August 29, 2006
Business Plan Success Releases New Marketing Plan Template
New marketing plan template helps professionals develop comprehensive marketing plans and strategies.
HENDERSON, Nevada –Aug. 23, 2006– Business Plan Success, a leader in business writing solutions, announced today that its new marketing plan template, Marketing Plan Success, is now available for customers at http://www.marketing-plan-success.com. Marketing Plan Success was developed as an affordable solution for professionals who need to quickly develop a marketing plan for their products or services.
Marketing Plan Success is a detailed marketing plan template that assists customers with developing a comprehensive marketing plan, including a situational analysis, competitive analysis, marketing strategy, and marketing budget. The marketing template is linked to an Excel spreadsheet template that helps customers easily develop forecasts, budgets, and other charts and graphs. The templates focus on assisting businesses with developing and implementing a sound marketing strategy.
The marketing template uses a format similar to Business Plan Success’s popular business plan template, but features, such as the click-and-type formatting, improve the functionality of the template. The template package also includes a detailed User’s Guide with over 40 pages of resources, writing tips, and instructions for using the templates. The marketing plan template was developed so that users with little or no marketing background, as well as experienced marketing professionals, are able to easily create a marketing plan.
“When developing Marketing Plan Success, we did extensive research into what customers wanted and needed in a marketing plan and tapped into our experience with creating business writing templates to create a product that customers could get excited about,” product manager Mr. Miles explained. “The initial reaction in market tests has been extremely positive. Customers really love Marketing Plan Success.”
Marketing Plan Success is available for immediate download online at http://www.marketing-plan-success.com/ or http://www.business-plan-success.com for $39.99.
About Business Plan Success:
Business Plan Success is a business writing software company with a focus on developing documents and tools that enable small business owners and professional develop and run successful businesses. Business Plan Success's products have been used by thousands of customers since their introduction in 2002.
Posted by Jon at 3:51 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
Small Business: Business plan can be helpful even when it is not necessary
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
By Don Hammonds, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The once requisite business plan may no longer be required by banks and lending institutions for small companies, but experts say entrepreneurs would still benefit by preparing the plans.
Business plans generally aren't necessary if you are forming a small, home-based business needing little cash; have large amounts of collateral to protect the loan; or have an existing business with a track record and are seeking an expansion loan, bankers say.
"A lending agency is a business. With many business loans, they are going to base their decision on the borrower's collateral, whether it's home equity or some other sources," said Diane Sandstrom, consulting manager at Duquesne University's Chrysler Corporation Small Business Development Center. "When there's lots of collateral, they really don't care about the business plan. If the business fails, they'll have the collateral as a backup.
"Banks will say, 'Give us a one page summary on what you intend to do,' and they will also do a thorough background check and the normal things that are done for any business loan, such as your credit score, credit worthiness, net worth and other factors."
Even so, there are many reasons business plans are still worthy documents for small-business owners.
Posted by Jon at 2:29 PM | Comments (1)
September 22, 2005
SCORE: Business plan provides a course of action
This is a great article by B.J. Landry about writing a business plan. His point is that the business plan provides small business owners with a plan of action. If you have any doubts that you need a business plan you should read his article.
Posted by Jon at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2005
PTEN Announces VERGE Finalists
The Piedmont Triad Entrepreneurial Network has announced the finalists for its VERGE business plan competition. The final awards will be announced on January 27. The VERGE business plan competition is for biotechnology, entertainment, retail, and the transportation industries.
The six business plan competition finalists are AstaPharma Inc., Best One Card, The BioMarker Group, Clear Defense, Medication Management Partners, Parking Revolution, and Transportation Systems Solution. $36,000 in prize money will be awarded to the six finalists.
Posted by Jon at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
Describing Intellectual Property In Your Business Plan
This article is by Dave Lavinsky and was printed on WebPro News. You can view the complete article at this link.
When a company is a complete start-up, and no milestones have been accomplished, the plan should focus on past accomplishments of the management team as an indicator of the company's ability to execute successfully.
Most companies that are worthy of raising venture capital have proprietary Intellectual Property (IP). In fact, the quality of the IP and the management team are often the two most important aspects of a venture capitalist's investment decision.
The challenge that many ventures face, however, is that most investors will not sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and NDAs are critical to maintaining the proprietary nature of the IP. This article details the appropriate strategy for addressing proprietary IP in your business plan in order to attract investor attention while retaining the confidentiality of your inventions.
Focus on the Benefits of and Applications of the IP: The business plan should not discuss the confidential aspects of the IP. Rather, the plan should discuss the benefits of the IP. Remember that even the most amazing of technologies will not excite investors unless it has tangible benefits to customers.
The business plan first needs to discuss the products and services into which the IP will be integrated. It then must detail the benefits that these products and services have to customers and differentiate them from competitive products. When applicable, it is helpful to include non-confidential drawings and backup materials of the products and services in the Appendix.
Focus on Customer Needs and the Relevant Market Size: The business plan must also discuss how the benefits of the IP fulfill a large customer need. To accomplish this, the plan needs to detail customer wants and needs and prove that the company's offerings specifically meet these needs.
Secondly, the plan needs to discuss the marketplace in which the IP is offered and the size of this marketplace. Critical to this analysis is determining the relevant market size. The relevant market size equals a company's sales if it were to capture 100% of its specific niche of the market. For example, a medical device's market size would not be the trillion dollar healthcare market, but rather the sales of all competing medical devices.
Focus on Competition and Competitive Differentiation: Your business plan must also prove that your IP is better than competitive inventions. In identifying competitors, note that listing no or few competitors has a negative connotation. It implies that there may not be a large enough customer need to support the company's products and/or services. On the other hand, should there be too many competitors, then the market may be too saturated to support the profitability of a new entrant. The answer -- any company that also serves the customer needs that you serve should be considered a competitor.
The business plan should detail both the positive and negative aspects of competitors' IP and products/services and validate that your offerings are either superior in general, or are superior in serving a specific customer niche.
Prove that you can Execute on the Opportunity: As importantly as proving the quality of the IP and that a vast market exists for its applications, the business plan most prove that the company can successfully execute on the opportunity.
The plan should detail the company's past accomplishments, including descriptions and dates when prior funding rounds were received, products and services were launched, revenue milestones were reached, key partnerships were executed, etc.
When a company is a complete start-up, and no milestones have been accomplished, the plan should focus on past accomplishments of the management team as an indicator of the company's ability to execute successfully.
Results: Getting Investors to Sign the NDA: If you are able to convince the prospective investor that the IP is integrated into a product/service which yields real customer benefits in a large market, then the investor will take the quality of the invention for granted when reviewing the plan. Later, during the due diligence process, the investor will review the actual technology. At this point, a discussion regarding signing an NDA would be appropriate.
---------------
About the Author:
As President of Growthink, Dave Lavinsky has helped the company become one of the premier business plan development firms. Since its inception, Growthink has developed over 200 business plans. Growthink clients have collectively raised over $750 million in financing, launched numerous new product and service lines and gained competitive advantage and market share. Growthink has become the firm of choice for venture capital firms, angel investors, corporations and entrepreneurs in the know. For more information please visit http://www.growthink.com.
Posted by Jon at 1:30 PM | Comments (0)