While in the end you carry the can for the contents of your business

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1 Bonus Chapter 1 Ten Business-Plan Helpers In This Chapter Reviewing who can help shape up you business plan Finding some hands on support While in the end you carry the can for the contents of your business plan, that doesn t mean you re on your own for the whole nine yards. This chapter lists some of the people you really should consider enlisiting to provide input, advice, help or just some friendly encouragement. You plan will be a whole lot better if you do. Encouraging Your Own Team in on the Act Okay, you re probably convinced by now that a business plan is essential. That still begs the question of who s supposed to put the wretched thing together? In some sense, the answer depends on how big your company is. Small businesses: If your business is really just you or maybe you and a couple of other people you already know exactly who s responsible for making a plan for the company. That s not such a bad thing, when you think about it. Who better to create a view of the future and set business goals and objectives than the people who are also responsible for reaching the goals and making the future happen? Medium-sized organisation: If your organisation is a bit bigger, say a medium-sized business, a not-for profit venture, a local government department or a charity, you probably don t want to go it alone when it comes to putting together your business plan. First of all, putting together a plan is a big job. But more than that, involving all the key people in the planning process has a certain advantage: everyone involved in the plan has a stake in making sure that your company succeeds.

2 BC2 Business Plans For Dummies, 3rd Edition Large organisations and public companies: If you re part of a big venture, you may need serious help to make a business plan that s complete and always up-to-date. To get all the work done, you may have to hire people who have nothing to do but tend to your business plan full time. Unfortunately, creating a planning staff involves a real danger: your plan can take on a life of its own and get completely divorced from what s really happening with your business. Remember: you have to make sure that your planners don t create plans all by themselves. To be of any use in the long run, the planning staff must support the managers who actually have to carry out the business plan. Talking to a Friendly Banker Despite having had a bad press during the credit crunch, these guys and girls have a lot to offer other than oodles of cash (or not!). Bankers see a lot of different people about a lot of different businesses. You can draw on their wide range of knowledge and experience. Your banker may be familiar with your type of business or the location you re interested in, or have advice on different strategic options. Start by talking with a bank manager you don t want to borrow money from. Begin the conversation by asking for advice, rather than money. Only when you ve convinced yourself that your proposition is an appropriate one for a bank, should you make a pitch. Using a Neighbourhood Business Angel One source of great business planning advice is a private individual, with their own funds and perhaps knowledge of your type of business, who may be willing to back your strategy in return for a share in the business. Such investors have been christened business angels, a term first coined to describe private wealthy individuals who backed theatrical productions, usually a play on Broadway or in London s West End. By their very nature, such investments are highly speculative in nature. The angel typically has a personal interest in the venture and may want to play some role in the company beyond merely signing a cheque. One role they have bags of experience of is writing and seeing business plans. These angels often have their own agenda and frequently operate through managed networks. Angel networks operate throughout the world, in some cases on the Internet. In the UK and the US, hundreds of networks operate

3 Bonus Chapter 1: Ten Business-Plan Helpers BC3 with tens of thousands of business angels who are prepared to put up several billion pounds each year into new or small businesses. One estimate is that the UK has approximately 18,000 business angels and that they annually invest in the region of 500 million. Two organisations that can put you in contact with a business angel are: The British Business Angels Association (BBAA; website org.uk). Angel Investment Network ( operates a service matching entrepreneurs to angels. Their website also has a number of useful tools to help you get investor ready. Asking a Venture Capitalist Venture capital providers (VCs) invest other people s money, often from pension funds. They re likely to be more useful if your business is large and your business plans ambitious. Venture capital is a means of financing the start-up, development, expansion or the purchase of a company. The venture capitalist acquires a share of the company in return for providing the requisite funding. Venture capital firms often work in conjunction with other providers of finance in putting together a total funding package for a business. Venture capital is a medium- to long-term investment, of not just money but of time and effort, exactly the resources you need to tap into when sharpening up a business plan. The venture capital firm s aim is to enable growth companies to develop into the major businesses of tomorrow. Before investing, a venture capital provider goes through due diligence, a process that involves a thorough examination of both the business and its owners. Accountants and lawyers subject you and your business plan to detailed scrutiny. You and your directors are required to warrant that you ve provided all relevant information, under pain of financial penalties. The British Venture Capital Association ( and the European Venture Capital Association ( both have online directories giving details of hundreds of venture capital providers. VFinance ( com), a global financial services company specialising in high-growth opportunities, has a directory of 1,541 venture capital firms and over 23,000 business angels. Its website also contains a useful business plan template.

4 BC4 Business Plans For Dummies, 3rd Edition Discussing with Your Best Friend Or Any Friend for That Matter! On the assumption that your best friend isn t your spouse, then she represents someone else who should be able to tell you whether you re the right sort of person to research and write up the business plan you have in mind. You can start out by asking your friends to review your ideas and so provide a valuable crosscheck on your self-assessment. In fact, you should always find someone who knows you really well to talk your plans over with. Unfortunately, everyone s capacity for self-deception is unlimited, and you shouldn t miss any opportunity for a reality check. Friends, especially those you ve worked alongside over the years have formed a view about your talents. At worst, they may tell you that your plan is barmy and explain why; at best, they may join you in the venture or invest their hard-earned savings in helping you execute your strategy. If you were thinking about taking on a partner to help you implement your business plan, then casting your eye around your friends and colleagues is a good place to start looking. Remember, it cuts both ways. Although they may know a lot about how you perform at work, you know as much about them. Tackling a Former Boss Talking to your boss about anything other than the job in hand is always a tricky decision. Talk about your business plan too soon and you may find yourself sidetracked for promotion and pay rises and perhaps even first in line for the next downsizing event. Leave it too late and your boss may see your action as disloyalty at best and betrayal at worst. But once you ve moved out and provided you re not going into direct competition, your boss can be a useful resource for business advice and contacts as well as a source of investment capital. Chatting up a Spouse Your spouse may not know a great deal about your business or the market you operate in, but you can be sure that she knows a lot about you. Your spouse can remind you of your weaknesses and help you play to your strengths. She also needs to be prepared for the risk associated with financing the strategy outlined in your business plan.

5 Bonus Chapter 1: Ten Business-Plan Helpers BC5 The money put into the business is going to have an impact on the money available for other areas of family expenditure, so your spouse also has to be comfortable with the financial commitments you re taking on. Unlike most other investments you may have made on houses and cars, for example, you can lose all the money you put into a business irrevocably. If your business plan calls for a substantial investment, or involves other people who will have a more or less equal hand in executing the plan, you should consider operating as a limited company, if you do not do so already. Using a limited company shelters your personal assets from being at risk if things go seriously wrong a great comfort to your spouse. You can find out all about limited companies on Companies House website ( Registration.shtml). Employing a Consultant If your business plan looks like taking you into areas in which you ve limited expertise, or if this is the first time you ve written a business plan, then hiring a consultant is an option worth considering. Getting the help of someone who has covered these areas several times before and who is an expert in the field may well make sense. The time a consultant takes to help with a business plan is likely to be between a fortnight and three months. Anything much longer is likely to be too expensive for most firms and anything much shorter is unlikely to have much of an impact on the business. However, the consultant is not working continuously on your project for that time. After an initial meeting, a consultant may do much of the work off site and in chunks of time. Costs vary depending on both the skill of the consultant and the topic covered. A lawyer working on the intellectual property aspect of a business plan, for example, can cost upwards of 500 an hour, while a consultant carrying out basic market research may cost the same sum for a day. You can t delegate decision making, you can only delegate the analysis of problems and the presentation of options. In the end, you have to choose which strategy your business plan should adopt. Don t let consultants implement decisions on their own. The line of responsibility between yourself and your staff needs to be preserved. Seeing someone else giving orders undermines the chain of command. If the consultant s solution is so complex that it needs their expertise to implement, you ve the wrong solution.

6 BC6 Business Plans For Dummies, 3rd Edition The Institute of Consulting ( provides guidelines for choosing a consultant in the Purchasing Consultancy section of its website. You may also find that your local Business Link has a register of approved (and insured) specialist consultants for most business needs (find more information at Bringing in an Accountant You need an accountant to help you put your business plan together in any event. Even if you re an accountant, you probably have a more demanding role to perform in shaping up the strategic content of your plan. In any event, don t miss out on making the maximum use of as many accountants as possible when researching your business plan. Take all the free advice you can get, because most accountants give you a free first meeting in the hope of signing you up as a client. Pump the accountants as much as you can for any tips, pointers or advice on the business you have in mind, because: Accountants are the first port of call for anyone seeking help and advice on business planning matters. As a consequence, they re the repositories of an enormous amount of information on every aspect of business, not just finance. Accountants draw an increasing amount of their revenue from nonaccounting tasks, and some even make more money from providing general business advice than they do from auditing. Most accountants are sole traders or in small partnerships so unlike bank managers, who all work in large organisations, accountants can identify with most off the ruitine problems and concerns that are the bedrock of a successful business planning process. Talk to the Added Value Network ( tel: ), a network of over 5,000 accountants working in over 400 offices across the United Kingdom who are focused on helping growing businesses. It offers a free Business Builder Review tailored to suit your needs but based on its experiences in helping 115,000 owner-managed businesses. Deploying Planning Software Software programs allow you to assemble automatically all the components of a business plan, turning them into a polished, ready-to-print document. The best programs also make easier work of the financial parts of business planning creating income statements and cash-flow statements, for example, or

7 Bonus Chapter 1: Ten Business-Plan Helpers BC7 making financial projections (see Chapter 11). Most software programs also allow you to add graphics, such as tables and charts, to your plan, providing an easy way for your audience to see at a glance what you re describing in the written document. To review the latest software offerings, enter Business Plan Software into the window of a search engine, and then browse through the offerings of leading software providers. You can often find sample business plans that you can review to get a sense of the product you can produce with each software tool. Business-planning software programs can make the job of business planning seem a bit too easy. With all the software bells and whistles, newcomers can inadvertently skip the serious (that is, difficult) work of creating and writing an effective plan. Remember, the best software-planning tools guide you through the important aspects of business planning and then keep track of your words, sentences and paragraphs they don t think for you. You still have to do the serious mental work yourself. Investors and bankers who make a living reviewing and funding business plans are all too familiar with the look and feel of the most popular softwaregenerated business-planning documents. When using one of these programs, customise your plan to make it unique. The last thing you want is for your business plan to look exactly like the others that cross a venture capitalist s desk. Bplans.com ( created by Palo Alto Software, offers thousands of pages of free sample plans, planning tools and expert advice to help you start and run your business. Their site has 60 free sample business plans on it and their software package, Business Plan Pro, has these plans plus a further 140. The sample business plans are tailored for every type of business from Aircraft Rental to a Yoga Centre.

8 BC8 Business Plans For Dummies, 3rd Edition