3 Steps to Writing a Winning Business Plan

One of the first things I did when I started Fowler & Company was join the local business plan competition. It was sponsored by Guardian Bank, our local Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and the Chamber of Commerce. It was a fantastic experience filled with helpful training from the SBDC and lots of great networking.

If you have the opportunity to join a similar competition in your town I highly suggest you do it. It will force you to craft a business plan that is far better than anything you would generate on your own. A little competition always brings out the best in each of us.

Thankfully I won that competition which earned me $15,000 in startup capital and lots of great in-kind services from local vendors (check out my speaking page to see the work of Fusion Creative Marketing). I tell everyone that the experience was worth the effort whether I had won or not, but winning was very nice.

So, how do you create a winning business plan for your company?

  1. Know Your Audience – and what your audience wants. Business plan competitions exist for a reason. The competition I won existed to help start promising local companies that would employ graduates from our two local educational institutions (Valdosta State University and Wiregrass Technical College).Fowler & Company is a management consulting business. Consulting businesses don’t start out with lots of employees. That put me at a disadvantage in the competition. What I had to show the judges was not just that Fowler & Company was going to grow and hire people, but also show how my services would help other local companies grow, creating exponential job growth.My business is set up to help other companies grow. Helping a 100 person firm grow their employment 10% is a lot easier than growing Fowler & Company by 10 people!

    In fact, I could easily help 10, 100 person shops grow by 10% in a given year. If those jobs are good jobs, each job has a multiplier effect creating additional jobs at grocery stores, restaurants, retail, etc. Add all of that up and Fowler & Company can create a lot of jobs. But I couldn’t expect the judges to come to that conclusion themselves, I had to show them how it was going to happen.

  1. Passion & Commitment – It doesn’t matter how good of salesperson you are, people (and business competition judges) will be able to tell if you have a burning desire to make your company succeed. In my case, I was leaving a great job to pursue my dream of starting Fowler & Company. I had also just gotten married and had my first child. I was motivated and committed!I also worked with the SBDC throughout the competition to build a better business plan. You would be amazed at the resources the SBDC has, all for free! I took the time to sit down with them and show them my plan and get feedback throughout the competition. The amazing thing was that most of my competition failed to leverage the SBDC as a resource. People talk and people recognize who is motivated to succeed. Make sure everyone in your community is a witness to your motivation to succeed.
  1. Show Results – Yes, this is a business “plan” competition, but the best plans are created in the harsh light of the real business world. As we discussed in my series on Lean Innovation, you must “get out of the building” to create a great business plan.Don’t just show the judges how you are going to get clients. Show them you already have them and how you will use the capital and resources provided by the competition to ramp up your success. The judges want to invest in a business that will be a winner. Help them by showing them your early successes.By the time I did my final pitch to the judges, I had actual clients who had given me great testimonials. I was also using interns from the local educational institutions that the plan was created to support and grow jobs for.

If you’ll follow these three steps you will be light years ahead of most of your competition. Check out my series on Lean Innovation to go deeper into what it takes to build a successful startup. I wish you the best as you pursue your new venture!

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Image courtesy of Fusion Creative Marketing.

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