Business Plan Essentials: Structure, Market, Marketing, and Sales

Business Concept

1. Business Structure: Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Corporation.
2. Business Size:
   • Microbusinesses: Up to 10 workers.
   • Small and Medium-sized Businesses (PYMES): 11 to 250 employees.
   • Macro businesses: More than 250 employees.
3. Economic Sector: Primary (extraction), Secondary (manufacturing), Tertiary (service).
4. Economic Activity: Industrial, Commercial, Service.
5. Scope of Activity: Local, Regional, Domestic, Multinational, Transnational.
6. Business Model: Retailer, Manufacturer, Fee-for-Service, Subscription, Freemium, Bundling, Marketplace, Affiliate, Razor blade, Franchise, Brokerage.
7. Description of Product or Service:
   • Product or service description
   • Product or service selling volume
   • Product or service selling prices
   • Product or service net sales
   • Net profit as percentage of net sales
   • Break-even point
8. Business Key Information:
   • Business branding
   • Business background
   • Business current & future situation
   • Competitive advantage
   • Business legal structure
9. Business Team: Main business manager, Business team.

Market Analysis

Option 1:

1. Identify your competitors.
2. Conduct customer segmentation research.
3. Evaluate competitor's marketing strategies.
4. Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT).
5. Identify your place in the market landscape.

Option 2:

• Product features
• Customer segments
• Pricing models
• Marketing and positioning
• Customer experience
• Market and financials
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Future vision

Option 3:

1. Establish a list of direct and indirect competitors.
2. Research your identified competitors.
3. Test the product yourself.
4. Document the user experience.
5. Identify your competitor's vision and positioning.
6. Define the differentiators.
7. Create a competitive analysis report.
8. Maintain and update the report.

Best Practices: Competitors (direct and indirect), Customer segmentation (demographic or behavior), Features (product, price, placement, promotion), SWOT (competitors advantage), Market landscape (market operating), Differentiators (strategy to distinguish), Customer experience (from marketing to sales).

Marketing Plan

1. Product: What are you selling?
2. Price: How much will you charge?
3. Place: Where are you available?
4. Promote: How will you promote your offering?
5. People: Who will do the marketing?
6. Process: What marketing channels will be used?
7. Plan: What marketing KPI´s (Key Performance Indicators) apply?

Sales Plan

1. Mission (what they do) and sales vision (where in the future).
2. Customer segments.
3. Allocate sales objectives (daily, monthly, seasonally).
4. Sales staff (personnel required).
5. Sales process (action plans based on 7 step sales process: prospecting, preparation, approach, presentation, handle objections, closing, follow up).
6. Involve stakeholders (commitment from parties by including them).
7. Sales metrics (effectiveness).