordinated by life coached; aiming w-holistic transformation and sustainability program.. . with such a big tasks, i need a step by step guides, and if possible a coach for i cannot do it alone… thank you, henry reandino chua

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We need your help!

Our team is currently conducting research for an upcoming guide focusing on starting a business in the Philippines . We would greatly appreciate your contribution, which should only require a few seconds of your time. 

Thank you in advance!

• Digital Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Digital PR & Link Building
• Social Media Marketing
• Digital Advertising (PPC & Social)
• Content Marketing
• Copywriting
• Email Marketing
• Conversion Optimization
• Web/App Development
• Ecommerce Development

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Name * Location of Business * Number of Employees * 1 - 10 11 -50 51 - 100 100 - 500 500+ Phone Number * Email * Insurance Company Standard Insurance AXA Philippines BDO AIG Submit

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Full Name * Company Name * Mobile Number * Email Address * Submit

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Name * Contact Number * Email Address * Target Location Preferred Developer * Ayala Land SM Prime Megaworld Alveo Land DMCI Homes Federal Land Robinsons Land Corp Vista Land and Lifescapes Filinvest Land Shang Properties Century Properties Empire East Rockwell Land Message Submit

Disclosure: Your personal details will not be shared with any third-party companies. We’ll just need your contact details so our resident real estate agents can reach you to provide you with the details for any of the listed property developments you’re interested to invest in.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Name * Age * Location* Phone Number * Email Address * Insurance Company Sun Life Financial Pru Life U.K. AXA Philippines AIA Philippines Manulife Insular Life BPI-AIA BDO Life Etiqa FWD Insurance Allianz PNB Life Phone Get a Quote

Disclosure: Your personal details will not be shared with any third-party companies. We’ll just need your contact details so our resident financial advisors can reach you to provide you with the details for any of the listed insurance company you’re interested in.

What Is Proprietary: Everything You Need to Know

What is proprietary relates to ownership and the rights an owner may exercise in regards to his or her property or information. 3 min read updated on February 01, 2023

What is proprietary relates to ownership and the rights an owner may exercise in regards to his or her property or information. A proprietor is one that possesses, owns, or holds exclusive right to something.

Legally, what is proprietary often refers to proprietary information. Proprietary information is important, possibly sensitive information that a company owns. This information usually gives the company competitive advantage(s) in its market.

Things that can be used, known, produced, manufactured and/or marketed under the exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker may be proprietary. For example, a patented medicine is protected by intellectual property law against free market competition in regards to name, product, composition, or process of manufacture. If a manufacturer uses a particular manufacturing process that others do not know about ( trade secret protection ) or are forbidden to use (patent protection) then that is a proprietary process. A proprietary trademark is a name or logo that only the owner of that trademark can use.

If a business was in fact owned by and managed by an intelligence organization as a front, that would be proprietary to the intelligence organization.

Intellectual Property Protection

Protection to these proprietary articles are through intellectual property law: copyright, patents, trademark, etc. Unfortunately, however, at some time down the line, proprietary items and processes will lose their legal protection. This is when the information becomes a part of the public domain. Once that happens, anyone can use the item, process, or trademark as they see fit.

Baseball fans have proprietary attitudes toward their favorite team. When their team wins they say “we won,” not “they won,” as if they own or are part of the team.

Municipal corporations must act in the best interests of the citizens. This is a proprietary function. This proprietary function is different than its governmental functions, which are duties drawn from being a political part of a state.

Proprietary information is very important for the success of most businesses. This property may not be valued, but it is very valuable. Especially due to the marketplace and its competitive nature. Intellectual assets are highly sought-after commodities.

Because of the value and importance of such property, companies often prohibit directors, employees, and agents from disclosing confidential or proprietary information without proper authority in non-disclosure agreements/clauses. Sometimes this prohibition extends to after the employment relationship has ended.

If a contractor is hired and received proprietary information in order to do his or her work, a company often requires him/her to give back the information or property and to keep the information confidential.

Proprietary Information Can Include:

• Trade secrets
• Production methods
• Marketing strategies
• Salary structure
• Consumer contact information
• Past and present contracts
• Computer software
• Technology/hardware
• Employee knowledge
• Employee skill
• Financial data
• Test results

For information to be considered proprietary by a court, a company must treat the information as confidential. Courts will not find readily available information or public information proprietary. The information must also give the company a competitive advantage to be considered proprietary.

If the information is known to others outside of the company, then it will not give the company advantage. In order to be granted protection by a court, a company must also prove that it has taken “reasonable steps” to keep the information secret.

Courts do not require that companies take all possible measures to keep the information private. Courts do not require the secret to be absolutely or completely private. Reasonable steps in order to keep the information confidential must be “reasonable under the circumstances.”

A company has different ways to keep its information proprietary:

• Confidentiality clauses in employee contracts
• Nondisclosure clauses
• Non-compete agreements
• Security systems
• Restricting employee access with codes
• Data protection codes and procedures
• Secure phone lines
• Secure conference rooms

Companies should make sure that their covenants are reasonable in both time and location. Otherwise a court will not enforce them and will not restrict the unreasonable restriction of the former employee’s right to find a new job. They should also ensure that the employees that they do reveal trade secrets to have signed a confidentiality agreement of some kind or a court may not protect a trade secret of that small business.

If you need help with what is proprietary, you can post your legal need on UpCounsel’s marketplace. UpCounsel accepts only the top 5 percent of lawyers to its site. Lawyers on UpCounsel come from law schools such as Harvard Law and Yale Law and average 14 years of legal experience, including work with or on behalf of companies like Google, Menlo Ventures, and Airbnb.

Hire the top business lawyers and save up to 60% on legal fees

Content Approved by UpCounsel

• What Is a Proprietary Patent?
• Proprietary Interest
• Proprietary Information Agreement
• Define Proprietary Company
• Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement
• Who Owns Trade Secret
• Government Non-Disclosure Agreement
• Confidentiality Contracts
• Proprietary Software License
• Confidentiality Agreement

Do you dream of making twice as much, working half the time? Join me for the upcoming online training.

Discover how to get your business to 20K, 50K, even 100K a month, without sacrificing your life. This FREE hands-on, half-day workshop shows you exactly how. Join us.

How to create your proprietary system

• July 9, 2012

As an entrepreneur, it’s important to assemble your knowledge into a content system that’s easy to follow – a proprietary system.

Clients frequently ask me how to put together their proprietary system and in what order the information should go. The confusion comes from the difference between working privately with clients versus group coaching or a home study program.

When you are coaching a client privately, you can start anywhere they want depending on the person’s specific needs. So you might start at step six because that is what they need in the moment and then circle back to step one at a later date. And the client won’t be confused by this out-of-order interaction because you are jumping in exactly where they are.

But, with a group or home study program, the experience for the client is very different. The content must be presented in a more orderly fashion. In other words, it should start from the beginning of what you do and go to the end in a chronological and logical manner.

So, for example, when I sat down to write my The Leveraged Business System (my proprietary system) I started by having my students make client attraction a priority, then figuring out what their position was in the marketplace. Once that was done, the logical next step was to determine where to find their ideal clients, and then the next step involved creating their compelling marketing message, followed by their materials, etc.

Most importantly, you want your proprietary system to make sense for marketing purposes.

You want to set it up so that communication about what’s included on your website and in your materials is clear and logical. Step by step. Visitors can see what the first step is and the second step, etc. Putting things in order this way will also work for a boot camp or other multi-session series.

Another way to think of organizing the information is as if you were writing a book. In fact, many of my clients turn their proprietary system into a book over time, as they gain more experience and client success stories.

Once you can put your system into chronological order, writing it and pulling all the pieces together will be so much simpler. And you’ll rest easy knowing people who use the system will benefit from the logical arrangement of the material.

Your The Leveraged Business Assignment

Have you created your proprietary system yet? If you haven’t done so, this is the perfect time to get started. Think about the program you want to offer and first map it out step by step. That will help you know what to write and include, and how it should be presented.

If you have already started or even completed your unique selling propositions , you may want to look them over to check they are in chronological order. Take a look at your marketing materials as well to make sure your communication of the system makes sense logically.

Now, if you’re just starting out and trying to fill your practice in the FIRST place, then follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. The Leveraged Business Program™ gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients.  It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things . So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter.  Easy . You can get it at  The Leveraged Business .

Want to know more about our programs ? You can book a FREE strategy call with one of our coach. Time to get that work done and to scale your business to a six-figures revenue, don’t you think so ?

We'd like to send you a FREE* copy of the revolutionary new book.

*We pay for the book, you only have to cover shipping

*Pay only $6.95 for shipping & handling in US ($9.95 Int.)

Ready to start leveraging your business?

CALL US: +1 (203) 717-4404 | EMAIL:  [email protected]

COPYRIGHT ©2024 BOLDHEART, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRIVACY POLICY  |  MEMBER CENTER

Privacy Overview

We'll be sharing practical strategies for leveraging your business, without sacrificing your life. They'll arrive on Saturday morning in your inbox, at no cost to you.

Woohoo! Please check your inbox and confirm your email. If you use Gmail, be sure to move our message to your Primary tab!

Double check your email for accuracy to ensure you receive access. Our privacy policy keeps your email safe and secure. We will never sell, rent, give, or divulge your email information to ANYONE.

Currently Limited Supply To Give Away!

Step #1 Where Should We Ship Your FREE Book?

Step #2 your free book is ready to ship.

Step 1: Shipping Information

Where should we send your free book?

Step 2: Checkout

How would you like to pay for shipping?

Orders for The Leveraged Business sourced through independent, third-party “freebie” sites will not be honored. The content and images of this book and webpage are the intellectual property of Fabienne Fredrickson, protected by the copyright laws of the United States, and may not be shared to or by any other website or organization without the express written permission of the author.

All personal information you provide is encrypted and secure. We will not share or trade any online information that you provide us. Review our Privacy Policy

Update Shipping Details

The Leveraged Business Book

FREE + Shipping

FREE + International Shipping

Domestic Shipping

International Shipping

• Search Search Please fill out this field.
• Trading Skills
• Trading Basic Education

Proprietary Trading: What It Is, How It Works, Benefits

Gordon Scott has been an active investor and technical analyst or 20+ years. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT).

What Is Proprietary Trading?

Proprietary trading refers to a financial firm or commercial bank that invests for direct market gain rather than earning commission dollars by trading on behalf of clients. Also known as "prop trading," this type of trading activity occurs when a financial firm chooses to profit from market activities rather than thin-margin commissions obtained through client trading activity. Proprietary trading may involve the trading of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, or other instruments.

Financial firms or commercial banks that engage in proprietary trading believe they have a competitive advantage that will enable them to earn an annual return that exceeds index investing , bond yield appreciation, or other investment styles.

Investopedia / Michela Buttignol

Key Takeaways

• Proprietary trading refers to a financial institution using its own capital, rather than client funds, to conduct financial transactions.
• Proprietary traders may execute an assortment of market strategies that include index arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, merger arbitrage, fundamental analysis, volatility arbitrage, technical analysis, and/or global macro trading.
• Market analysts understand that large financial institutions purposely obfuscate details on proprietary vs. non-proprietary trading operations in order to obscure activities promoting corporate self-interest.

How Does Proprietary Trading Work?

Proprietary trading, which is also known as "prop trading," occurs when a trading desk at a financial institution, brokerage firm, investment bank, hedge fund , or other liquidity source uses the firm's capital and balance sheet to conduct self-promoting financial transactions. These trades are usually speculative in nature, executed through a variety of derivatives or other complex investment vehicles.

Benefits of Proprietary Trading

Proprietary trading provides many benefits to a financial institution or commercial bank, most notably higher quarterly and annual profits. When a brokerage firm or investment bank trades on behalf of clients, it earns revenues in the form of commissions and fees. This income can represent a very small percentage of the total amount invested or the gains generated, but the proprietary trading process allows an institution to realize 100% of the gains earned from an investment.

The second benefit is that the institution is able to stockpile an inventory of securities. This helps in two ways. First, any speculative inventory allows the institution to offer an unexpected advantage to clients. Second, it helps these institutions prepare for down or illiquid markets when it becomes harder to purchase or sell securities on the open market.

The final benefit is associated with the second benefit. Proprietary trading allows a financial institution to become an influential market maker by providing liquidity on a specific security or group of securities.

An Example of a Proprietary Trading Desk

In order for proprietary trading to be effective and also keep the institution's clients in mind, the proprietary trading desk is normally "roped off" from other trading desks. This desk is responsible for a portion of the financial institution's revenues, unrelated to client work while acting autonomously.

However, proprietary trading desks can also function as market makers, as outlined above. This situation arises when a client wants to trade a large amount of a single security or trade a highly illiquid security. Since there aren't many buyers or sellers for this type of trade, a proprietary trading desk will act as the buyer or seller, initiating the other side of the client trade.

Proprietary trading occurs when a financial institution trades financial instruments using its own money rather than client funds. This allows the firm to maintain the full amount of any gains earned on the investment, potentially providing a significant boost to the firm's profits. Proprietary trading desks are generally "roped off" from client-focused trading desks, helping them to remain autonomous and ensuring that the financial institution is acting in the interest of its clients.

Why Do Firms Engage in Proprietary Trading?

Financial institutions engage in proprietary trading as a way of benefitting from perceived competitive advantages and maximizing their profits. Since proprietary trading uses the firm's own money rather than funds belonging to its clients, prop traders can take on greater levels of risk without having to answer to clients.

Can Banks Engage in Proprietary Trading?

The Volcker Rule , implemented in response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, places restrictions against large banks using their own accounts for short-term proprietary trading of securities, derivatives, and commodity futures, along with options on these instruments. The rule is designed to shield customers by preventing banks from making the types of speculative investments that contributed to the Great Recession.

The Bottom Line

Proprietary trading occurs when a financial institution carries out transactions using its own capital rather than trading on behalf of its clients. The practice allows financial firms to maximize their profits, as they are able to keep 100% of the investment earnings generated by proprietary trades. Institutions such as brokerage firms, investment banks, and hedge funds frequently have proprietary trading desks. However, there are restrictions against large banks engaging in prop trading, designed to limit the speculative investments that contributed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices