Assignment
Solomon Kane
OfficialBusinessTemplateGuide.docxCompany Name
COMPANY LOGO HERE
Street Address
City, State & Zip Code
Phone Number
E-Mail Address
Web Address
Executive Summary
This section should:
· Be written last
· Provide an enthusiastic snapshot of your company, explaining who you are, what you do, and why
· Hit each key point of each sub-section
· Incorporate ethical elements into your statements to demonstrate that your company is ethical, social, and environmentally responsible.
· Indicate why someone may want to invest in your company
· This should tell your story – make the reader want to know more and demonstrate the passion you have for your business
· Be 1-2 pages in length (double-space)
After reviewing this section, the readers should:
· Want to learn more about your business
· Have a basic understanding of your company
· Bottom of Form
Company Overview
What is in the Company Overview section? Why is it important? The Company Overview section includes key information regarding the mission statement, principal associates, and general legal considerations of a business. It guides anyone reading the business plan with a basic understanding of your business model. This can be very helpful for investors in understanding what your business is, who operates business, and what you need to legal operate the business.
Mission Statement (1 to 3 Sentences)
A mission statement should include what you do, who you do it for and why. In the sample guide, you will see this broken down in the sample mission statement:
The mission of Rx Travel Company is to provide cost-effective, timely delivery services of medication for local community members without transportation to prevent avoidable health events.
Who: “Rx Travel Company”
What you do: “provide cost-effective, timely delivery services of medication”
Who you do it for: “local community members without transportation”
Why: “to prevent avoidable health events.”
Principal Associates (1 Principal Member Minimum & 1 Paragraph Minimum)
The Principal Associates section should detail who is essential to the operations of the business – the operational team. This includes owners, executives, managers, and investors. We do not include front-line workers or customers in this section. Please be sure to include a minimum of one for yourself as the owner. If you do not have anyone else that will be in the operational team with you at this time that is perfectly acceptable.
Please be sure to detail the name, position, specialized experience and any degrees you or the person possesses (future degrees with expected graduation date are acceptable), and a brief description of the position responsibilities. When using another member of the operational team for this section, please simply use their initials for their last name – example – John D., Jane D., etc. This is to protect their privacy. Include the required information for each principal individually.
Legal (Structure/Permits/Licenses) (1 Paragraph Minimum)
In this section, you will need to select and state explicitly a legal structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, partnership, etc. – only one structure) and why this is the best legal structure selection for your business now.
You will also need to outline specific licenses and permits that you need to operate your business (e.g., Food Handlers’ permit/Tax ID/city/county/state business license/liquor license). Visit your federal, state, and local municipality’s website for more details on required licenses and permits for your business. In some cases, you may only need very few permits and licenses – check carefully!
Product & Service Offerings
What is in the Product and Service Offerings section? Why is it important? The Product and Service Offerings section includes key information regarding the products and services, pricing structure, and research and development strategies. It continues to guide anyone (e.g., investors) reading the business plan with a basic continued understanding of your business model. This can be very helpful for investors in understanding what your products and services are, the pricing strategy, and research and development that will go into making your company competitive.
Products/Services (1 Paragraph Minimum of Analysis & 1 Bullet Point Minimum)
In this section, you summarize your products and services. Detail what products and services you offer (e.g., what you sell and any extras like free delivery, online ordering, etc.), hours of operation, décor/atmosphere (if applicable), and even any pictures that you would like to share that you believe are essential – if they are not essential, you do not need to include them here. After summarizing your products/services in one paragraph, you will then need to create a bulleted list of those products/services to allow for easy review from investors of your products/services at a glance.
Examples:
Restaurant: What will you offer on your menu? You will want to include a list of items available – similar to an actual restaurant menu, divided up into attractive, easy-to-follow sections, i.e. Appetizers, Beverages, Entrees, etc.
Retail store: What will you sell? “Women’s clothing” does not suffice. Bulleted lists work well for this business, too. Give specifics of the different items for sale, i.e. women’s dresses, shirts, skirts, jeans, tops, shoes, etc. and even more detailed, describe the styles you will offer.
Pricing Structure (1 Paragraph Minimum)
Here, you will explicitly state your pricing structure (e.g., penetration pricing) selection, and why you believe this is the best fit for your business.
You will list specific prices next week in your Sample Price Sheet.
Research & Development (1 Paragraph Minimum & 3 Bullet Points Minimum)
In this area, you will discuss your future goals for the business in terms of how you will invest your company’s future specific to product and service offerings to remain competitive. It will answer what you do not offer now, but will plan to offer in the future.
Marketing & Sales Strategies
What is in the Marketing & Sales Strategies section? Why is it important? The Marketing & Sales Strategies section includes key information regarding the target market, distribution and promotional opportunities, competitive and SWOT Analysis. As a continuation, guiding anyone (e.g., investors) reading the business plan with a basic continued understanding of your business model. This can be very helpful for investors in understanding who your customers are, how you will deliver your products to your target market, promote your products, competition that you face, and your internal and external factors facing the company.
Target Market (1 Paragraph Minimum & 6 Bullet Points Minimum)
In this area, you will describe your most probable customers’ demographic, psychographic, and location traits. Your target market should relate to the product you sell and should not try to serve everyone. Think about and research what makes customers of your product different from people who won’t regularly buy what you sell.
Demographic characteristics
Psychographic characteristics
Geographic characteristics
Distribution Strategy (1 Paragraph Minimum)
This is the sub-section where you will include how you intend to move (e.g., sell them in store, sell online, delivery) your products and services to your customers.
Promotional Opportunities (1 Paragraph Minimum)
This is the sub-section where you will include how your potential customers will find out about your company(e.g., newspaper, radio, social media). You will also want to include any promotional offers (e.g., discounts, loyalty programs, coupons, etc.).
Competitive Analysis (2 Paragraph Minimum)
This is the sub-section where you will include your unique value proposition. How are you different than your competitors? What makes you unique?
SWOT Analysis (1 Paragraph Minimum & Matrix)
You will also summarize your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities in a paragraph form with a matrix as well.
Financials
What is in the Financials section? Why is it important? The Financials section includes key information regarding the sales forecast, statement to investors, and sample price sheet. As a continuation, guiding anyone (e.g., investors) reading the business plan with a basic continued understanding of your business model. This can be very helpful for investors in understanding your potential sales, the reasons why they should invest in your company, and sample pricing to support your financial models. In more extensive plans, you can include balance sheets, profit and loss statements and more in this section. In consideration of this course, however, we will focus on the three sub-sections below.
Sales Forecast Analysis (1 Paragraph Minimum)
For this section, it would be best to complete Section 4.02, Sales Forecast Data and Visual first. Once complete, you will share your analysis of your data and the visual you created. You will want to support and justify your reasons for selecting such hypothetical data and what the outcome will be, including any promotional activities you feel will help increase sales, and the impact of seasonality on your business.
Sales Forecast Data and Visual (1 Table and 1 Visual)
Please review the following:
Developing a Sales Forecast in Excel
Even if you're not preparing a full business plan, it's important to develop certain financial goals and reports. In this guide, we'll show how to use Excel to produce a sales forecast that can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.
What Numbers Do You Need?
There's a popular misconception among many business owners that you need a solid background in finance, accounting or some other discipline that deals a lot with numbers in order to develop a sales forecast. In actuality, all you really need is the ability to make relatively good "guesses" based on the information you have on hand.
Of course, more information tends to lead to better guesses, but in the end, a sales forecast is simply your best guess of how much money you'll make in sales over the forecast period. Business planning software progams, such as Business Plan Pro, generally include some type of tool that will help you develop a sales forecast. However, it's just as easy to create your exhibit in Excel – or almost any other spreadsheet application, for that matter.
With that in mind, it's still important to be able to explain what logic you used to come up with your guesses, especially if you need to include the forecast in your business plan or defend it to business partners or potential investors. Here, we'll take a look at how to develop a simple sales forecast in Microsoft Excel 2007.
Even though we'll just be constructing a very basic forecast, you can easily expand on this forecast and the methodologies used to develop it to incorporate more complex situations. The Excel forecast and spreadsheet that we are developing here is available in the Entrepreneurship Media Gallery under the title Sample Excel Sales Forecast. You're welcome to download the file and modify it to suit your own business planning needs.
Creating a Table
Step 1: Begin by setting up a small table in Excel that includes columns for Month, Sales Forecast (in dollars), and Percent Growth as shown in the screenshot below. (Click any image for a larger view.)
If you're an existing business, it can also be helpful to include the actual sales figures from the most recent month. If you don't have this information on hand or if you're a new startup, you can delete this field on the template.
Step 2: With this template, instead of entering in dollar amounts for each month, we're going to base the monthly forecast amounts on expected growth. So, for each month (February - December), we'll insert a formula that will compute the sales forecast for that month based on growth and the prior month's forecast. For example, the formula entered into cell B7 (the sales forecast figure for February) will be the following:
= (B6 * C7) + B6
Once you enter this formula, you can copy it and use the Paste Special command to paste only the formula into the other cells in column B.
Creating a Sales Forecast in Excel (continued)
Step 3: Now, we need to enter a couple of our "guesses" into the table. First, we'll need a sales forecast for January, the first month of our table. As an example here, we'll just enter $10,000. Yes, this is a guess, but generally it is a lot easier to guess how much you'll make in sales during the first month of business that it is to guess what you'll be making six months down the road.
We also need to enter a percent growth for each month. Depending on your business type or plan, these values might be different for each month. For instance, if you're a seasonal business that sells swim wear, your growth will most likely be higher in the summer months. Similarly, if you plan to throw a lot of money into advertising in the autumn months, your growth will tend to be higher there as a result. For now, we'll assume a steady growth rate of 12% throughout most of the year, but we'll up that to 25% for October - December to indicate the upsurge during the holiday shopping season due to an increase in advertising and more customers shopping during those months.
After entering this information, our sales forecast numbers will automatically calculate and we'll obtain a table like the one shown below.
At this point, if all you wanted was a table with the forecast data, you're basically done. However, it's generally a good idea to create a chart as a visual representation of the data in your table to accompany your forecast. We'll go on to do that.
Generate a Chart
Step 4: Select the Month and Sales Forecast columns of the data table.
Step 5: For this example, we'll create a simple line chart. To do this, go to the Insert tab on Excel's ribbon, select Line from the Charts grouping, and pick the first line chart.
The initial line chart will appear as shown in the screenshot below.
You can drag this chart around to any other position on the Excel spreadsheet, or you can even move it to a completely new worksheet.
Step 6: In its present condition, the chart isn't very eye-catching. However, you can modify the formatting and design of this chart just as you would any other chart in Excel. For tips on how to do this, check out some of our other Excel chart tutorials at Bright Hub. Below is one example of the many design changes you can make for the chart.
You may also want to take a look at How to Measure the Accuracy of a Sales Forecast for some tips that will help you determine how accurate your forecast model is.
Article Source:
McDonough, M. (2011). Developing a sales forecast in Excel. Bright Hub. Retrieved from http://www.brighthub.com/office/entrepreneurs/articles/55766.aspx
The template has been created for you. You will need to put your company name in, plug in your numbers into the December of Previous Year area first and use that as your starting number for January (put it into January as well). From there, begin placing your percentages into the Percent Growth column from January to December – it will auto calculate and create the graph for you. Copy and paste the spreadsheet and graph over to your plan from the Excel Template.
Sample Price Sheet (1 Visual)
Insert sample price sheet for your products/services here. Ensure that it is detailed and professional. You have the creative freedom here to create your price sheet.
