Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game they coach. To have a fighting chance against any of their opponents, they need to prepare a specific game plan tailored to each of their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, they’ll get crushed
The same logic applies to business. If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare yourself for battle before you break into a market. Because companies who can find gaps in your business model will quickly learn how to fill those gaps and solve your customers’ problems better than you can.
The business world moves fast, and it’s full of ambitious companies scrambling to gain the majority of their industry’s market share.
So how do you keep up? Writing a viable business plan and following it religiously is one of the most important first steps.
Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. Referencing one throughout your voyage will keep you on the path toward success. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.
But how do you actually write a viable and convincing business plan? To find out, we scoured the web for the top sample business plans around. Here’s the seven best we found.
4 Sample Business Plans to Help You Write Your Own
1. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template
Panda Doc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each of its sections, so you don’t have to come up with everything from scratch.
Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to your business’ success.
2. HubSpot’s One-Page Business Plan
The business plan linked above was created at HubSpot, and is perfect for businesses of any size — and no matter how much strategy they still have to develop.
Including fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline, this one-page business plan gives businesses a framework for how to build their brand and what tasks to keep track of as they grow. Then, as the business matures, it can expand on its original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.
3. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan
If you want to reference an actual business plan while writing your own, ThoughtCo’s got you covered. They created a fictional company called Acme Management Technology and wrote an entire business plan for them.
Using their sample business plan as a guide while filling out your own will help you catch and include small yet potent details in your business plan that you otherwise might not have noticed.
4. Harvard Business Review’s “How to Write a Winning Business Plan”
Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.
You’ll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasises the market demand for your product or service and the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture, rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.
Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a viable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.
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