Blog Post
A significant determining factor in your success or failure to attract attention and secure funding can be found in the quality of your business plan. Your business plan – its quality, flow, and ability to communicate your key idea – is a major component in securing the money that’ll let your company grow. So how can you ensure you get it right? One helpful strategy for writing your business plan is to approach it like a winning proposal.
Writing a Solid Business Plan Proposal: Goals
Similar to any business plan, the goal of a proposal is to be awarded. You are creating this as a sales document, not just a strategy document. Make sure it speaks to the ideal person, the investor who you want to partner with. To do that, you have to evaluate your audience. Here’s how.
Evaluate Your Audience
Always start with the reader in mind. You can do this by asking yourself: Who will be reading this? Whether your reader is a banker, investor, or yourself and your partners, look closely at who you’re writing to. A good exercise is to put yourself in their shoes and jot down targeted questions you’d ask if you were the one investing your hard-earned money.
Rather than writing about what’s important to you, write about what’s important to them. After all, they have pain points, too. What are those pain points? What’s important to that investor? What is less important to them, but you’ll still include?
Identify the Need
Their end game is to make money on their investment. How can they up their chances of making money? They need to see that you’ll be successful, so be sure to speak to that in your business plan. Once you’ve taken the time to truly understand your audience, you can match the information you’re presenting directly to their needs.
Show You Know the Problem
Just as a successful proposal begins with a problem statement, a winning business plan proposal demonstrates the full grasp of the business problem.
Identify the business problem both clearly and simply. Show you understand the need intrinsically, and that you understand it better than the competition. This is how you instill trust that you’re the one perfectly and uniquely qualified to solve the problem.
