Types of business plans

Choosing the right business plan is crucial as it tailors the strategic approach to the business's nature and goals. The selected plan should align with the business model, industry, and intended audience, ensuring effective communication. Making an informed choice sets the stage for a comprehensive and actionable plan that guides the business toward success.

1. Miniplan

A Miniplan. or One-page plan, contains all the same components of a full Business plan, but only details the most important highlights.

Focus on the strengths of your business, providing greater details for these sections.

It is a great starting point for writing your full Business Plan, it enables you to later expand and elaborate on the highlights.

This is a good exercise on communicating your business idea concisely. Limit each section to 3-4 bullet points or 1-2 sentences. Use font size 11 or 12 and absolutely only on one page.

2. The Presentation Plan or Deck Plan

Whether you have a full Business Plan or a Mini Plan, creating and presenting your Business Plan electronically is a powerful tool. It enables you to share your business passion and knowledge in a succinct and visually appealing way.

Whilst your presentation will be much more concise than the full version do not underestimate the amount of planning required. Being concise is quite an art. The pivotal 5 W's and 1 H will need to be answered, Who, What, Where, Why, When and How.

The objective of your presentation is to convince others that they need your product or service and that your business is worth investing money, time and resources, therefore you MUST engage them.

Presentation format

• Where possible use a template or you can fall down the rabbit hole of design

• Don’t use too many slides, the length is usually 10 to 12

• Keep text to an absolute minimum, if you need more room for text, make another slide or cut the text down

• Keep transitions to an absolute minimum

• Use your notes to stay on topic, not the slides

• Don’t read out the slide, your audience can read them for themselves

• Test that you can see the presentation from a distance, the viewers at the back want to read it too

Infographics

Infographics (a visual representation of information and data) are key in your presentation.

They are a very effective method in enabling your audience to understand complex concepts.

Video is now classified as an Infographic. The careful inclusion of video can turn your Business Plan into a memorable, differentiating proposal. To add emotion to your presentation add a video of you giving a brief introduction of your company's vision, your products in action or your team at work.

3. Start-Up Plan

The Start-Up Business Plan’s details the steps to get your business idea into production and/or receive funding from investors.

At this point a lot of the information included will be forecast based so it is important to sell yourself.

Kept updated It is a useful tool as your Company grows.

4. Internal Plan

Internal Business Plans are created to evaluate a proposed project, within a specified audience, in an existing business.

Calculations on what funding is required and how it will be repaid are balanced against the current state of the business.

The content included is dependent upon the project requirements and business audience.

As this is an internal document, detailed information about yourself, the management team and product photos will not be required.

5. Operations Working Plan

An Operations Working Plan can be created for internal or external use and is very detailed.

It focuses on the day-to-day operational activities of the business.

It can also be used to quantify an increase in budgets, usually on an annual basis.

It states the implementation goals and deadlines for the coming year.

It includes the responsibilities of the management team, employees and departments and how they will all contribute to the overall success of the Business.

6. Growth Plans

Growth plans, or Expansion Plans, are detailed descriptions of proposed growth of an existing business.

They can be created for internal or external use and therefore contain different information.

External Growth Plans

External Growth Plans include detailed content to gain external investment for growth. This could relate to financial investment, new products, recruitment of new employees or materials.

To determine the level of detail required for each section assume that the external investor or bank has no information about your Company.

Internal Growth Plans

When a business uses its own revenue for growth, an Internal Growth Plan is required.

The Business and product or service information does not need to be as detailed as with the External Plan.

7. Strategic Plan

Strategic Plans are usually internal and used by larger enterprises, whereby teams of senior management and possibly external consultants develop high-level strategies for the Business.

It provides a high-level view of the Company’s goals and how to achieve them.

The plan is inclusive of the whole Company, engaging all levels of the business in the plan and inspiring everyone to collectively work towards and achieve the goals.

Frequently a SWOT analysis is carried out by management, to identify the areas of Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats in the business, creating a greater awareness of the factors that affect business decisions. The results help determine which strategies will be the most effective to implement.

The chosen strategies are then detailed, moving the Company closer to its goals. It may include recommendations for allocating resources and key dates for the completion of various proposals.

It is important for any business to funnel their resources to areas that will produce the largest benefits by identifying what your company does well then play to these strengths and select the right opportunities.