A Sample Business Plan for a Small Business May Not Be the Best Way
You can find a sample business plan for a small business in all kinds of formats. There is a sample business plan for a small business where you basically fill in the blanks or you can have access to a sample business plan for a small business where you can pattern yours from it or you can develop a business plan that is centered on what you want for your dreams and your life.
I don't know of better way than to let your business give you what you want for your lifestyle. Whether it's a sample business plan for a small business or one where your business gives you a plan, it should tell you what is needed to take you where you want to go and when and how you can get there and it should be in clear simple terms, supported with all the specifics.
So using a sample business plan for a small business is just one of many ways to make a business plan but frankly I think designing one that will have your business give you exactly what you want is by far the best way.
So, why not start out with what you would like to have in life for you and your family? Then develop a business plan that could show you exactly what your business would need to do to give you that life style. If you think about it, there is no other way where you have more control over what you want in life than letting your own business do it for you.
If you work for someone else, you're sure not going to have as much control over your future. So how would you go about making a plan like this? Well if you know a fair amount about business, you can. It will take some special calculations and some work but if you know how to put together a Profit & Loss Statement, you can probably do it.
You would first do a P&L for the present year for your existing business and the first year and as many years after as you would like to have your plan cover. Your existing business financials will be the foundation for building yourself a business plan for as many years out as you want.
This data will tell you a number of things but first if you want to build your plan around what you want in life, you would need to decide some things about your life:
1. You would need to decide how much income you would like to have for yourself for each of the years you plan for.
2. You would need to determine what kind of profit margin you would want from your business for each of the years.
3. And by combining these 2 things into a P&L format you can develop a financial business plan that can extend as for into the future as you would like.
4. The first thing it will show you is how much sales you would need each year to give you the income and profit you would like. Once you see the sales needed, if you know your business well enough, you should be able to estimate those additional expenses needed to overcome capacity constraints that will occur as your business grows.
With this information you can actually predict not only what your sales will be, but you can see how much your fixed and variable expenses will be, what your labor cost will be, your material cost, and your profit.
1. So let's first look at what exactly are fixed expenses? They are exactly what they say they are; they are fixed. This simply means these are expenses that are ongoing whether you have a lot of sales or "0" sales. They are expenses like utilities, taxes, rent, salaries other than the wages used in the making of the actual product or doing a service, business fees, telephone, etc. See how these expenses would continue on even if you have 0 sales? Any expenses that fall into this category are fixed expenses.
Far too many small business owners never divide their expenses into fixed and variable. As a matter of fact, if you could have a business that had "0" fixed expenses; this would be the best of all worlds, why? If you had "0" sales, you would have "0" expenses. So the closer you could get to this the better you would be.
2. Variable expenses are those expenses that track directly with sales. If sales stop they stop. These are expenses like supplies used to support in the making of your product or doing your service.
Such things as shipping cost for raw materials for your product or service. If you have no sales then you're not going to be purchasing materials so your shipping cost for those materials will stop as well.
As an example, if you have a lawn mowing business and there are no lawns to mow, then you wouldn't be buying gasoline to travel to your lawn mowing site. These kinds of things are variable expenses.
If you're producing a product, it would include supplies used to produce that product like sand paper, glue, finishing materials, cutting tools, etc. 3. Labor and material costs are also directly proportionate to sales.
These are things that go directly into the making of the product or into doing the service. a. Labor cost is the actual direct labor used in the making of product or doing the service.
The cost would also include all the fringe benefits like social security, payroll taxes, vacation pay, holidays, sick pay days, etc. b. Material costs are all the materials used in the making of product or in doing the service.
In the lawn mower service as an example it would be the gasoline used in the mower and any other materials used directly in that service. For producing a product it would be all the materials used in the product that is sent to the customer including all the packaging materials.
Average Selling Price Now when you calculate your average selling price which is your cost of sales (material + labor) divided by (1-gross profit), you can determine how many customers you would need and then come up with what you think your conversion rate would be for converting leads to customers, you can determine how many leads you would need. Then from this and with the aid of the U.S.
Census Bureau and some basic research on your own you can actually have a pretty decent idea of what size your market is and is going to be in the future so you can see if it will support your business plan or not.
So if you can put this all together, you can have a complete business operating plan that would show you exactly what your business would need to do to give you the income and profit you would like to have and a rough idea whether your market would support it or not.
All you would have left to do would be to figure out how to make it all happen. It's like planning backwards.
1. Determine what you want in life.
2. Figure out what your business would need to do to give you that life.
3. Figure out how long it would take you to reach it.
4. Figure out how big of a market it would take each of the years you're planning for.
5. Then see if that market is big enough. Isn't this a much better way to go about planning your business? Shouldn't your business be designed to give you want you want instead of you working yourself to death just hoping for the best? So how would you go about calculating all this? There is quite a bit of calculations and you should know a little about business principles but it isn't that complicated.
So first let's look at figuring out your future needed sales with this formula: Projected sales = fixed expenses divided by (1-(var exp % of existing sales + mat cost % of existing sales + lab cost % of existing sales + desired net prof %)) So, let's say you existing sales is $850,000 annually, your fixed expenses are $275,000, variable expenses is $55,000 or 6.5% of the $850,000, material cost is $236,000 or 27.8%, labor cost is $109,000 or 12.8%, and your existing profit margin is $175,000 or 20.6%.
Now let's say next year you want to have a profit margin of 25% so what would your sales need to be to give you that profit margin? Now you might think you would simply tack on 4.4% more to sales (25% - 20.6%) and you would have it.
Well not quiet. it doesn't work that way because you are going to have the additional variable expenses, material cost, and labor cost too.
Remember, the more sales the more each of these expenses and cost will be. So here is how you would do it: Projected sales = fixed exp ($275,000) divided by 1-(6.5% + 27.8% + 12.8% + 25% (your new profit margin) = $896,057 (new sales) You can do this for as many years out as you want. Obviously this is based on your first year's fixed expenses remaining constant and no consideration of depreciation, inflation, or taxes.
But most likely you would need to increase your fixed expenses because you're going to probably have more rent, utilities, or such as your business grows.
So, you would simple put in your new fixed expense number in place of the existing one for each of the years you would be planning for.
So, you see if you decided you wanted a 35% profit margin at year 5 then you could see how much sales it would take to give you that.
Now it's also important to know how many more customers you would need as well so you should always look at that unless you have another way of growing your sales other than with new customers.
Let's say your average selling price for your service is $925.50 and you have one transaction per year per customer. Using that first years sales example we used above, you would calculate it this way. $896,057 divided by $925.50 = 968 customers needed for the year. Now if your average transactions per customer are more than 1, then you would need fewer customers.
As an example, let's say your average transaction per customers per year is 2.5 then 968 divided by 2.5 = 387 customers per year. Now let's say you estimate your conversation rate to be 3% of turning leads into paying customers with the advertising method you're going to use, how many leads would need to contact to get 387 customers? Simply divide 387 by 3% and you get 12,909 leads you're going to need to contact. Then the question is; is your market going to be big enough to provide you with 12,909 leads for the next year and how many will you need each of the following years?
It may be easier than you think to figure this out. You would do some research and with the aid of the U.S. Census Bureau you can roughly determine whether your plan can be supported by your market or not. So what do you think?
Is it better to build a business plan around what you want in life then see how your business can maybe give you that or is it better to use a sample business plan for a small business where you are probably guessing? I'd love to help you some more. Please go to http://www.StrategicBusinessSolutionsLLC.com and see what might be available.
38 of my 41 years were in management and leadership roles. Some of my disciplines were manufacturing operations and processes, quality systems including ISO, materials, supply chain logistics, engineering, purchasing, HR functions including union and nonunion operations, concurrent engineering from product design to the customer, and upper management, and supervision training. Experiences also included a number of special projects such as managing plant shutdowns, project director of facility relocations including feasibility studies, designing of lean manufacturing concepts for new operations, development and startup of new facilities, plant and process moves to new locations, and hiring and training of staffs and workforces for new locations.
All the years in those various positions offered great opportunities for leading, teaching, training, and hands on support for empowering managers and workforces.
Environments were created that made it possible for people to reach levels of success they never thought possible.
Success came because of the use of real leadership, lean principles, employee involvement, a trusting environment, good communication, continuous improvement, and solid operating systems.
The results were people working toward an error free workplace, waste reduction, and a very positive attitude toward meeting goals and expectations.
This resulted in labor content reductions, major reductions in labor turnover, major increases in inventory turns, reductions in cycle times, improved customer relations, strong teams, and improved employee satisfaction.
I have had the good fortune to have practiced and proven that creating the right environment will cause people to want to participate in helping organizations meet their goals and visions because it is an environment that lets them build success for themselves as well helping everyone else build theirs.
I believe strongly that you cannot motivate people but that the right environment is what motivates people.