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Building a Solid Internal Business Plan: Expert Guidance and Insights

An internal business plan is like a compass for your organization, guiding your team towards common goals and strategies. In this guide, we’ll break down each component of an internal business plan in simpler terms and share expert tips to help you create a plan that keeps your team on the same page.

• Key Highlights
• An internal business plan is a roadmap that guides your team towards common goals and strategies.
• It helps align your team, make better decisions, and achieve success.
• Create a clear and concise plan with SMART goals, action steps, and communication strategies.

What is Internal Business Plan?

Differences between internal and external business plans:.

• What's the Purpose of an Internal Business Plan?
• Here's Why It Matters:

Benefits of an Internal Business Plan:

• 1. Mission and Vision: Your Organization's Purpose (Around 200 words)

2. Organizational Goals: What You Want to Achieve (Around 250 words)

3. swot analysis: understanding your internal landscape (around 300 words).

• 4. Key Strategies: How You'll Achieve Your Goals (Around 250 words)

5. Action Plans: Who Does What (Around 350 words)

6. budget and resources: what you need (around 250 words), 7. monitoring and evaluation: keeping things on track (around 300 words), 8. communication plan: keeping everyone informed (around 200 words), common mistakes to avoid, tips to overcome challenges, measuring success, effective metrics for internal business plan success, interpreting data and making data-driven decisions:, what must an entrepreneur do after creating a business plan, 1. secure funding, 2. assemble your team, 3. execute your strategies, 4. foster communication and collaboration, 5. measure performance and analyze data.

A business plan acts as a blueprint for your organization’s future, detailing its goals, strategies, and financial projections. An internal business plan takes this concept further, focusing specifically on aligning your team and ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities in achieving your shared vision.

Here’s a breakdown of the key differences between internal and external business plans:

What's the Purpose of an Internal Business Plan?

Think of an internal business plan as your team’s GPS for success. It’s all about getting everyone on the same page and heading toward the same goals. Unlike the fancy plans you show off to investors, this one is all about making sure your team knows where you’re headed and how to get there together.

Here's Why It Matters:

• Teamwork and Focus: It spells out what your gang is trying to achieve and gives everyone a clear focus on the mission.
• Smarter Choices: Helps everyone make better decisions by laying out the game plan. It's like having a playbook for your business moves.
• Using Resources Wisely: Shows where the money, people, and tech need to go, making sure everything's used just right.
• Making Everyone Accountable: Sets goals and ways to measure success so that everyone's accountable for their part.
• Happy Teams: When everyone knows what they're doing and why, it makes the team feel united and pumped up.
• Spotting Trouble Early: It's like having a radar for problems, so you can plan ahead and steer clear of disasters.

An internal business plan isn’t just a document—it’s your team’s guidebook, making sure everyone’s rowing in the same direction and making the right moves to reach those big goals.

• Improved Communication and Alignment: Creates a shared understanding of goals, strategies, and responsibilities within the organization.
• Enhanced Decision-Making: Provides a data-driven foundation for strategic decision-making and resource allocation.
• Increased Accountability and Performance: Establishes key performance indicators (KPIs) and promotes accountability for achieving goals.
• Boosted Team Morale and Motivation: A clear roadmap fosters a sense of purpose and direction for team members.
• Improved Risk Management: Identifies potential challenges and facilitates the development of contingency plans.

Overall, an internal business plan serves as a vital tool for achieving organizational goals, fostering collaboration, and ensuring long-term success.

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1. mission and vision: your organization's purpose (around 200 words).

Your mission defines why your organization exists, while your vision outlines what you aim to achieve in the future. Keep these statements clear and inspiring, as they set the direction for your entire team.

• Expert Tip 1: "Your mission and vision should motivate and unite your team. They're your organization's North Star." - Maria Rodriguez, Management Consultant.

Lay out your short-term and long-term goals. Make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). These goals give your team a sense of purpose and direction.

• Expert Tip 2: "Goals should be like checkpoints in a race - clear and achievable. They keep your team focused and motivated." - Mark Thompson, Organizational Strategist.

Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This helps your team understand your current position and potential challenges.

• Expert Tip 3: "SWOT analysis is like a diagnostic checkup. It helps you know where you're strong and where you need to improve." - Emily Turner, Business Analyst.

4. Key Strategies: How You'll Achieve Your Goals (Around 250 words)

Outline the strategies your organization will use to achieve its goals. These could include expanding to new markets, improving processes, or developing new products or services.

• Expert Tip 4: "Your strategies should align with your goals. They're the 'how' behind your 'what'." - David Reynolds, Strategy Consultant.

Break your strategies down into actionable steps. Assign responsibilities to specific team members, set deadlines, and define key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress.

• Expert Tip 5: "Action plans turn ideas into actions. They make your strategies a reality." - Laura Martinez, Project Manager.

Detail the budget and resources required to execute your action plans. This includes finances, manpower, technology, and any other resources necessary for success.

• Expert Tip 6: "Budgets ensure you have the resources to implement your plans. They're like a financial roadmap." - Susan James, Financial Analyst.

Explain how you’ll monitor progress and evaluate the success of your action plans. Regular assessments help your team stay on course and make adjustments as needed.

• Expert Tip 7: "Monitoring and evaluation ensure you're headed in the right direction. It's about continuous improvement." - John Stevens, Management Expert.

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Describe how you’ll communicate the plan to your team. Transparency and clear communication are crucial to ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.

• Expert Tip 8: "A well-communicated plan fosters teamwork and alignment. It's the glue that holds your organization together." - Maria Rodriguez, Communication Specialist.

While crafting and implementing your internal business plan, be mindful of these common pitfalls:

• 1. Lack of Clarity and Specificity: Vague goals and objectives lead to confusion and hinder progress. Ensure your plan outlines SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals with clear action steps.
• 2. Ignoring Internal Analysis: Neglecting a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) leaves you blind to internal challenges and untapped potential. Conduct a thorough assessment to gain a realistic understanding of your organization's capabilities.
• 3. Unrealistic Budgeting: Overestimating resources or underestimating costs can derail your plan. Develop a realistic budget based on accurate data and forecasts to avoid financial constraints.
• 4. Inadequate Communication: Failing to communicate the plan effectively to your team leads to misalignment and inefficiency. Foster open communication channels and ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.
• 5. Rigid and Inflexible Approach: The business landscape is dynamic, so your plan should be adaptable. Be prepared to adjust your strategies and tactics as needed based on market changes, performance data, and feedback.
• Seek feedback: Enlist the help of colleagues and stakeholders to review your plan and identify areas for improvement.
• Promote collaboration: Encourage open communication and brainstorming sessions to foster innovative ideas and solutions.
• Track progress regularly: Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress and identify areas needing adjustments.
• Be proactive: Anticipate potential challenges and develop contingency plans to minimize disruptions.
• Embrace flexibility: Be prepared to adapt your plan as needed based on evolving circumstances.
• Goal Achievement: Track progress towards achieving your defined SMART goals.
• Financial Performance: Monitor key financial metrics like revenue, profitability, and cost-effectiveness.
• Operational Efficiency: Measure improvements in efficiency through process metrics like cycle time and error rates.
• Team Performance: Evaluate team effectiveness by tracking KPIs like productivity, engagement, and satisfaction.
• Market Share and Growth: Monitor your market share and growth rate to assess your competitive position and market penetration.
• Analyze trends and patterns: Identify trends and patterns emerging from your data to understand the underlying drivers of success or failure.
• Investigate root causes: Delve deeper into the root causes behind performance data to pinpoint areas for improvement.
• Test and experiment: Utilize A/B testing and other experimental methods to validate your assumptions and optimize your strategies.
• Communicate data insights: Share key data insights with your team to promote transparency and inform decision-making.
• Make data-driven decisions: Base your strategic decisions on evidence and insights gleaned from your data analysis.

By implementing these tips and practices, you can avoid common pitfalls and effectively measure the success of your internal business plan. Remember, a successful plan requires continuous monitoring, feedback, and adaptation to ensure it remains relevant and effective in driving your organization towards its goals. Ready to write an internal business plan but don’t know what to do? Explore WiseBusinessPlans’ professional business plan writers to get started today!

With your internal business plan finalized, it’s time to shift gears and focus on its execution. This crucial phase requires action, dedication, and strategic implementation to transform your vision into reality. Here’s what you, as an entrepreneur, must do after creating an internal business plan:

• Assess your financial needs: Review your budget and determine the funding required to execute your plan. Explore various funding options, including personal savings, loans, grants, and angel investors.
• Craft a compelling pitch: Develop a concise and persuasive pitch deck that highlights your vision, market potential, and financial projections to attract investors.
• Build relationships with potential investors: Network with individuals and organizations interested in your industry and build relationships that can pave the way for funding opportunities.
• Identify key roles: Determine the skills and expertise needed to implement your plan effectively.
• Recruit talented individuals: Find passionate and qualified individuals who share your vision and values, and build a cohesive and motivated team.
• Delegate and empower: Assign tasks and responsibilities based on individual strengths, fostering ownership and accountability within your team.
• Break down your plan into action steps: Divide your strategies into manageable tasks with clear deadlines.
• Implement best practices: Utilize proven strategies and methodologies aligned with your industry and goals.
• Monitor progress and adapt: Regularly track progress against your goals, identify areas needing improvement, and adapt your strategies as needed.
• Communicate openly and transparently: Keep your team informed of progress, challenges, and decisions.
• Encourage feedback and input: Create an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas and concerns.
• Build trust and collaboration: Foster a collaborative culture that encourages teamwork and shared ownership of success.
• Track key performance indicators (KPIs): Identify specific metrics aligned with your goals and regularly track their progress.
• Analyze data and draw insights: Utilize data to identify trends, understand performance drivers, and make data-driven decisions.
• Continuously improve: Leverage data insights to identify areas for improvement and adapt your strategies to optimize performance.

By following these steps after crafting your internal business plan, leveraging a well-designed business plan template can further assist in effectively translating your vision into action, propelling your entrepreneurial journey towards success.

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In summary, creating an internal business plan is about providing your team with a roadmap to success. By simplifying each section and focusing on clear communication, you’ll not only set your team on the right path but also promote unity and collaboration within your organization. Your internal business plan is your tool for achieving your mission and turning your vision into reality.

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How to create a business plan: examples & free template.

This is the ultimate guide to creating a comprehensive and effective plan to start a business . In today’s dynamic business landscape, having a well-crafted business plan is an important first step to securing funding, attracting partners, and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship.

This guide has been designed to help you create a winning plan that stands out in the ever-evolving marketplace. U sing real-world examples and a free downloadable template, it will walk you through each step of the process.

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or launching your very first startup, the guide will give you the insights, tools, and confidence you need to create a solid foundation for your business.

Table of Contents

How to Write a Business Plan

Embarking on the journey of creating a successful business requires a solid foundation, and a well-crafted business plan is the cornerstone. Here is the process of writing a comprehensive business plan and the main parts of a winning business plan . From setting objectives to conducting market research, this guide will have everything you need.

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary serves as the gateway to your business plan, offering a snapshot of your venture’s core aspects. This section should captivate and inform, succinctly summarizing the essence of your plan.

It’s crucial to include a clear mission statement, a brief description of your primary products or services, an overview of your target market, and key financial projections or achievements.

Think of it as an elevator pitch in written form: it should be compelling enough to engage potential investors or stakeholders and provide them with a clear understanding of what your business is about, its goals, and why it’s a promising investment.

Example: EcoTech is a technology company specializing in eco-friendly and sustainable products designed to reduce energy consumption and minimize waste. Our mission is to create innovative solutions that contribute to a cleaner, greener environment.

Our target market includes environmentally conscious consumers and businesses seeking to reduce their carbon footprint. We project a 200% increase in revenue within the first three years of operation.

Overview and Business Objectives

In the Overview and Business Objectives section, outline your business’s core goals and the strategic approaches you plan to use to achieve them. This section should set forth clear, specific objectives that are attainable and time-bound, providing a roadmap for your business’s growth and success.

It’s important to detail how these objectives align with your company’s overall mission and vision. Discuss the milestones you aim to achieve and the timeframe you’ve set for these accomplishments.

This part of the plan demonstrates to investors and stakeholders your vision for growth and the practical steps you’ll take to get there.

Example: EcoTech’s primary objective is to become a market leader in sustainable technology products within the next five years. Our key objectives include:

• Introducing three new products within the first two years of operation.
• Achieving annual revenue growth of 30%.
• Expanding our customer base to over 10,000 clients by the end of the third year.

Company Description

The Company Description section is your opportunity to delve into the details of your business. Provide a comprehensive overview that includes your company’s history, its mission statement, and its vision for the future.

Highlight your unique selling proposition (USP) – what makes your business stand out in the market. Explain the problems your company solves and how it benefits your customers.

Include information about the company’s founders, their expertise, and why they are suited to lead the business to success. This section should paint a vivid picture of your business, its values, and its place in the industry.

Example: EcoTech is committed to developing cutting-edge sustainable technology products that benefit both the environment and our customers. Our unique combination of innovative solutions and eco-friendly design sets us apart from the competition. We envision a future where technology and sustainability go hand in hand, leading to a greener planet.

Define Your Target Market

Defining Your Target Market is critical for tailoring your business strategy effectively. This section should describe your ideal customer base in detail, including demographic information (such as age, gender, income level, and location) and psychographic data (like interests, values, and lifestyle).

Elucidate on the specific needs or pain points of your target audience and how your product or service addresses these. This information will help you know your target market and develop targeted marketing strategies.

Example: Our target market comprises environmentally conscious consumers and businesses looking for innovative solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. Our ideal customers are those who prioritize sustainability and are willing to invest in eco-friendly products.

Market Analysis

The Market Analysis section requires thorough research and a keen understanding of the industry. It involves examining the current trends within your industry, understanding the needs and preferences of your customers, and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

This analysis will enable you to spot market opportunities and anticipate potential challenges. Include data and statistics to back up your claims, and use graphs or charts to illustrate market trends.

This section should demonstrate that you have a deep understanding of the market in which you operate and that your business is well-positioned to capitalize on its opportunities.

Example: The market for eco-friendly technology products has experienced significant growth in recent years, with an estimated annual growth rate of 10%. As consumers become increasingly aware of environmental issues, the demand for sustainable solutions continues to rise.

Our research indicates a gap in the market for high-quality, innovative eco-friendly technology products that cater to both individual and business clients.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis in your business plan offers a comprehensive examination of your company’s internal and external factors. By assessing Strengths, you showcase what your business does best and where your capabilities lie.

Weaknesses involve an honest introspection of areas where your business may be lacking or could improve. Opportunities can be external factors that your business could capitalize on, such as market gaps or emerging trends.

Threats include external challenges your business may face, like competition or market changes. This analysis is crucial for strategic planning, as it helps in recognizing and leveraging your strengths, addressing weaknesses, seizing opportunities, and preparing for potential threats.

Including a SWOT analysis demonstrates to stakeholders that you have a balanced and realistic understanding of your business in its operational context.

• Innovative and eco-friendly product offerings.
• Strong commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility.
• Skilled and experienced team with expertise in technology and sustainability.

Weaknesses:

• Limited brand recognition compared to established competitors.
• Reliance on third-party manufacturers for product development.

Opportunities:

• Growing consumer interest in sustainable products.
• Partnerships with environmentally-focused organizations and influencers.
• Expansion into international markets.
• Intense competition from established technology companies.
• Regulatory changes could impact the sustainable technology market.

Competitive Analysis

In this section, you’ll analyze your competitors in-depth, examining their products, services, market positioning, and pricing strategies. Understanding your competition allows you to identify gaps in the market and tailor your offerings to outperform them.

By conducting a thorough competitive analysis, you can gain insights into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to develop strategies to differentiate your business and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Example: Key competitors include:

GreenTech: A well-known brand offering eco-friendly technology products, but with a narrower focus on energy-saving devices.

EarthSolutions: A direct competitor specializing in sustainable technology, but with a limited product range and higher prices.

By offering a diverse product portfolio, competitive pricing, and continuous innovation, we believe we can capture a significant share of the growing sustainable technology market.

Organization and Management Team

Provide an overview of your company’s organizational structure, including key roles and responsibilities. Introduce your management team, highlighting their expertise and experience to demonstrate that your team is capable of executing the business plan successfully.

Showcasing your team’s background, skills, and accomplishments instills confidence in investors and other stakeholders, proving that your business has the leadership and talent necessary to achieve its objectives and manage growth effectively.

Example: EcoTech’s organizational structure comprises the following key roles: CEO, CTO, CFO, Sales Director, Marketing Director, and R&D Manager. Our management team has extensive experience in technology, sustainability, and business development, ensuring that we are well-equipped to execute our business plan successfully.

Products and Services Offered

Describe the products or services your business offers, focusing on their unique features and benefits. Explain how your offerings solve customer pain points and why they will choose your products or services over the competition.

This section should emphasize the value you provide to customers, demonstrating that your business has a deep understanding of customer needs and is well-positioned to deliver innovative solutions that address those needs and set your company apart from competitors.

Example: EcoTech offers a range of eco-friendly technology products, including energy-efficient lighting solutions, solar chargers, and smart home devices that optimize energy usage. Our products are designed to help customers reduce energy consumption, minimize waste, and contribute to a cleaner environment.

Marketing and Sales Strategy

In this section, articulate your comprehensive strategy for reaching your target market and driving sales. Detail the specific marketing channels you plan to use, such as social media, email marketing, SEO, or traditional advertising.

Describe the nature of your advertising campaigns and promotional activities, explaining how they will capture the attention of your target audience and convey the value of your products or services. Outline your sales strategy, including your sales process, team structure, and sales targets.

Discuss how these marketing and sales efforts will work together to attract and retain customers, generate leads, and ultimately contribute to achieving your business’s revenue goals.

This section is critical to convey to investors and stakeholders that you have a well-thought-out approach to market your business effectively and drive sales growth.

Example: Our marketing strategy includes digital advertising, content marketing, social media promotion, and influencer partnerships. We will also attend trade shows and conferences to showcase our products and connect with potential clients. Our sales strategy involves both direct sales and partnerships with retail stores, as well as online sales through our website and e-commerce platforms.

Logistics and Operations Plan

The Logistics and Operations Plan is a critical component that outlines the inner workings of your business. It encompasses the management of your supply chain, detailing how you acquire raw materials and manage vendor relationships.

Inventory control is another crucial aspect, where you explain strategies for inventory management to ensure efficiency and reduce wastage. The section should also describe your production processes, emphasizing scalability and adaptability to meet changing market demands.

Quality control measures are essential to maintain product standards and customer satisfaction. This plan assures investors and stakeholders of your operational competency and readiness to meet business demands.

Highlighting your commitment to operational efficiency and customer satisfaction underlines your business’s capability to maintain smooth, effective operations even as it scales.

Example: EcoTech partners with reliable third-party manufacturers to produce our eco-friendly technology products. Our operations involve maintaining strong relationships with suppliers, ensuring quality control, and managing inventory.

We also prioritize efficient distribution through various channels, including online platforms and retail partners, to deliver products to our customers in a timely manner.

Financial Projections Plan

In the Financial Projections Plan, lay out a clear and realistic financial future for your business. This should include detailed projections for revenue, costs, and profitability over the next three to five years.

Ground these projections in solid assumptions based on your market analysis, industry benchmarks, and realistic growth scenarios. Break down revenue streams and include an analysis of the cost of goods sold, operating expenses, and potential investments.

This section should also discuss your break-even analysis, cash flow projections, and any assumptions about external funding requirements.

By presenting a thorough and data-backed financial forecast, you instill confidence in potential investors and lenders, showcasing your business’s potential for profitability and financial stability.

This forward-looking financial plan is crucial for demonstrating that you have a firm grasp of the financial nuances of your business and are prepared to manage its financial health effectively.

Example: Over the next three years, we expect to see significant growth in revenue, driven by new product launches and market expansion. Our financial projections include:

• Year 1: $1.5 million in revenue, with a net profit of $200,000.
• Year 2: $3 million in revenue, with a net profit of $500,000.
• Year 3: $4.5 million in revenue, with a net profit of $1 million.

These projections are based on realistic market analysis, growth rates, and product pricing.

Income Statement

The income statement , also known as the profit and loss statement, provides a summary of your company’s revenues and expenses over a specified period. It helps you track your business’s financial performance and identify trends, ensuring you stay on track to achieve your financial goals.

Regularly reviewing and analyzing your income statement allows you to monitor the health of your business, evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies, and make data-driven decisions to optimize profitability and growth.

Example: The income statement for EcoTech’s first year of operation is as follows:

• Revenue: $1,500,000
• Cost of Goods Sold: $800,000
• Gross Profit: $700,000
• Operating Expenses: $450,000
• Net Income: $250,000

This statement highlights our company’s profitability and overall financial health during the first year of operation.

Cash Flow Statement

A cash flow statement is a crucial part of a financial business plan that shows the inflows and outflows of cash within your business. It helps you monitor your company’s liquidity, ensuring you have enough cash on hand to cover operating expenses, pay debts, and invest in growth opportunities.

By including a cash flow statement in your business plan, you demonstrate your ability to manage your company’s finances effectively.

Example:  The cash flow statement for EcoTech’s first year of operation is as follows:

Operating Activities:

• Depreciation: $10,000
• Changes in Working Capital: -$50,000
• Net Cash from Operating Activities: $210,000

Investing Activities:

•  Capital Expenditures: -$100,000
• Net Cash from Investing Activities: -$100,000

Financing Activities:

• Proceeds from Loans: $150,000
• Loan Repayments: -$50,000
• Net Cash from Financing Activities: $100,000
• Net Increase in Cash: $210,000

This statement demonstrates EcoTech’s ability to generate positive cash flow from operations, maintain sufficient liquidity, and invest in growth opportunities.

Tips on Writing a Business Plan

1. Be clear and concise: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms. A clear and concise business plan is easier for investors and stakeholders to understand and demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively.

2. Conduct thorough research: Before writing your business plan, gather as much information as possible about your industry, competitors, and target market. Use reliable sources and industry reports to inform your analysis and make data-driven decisions.

3. Set realistic goals: Your business plan should outline achievable objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Setting realistic goals demonstrates your understanding of the market and increases the likelihood of success.

4. Focus on your unique selling proposition (USP): Clearly articulate what sets your business apart from the competition. Emphasize your USP throughout your business plan to showcase your company’s value and potential for success.

5. Be flexible and adaptable: A business plan is a living document that should evolve as your business grows and changes. Be prepared to update and revise your plan as you gather new information and learn from your experiences.

6. Use visuals to enhance understanding: Include charts, graphs, and other visuals to help convey complex data and ideas. Visuals can make your business plan more engaging and easier to digest, especially for those who prefer visual learning.

7. Seek feedback from trusted sources: Share your business plan with mentors, industry experts, or colleagues and ask for their feedback. Their insights can help you identify areas for improvement and strengthen your plan before presenting it to potential investors or partners.

FREE Business Plan Template

To help you get started on your business plan, we have created a template that includes all the essential components discussed in the “How to Write a Business Plan” section. This easy-to-use template will guide you through each step of the process, ensuring you don’t miss any critical details.

The template is divided into the following sections:

• Mission statement
• Business Overview
• Key products or services
• Target market
• Financial highlights
• Company goals
• Strategies to achieve goals
• Measurable, time-bound objectives
• Company History
• Mission and vision
• Unique selling proposition
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Pain points
• Industry trends
• Customer needs
• Competitor strengths and weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Competitor products and services
• Market positioning
• Pricing strategies
• Organizational structure
• Key roles and responsibilities
• Management team backgrounds
• Product or service features
• Competitive advantages
• Marketing channels
• Advertising campaigns
• Promotional activities
• Sales strategies
• Supply chain management
• Inventory control
• Production processes
• Quality control measures
• Projected revenue
• Assumptions
• Cash inflows
• Cash outflows
• Net cash flow

What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a strategic document that outlines an organization’s goals, objectives, and the steps required to achieve them. It serves as a roadmap as you start a business , guiding the company’s direction and growth while identifying potential obstacles and opportunities.

Typically, a business plan covers areas such as market analysis, financial projections, marketing strategies, and organizational structure. It not only helps in securing funding from investors and lenders but also provides clarity and focus to the management team.

A well-crafted business plan is a very important part of your business startup checklist because it fosters informed decision-making and long-term success.

Why You Should Write a Business Plan

Understanding the importance of a business plan in today’s competitive environment is crucial for entrepreneurs and business owners. Here are five compelling reasons to write a business plan:

• Attract Investors and Secure Funding : A well-written business plan demonstrates your venture’s potential and profitability, making it easier to attract investors and secure the necessary funding for growth and development. It provides a detailed overview of your business model, target market, financial projections, and growth strategies, instilling confidence in potential investors and lenders that your company is a worthy investment.
• Clarify Business Objectives and Strategies : Crafting a business plan forces you to think critically about your goals and the strategies you’ll employ to achieve them, providing a clear roadmap for success. This process helps you refine your vision and prioritize the most critical objectives, ensuring that your efforts are focused on achieving the desired results.
• Identify Potential Risks and Opportunities : Analyzing the market, competition, and industry trends within your business plan helps identify potential risks and uncover untapped opportunities for growth and expansion. This insight enables you to develop proactive strategies to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities, positioning your business for long-term success.
• Improve Decision-Making : A business plan serves as a reference point so you can make informed decisions that align with your company’s overall objectives and long-term vision. By consistently referring to your plan and adjusting it as needed, you can ensure that your business remains on track and adapts to changes in the market, industry, or internal operations.
• Foster Team Alignment and Communication : A shared business plan helps ensure that all team members are on the same page, promoting clear communication, collaboration, and a unified approach to achieving the company’s goals. By involving your team in the planning process and regularly reviewing the plan together, you can foster a sense of ownership, commitment, and accountability that drives success.

What are the Different Types of Business Plans?

In today’s fast-paced business world, having a well-structured roadmap is more important than ever. A traditional business plan provides a comprehensive overview of your company’s goals and strategies, helping you make informed decisions and achieve long-term success. There are various types of business plans, each designed to suit different needs and purposes. Let’s explore the main types:

• Startup Business Plan: Tailored for new ventures, a startup business plan outlines the company’s mission, objectives, target market, competition, marketing strategies, and financial projections. It helps entrepreneurs clarify their vision, secure funding from investors, and create a roadmap for their business’s future. Additionally, this plan identifies potential challenges and opportunities, which are crucial for making informed decisions and adapting to changing market conditions.
• Internal Business Plan: This type of plan is intended for internal use, focusing on strategies, milestones, deadlines, and resource allocation. It serves as a management tool for guiding the company’s growth, evaluating its progress, and ensuring that all departments are aligned with the overall vision. The internal business plan also helps identify areas of improvement, fosters collaboration among team members, and provides a reference point for measuring performance.
• Strategic Business Plan: A strategic business plan outlines long-term goals and the steps to achieve them, providing a clear roadmap for the company’s direction. It typically includes a SWOT analysis, market research, and competitive analysis. This plan allows businesses to align their resources with their objectives, anticipate changes in the market, and develop contingency plans. By focusing on the big picture, a strategic business plan fosters long-term success and stability.
• Feasibility Business Plan: This plan is designed to assess the viability of a business idea, examining factors such as market demand, competition, and financial projections. It is often used to decide whether or not to pursue a particular venture. By conducting a thorough feasibility analysis, entrepreneurs can avoid investing time and resources into an unviable business concept. This plan also helps refine the business idea, identify potential obstacles, and determine the necessary resources for success.
• Growth Business Plan: Also known as an expansion plan, a growth business plan focuses on strategies for scaling up an existing business. It includes market analysis, new product or service offerings, and financial projections to support expansion plans. This type of plan is essential for businesses looking to enter new markets, increase their customer base, or launch new products or services. By outlining clear growth strategies, the plan helps ensure that expansion efforts are well-coordinated and sustainable.
• Operational Business Plan: This type of plan outlines the company’s day-to-day operations, detailing the processes, procedures, and organizational structure. It is an essential tool for managing resources, streamlining workflows, and ensuring smooth operations. The operational business plan also helps identify inefficiencies, implement best practices, and establish a strong foundation for future growth. By providing a clear understanding of daily operations, this plan enables businesses to optimize their resources and enhance productivity.
• Lean Business Plan: A lean business plan is a simplified, agile version of a traditional plan, focusing on key elements such as value proposition, customer segments, revenue streams, and cost structure. It is perfect for startups looking for a flexible, adaptable planning approach. The lean business plan allows for rapid iteration and continuous improvement, enabling businesses to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions. This streamlined approach is particularly beneficial for businesses in fast-paced or uncertain industries.
• One-Page Business Plan: As the name suggests, a one-page business plan is a concise summary of your company’s key objectives, strategies, and milestones. It serves as a quick reference guide and is ideal for pitching to potential investors or partners. This plan helps keep teams focused on essential goals and priorities, fosters clear communication, and provides a snapshot of the company’s progress. While not as comprehensive as other plans, a one-page business plan is an effective tool for maintaining clarity and direction.
• Nonprofit Business Plan: Specifically designed for nonprofit organizations, this plan outlines the mission, goals, target audience, fundraising strategies, and budget allocation. It helps secure grants and donations while ensuring the organization stays on track with its objectives. The nonprofit business plan also helps attract volunteers, board members, and community support. By demonstrating the organization’s impact and plans for the future, this plan is essential for maintaining transparency, accountability, and long-term sustainability within the nonprofit sector.
• Franchise Business Plan: For entrepreneurs seeking to open a franchise, this type of plan focuses on the franchisor’s requirements, as well as the franchisee’s goals, strategies, and financial projections. It is crucial for securing a franchise agreement and ensuring the business’s success within the franchise system. This plan outlines the franchisee’s commitment to brand standards, marketing efforts, and operational procedures, while also addressing local market conditions and opportunities. By creating a solid franchise business plan, entrepreneurs can demonstrate their ability to effectively manage and grow their franchise, increasing the likelihood of a successful partnership with the franchisor.

Using Business Plan Software

Creating a comprehensive business plan can be intimidating, but business plan software can streamline the process and help you produce a professional document. These tools offer a number of benefits, including guided step-by-step instructions, financial projections, and industry-specific templates. Here are the top 5 business plan software options available to help you craft a great business plan.

1. LivePlan

LivePlan is a popular choice for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features. It offers over 500 sample plans, financial forecasting tools, and the ability to track your progress against key performance indicators. With LivePlan, you can create visually appealing, professional business plans that will impress investors and stakeholders.

2. Upmetrics

Upmetrics provides a simple and intuitive platform for creating a well-structured business plan. It features customizable templates, financial forecasting tools, and collaboration capabilities, allowing you to work with team members and advisors. Upmetrics also offers a library of resources to guide you through the business planning process.

Bizplan is designed to simplify the business planning process with a drag-and-drop builder and modular sections. It offers financial forecasting tools, progress tracking, and a visually appealing interface. With Bizplan, you can create a business plan that is both easy to understand and visually engaging.

Enloop is a robust business plan software that automatically generates a tailored plan based on your inputs. It provides industry-specific templates, financial forecasting, and a unique performance score that updates as you make changes to your plan. Enloop also offers a free version, making it accessible for businesses on a budget.

5. Tarkenton GoSmallBiz

Developed by NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton, GoSmallBiz is tailored for small businesses and startups. It features a guided business plan builder, customizable templates, and financial projection tools. GoSmallBiz also offers additional resources, such as CRM tools and legal document templates, to support your business beyond the planning stage.

Business Plan FAQs

What is a good business plan.

A good business plan is a well-researched, clear, and concise document that outlines a company’s goals, strategies, target market, competitive advantages, and financial projections. It should be adaptable to change and provide a roadmap for achieving success.

What are the 3 main purposes of a business plan?

The three main purposes of a business plan are to guide the company’s strategy, attract investment, and evaluate performance against objectives. Here’s a closer look at each of these:

• It outlines the company’s purpose and core values to ensure that all activities align with its mission and vision.
• It provides an in-depth analysis of the market, including trends, customer needs, and competition, helping the company tailor its products and services to meet market demands.
• It defines the company’s marketing and sales strategies, guiding how the company will attract and retain customers.
• It describes the company’s organizational structure and management team, outlining roles and responsibilities to ensure effective operation and leadership.
• It sets measurable, time-bound objectives, allowing the company to plan its activities effectively and make strategic decisions to achieve these goals.
• It provides a comprehensive overview of the company and its business model, demonstrating its uniqueness and potential for success.
• It presents the company’s financial projections, showing its potential for profitability and return on investment.
• It demonstrates the company’s understanding of the market, including its target customers and competition, convincing investors that the company is capable of gaining a significant market share.
• It showcases the management team’s expertise and experience, instilling confidence in investors that the team is capable of executing the business plan successfully.
• It establishes clear, measurable objectives that serve as performance benchmarks.
• It provides a basis for regular performance reviews, allowing the company to monitor its progress and identify areas for improvement.
• It enables the company to assess the effectiveness of its strategies and make adjustments as needed to achieve its objectives.
• It helps the company identify potential risks and challenges, enabling it to develop contingency plans and manage risks effectively.
• It provides a mechanism for evaluating the company’s financial performance, including revenue, expenses, profitability, and cash flow.

Can I write a business plan by myself?

Yes, you can write a business plan by yourself, but it can be helpful to consult with mentors, colleagues, or industry experts to gather feedback and insights. There are also many creative business plan templates and business plan examples available online, including those above.

We also have examples for specific industries, including a using food truck business plan , salon business plan , farm business plan , daycare business plan , and restaurant business plan .

Is it possible to create a one-page business plan?

Yes, a one-page business plan is a condensed version that highlights the most essential elements, including the company’s mission, target market, unique selling proposition, and financial goals.

How long should a business plan be?

A typical business plan ranges from 20 to 50 pages, but the length may vary depending on the complexity and needs of the business.

What is a business plan outline?

A business plan outline is a structured framework that organizes the content of a business plan into sections, such as the executive summary, company description, market analysis, and financial projections.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

The five most common business plan mistakes include inadequate research, unrealistic financial projections, lack of focus on the unique selling proposition, poor organization and structure, and failure to update the plan as circumstances change.

What questions should be asked in a business plan?

A business plan should address questions such as: What problem does the business solve? Who is the specific target market ? What is the unique selling proposition? What are the company’s objectives? How will it achieve those objectives?

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan focuses on the overall vision, goals, and tactics of a company, while a strategic plan outlines the specific strategies, action steps, and performance measures necessary to achieve the company’s objectives.

How is business planning for a nonprofit different?

Nonprofit business planning focuses on the organization’s mission, social impact, and resource management, rather than profit generation. The financial section typically includes funding sources, expenses, and projected budgets for programs and operations.

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10 Free Business Plan Templates in Word, Excel, & ClickUp

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

Turning your vision into a clear and coherent business plan can be confusing and tough. 

Hours of brainstorming and facing an intimidating blank page can raise more questions than answers. Are you covering everything? What should go where? How do you keep each section thorough but brief?

If these questions have kept you up at night and slowed your progress, know you’re not alone. That’s why we’ve put together the top 10 business plan templates in Word, Excel, and ClickUp—to provide answers, clarity, and a structured framework to work with. This way, you’re sure to capture all the relevant information without wasting time. 

And the best part? Business planning becomes a little less “ugh!” and a lot more “aha!” 🤩

What is a Business Plan Template?

What makes a good business plan template, 1. clickup business plan template, 2. clickup sales plan template, 3. clickup business development action plan template, 4. clickup business roadmap template, 5. clickup business continuity plan template, 6. clickup lean business plan template, 7. clickup small business action plan template, 8. clickup strategic business roadmap template , 9. microsoft word business plan template by microsoft, 10. excel business plan template by vertex42.

A business plan template is a structured framework for entrepreneurs and business executives who want to create business plans. It comes with pre-arranged sections and headings that cover key elements like the executive summary , business overview, target customers, unique value proposition, marketing plans, and financial statements.  

A good business plan template helps with thorough planning, clear documentation, and practical implementation. Here’s what to look for:

• Comprehensive structure: A good template comes with all the relevant sections to outline a business strategy, such as executive summary, market research and analysis, and financial projections 
• Clarity and guidance: A good template is easy to follow. It has brief instructions or prompts for each section, guiding you to think deeply about your business and ensuring you don’t skip important details
• Clean design: Aesthetics matter. Choose a template that’s not just functional but also professionally designed. This ensures your plan is presentable to stakeholders, partners, and potential investors
• Flexibility : Your template should easily accommodate changes without hassle, like adding or removing sections, changing content and style, and rearranging parts 🛠️ 

While a template provides the structure, it’s the information you feed it that brings it to life. These pointers will help you pick a template that aligns with your business needs and clearly showcases your vision.

10 Business Plan Templates to Use in 2024

Preparing for business success in 2024 (and beyond) requires a comprehensive and organized business plan. We’ve handpicked the best templates to help you guide your team, attract investors, and secure funding. Let’s check them out.

If you’re looking to replace a traditional business plan document, then ClickUp’s Business Plan Template is for you!

This one-page business plan template, designed in ClickUp Docs , is neatly broken down into the following sections:

• Company description : Overview, mission, vision, and team
• Market analysis : Problem, solution, target market, competition, and competitive advantage
• Sales and marketing strategy : Products/services and marketing channels
• Operational plan : Location and facilities, equipment and tools, manpower, and financial forecasts
• Milestones and metrics: Targets and KPIs

Customize the template with your company logo and contact details, and easily navigate to different sections using the collapsible table of contents. The mini prompts under each section guide you on what to include—with suggestions on how to present the data (e.g., bullet lists, pictures, charts, and tables). 

You can share the document with anyone via URL and collaborate in real time. And when the business plan is ready, you have the option to print it or export it to PDF, HTML, or Markdown.

But that’s not all. This template is equipped with basic and enterprise project management features to streamline the business plan creation process . The Topics List view has a list of all the different sections and subsections of the template and allows you to assign it to a team member, set a due date, and attach relevant documents and references.

Switch from List to Board view to track and update task statuses according to the following: To Do, In Progress, Needs Revision, and Complete. 

This template is a comprehensive toolkit for documenting the different sections of your business plan and streamlining the creation process to ensure it’s completed on time. 🗓️

If you’re looking for a tool to kickstart or update your sales plan, ClickUp’s Sales Plan Template has got you covered. This sales plan template features a project summary list with tasks to help you craft a comprehensive and effective sales strategy. Some of these tasks include:

• Determine sales objectives and goals
• Draft positioning statement
• Perform competitive analysis
• Draft ideal customer persona
• Create a lead generation strategy

Assign each task to a specific individual or team, set priority levels , and add due dates. Specify what section of the sales plan each task belongs to (e.g., executive summary, revenue goals, team structure, etc.), deliverable type (such as document, task, or meeting), and approval state (like pending, needs revisions, and approved).

And in ClickUp style, you can switch to multiple views: List for a list of all tasks, Board for visual task management, Timeline for an overview of task durations, and Gantt to get a view of task dependencies. 

This simple business plan template is perfect for any type of business looking to create a winning sales strategy while clarifying team roles and keeping tasks organized. ✨

Thinking about scaling your business’s reach and operations but unsure where or how to start? It can be overwhelming, no doubt—you need a clear vision, measurable goals, and an actionable plan that every member of your team can rally behind. 

Thankfully, ClickUp’s Business Development Action Plan Template is designed to use automations to simplify this process so every step toward your business growth is clear, trackable, and actionable.

Start by assessing your current situation and deciding on your main growth goal. Are you aiming to increase revenue, tap into new markets, or introduce new products or services? With ClickUp Whiteboards or Docs, brainstorm and collaborate with your team on this decision.

Set and track your short- and long-term growth goals with ClickUp’s Goals , break them down into smaller targets, and assign these targets to team members, complete with due dates. Add these targets to a new ClickUp Dashboard to track real-time progress and celebrate small wins. 🎉

Whether you’re a startup or small business owner looking to hit your next major milestone or an established business exploring new avenues, this template keeps your team aligned, engaged, and informed every step of the way.

ClickUp’s Business Roadmap Template is your go-to for mapping out major strategies and initiatives in areas like revenue growth, brand awareness, community engagement, and customer satisfaction. 

Use the List view to populate tasks under each initiative. With Custom Fields, you can capture which business category (e.g., Product, Operations, Sales & Marketing, etc.) tasks fall under and which quarter they’re slated for. You can also link to relevant documents and resources and evaluate tasks by effort and impact to ensure the most critical tasks get the attention they deserve. 👀

Depending on your focus, this template provides different views to show just what you need. For example, the All Initiatives per Quarter view lets you focus on what’s ahead by seeing tasks that need completion within a specific quarter. This ensures timely execution and helps in aligning resources effectively for the short term.

This template is ideal for business executives and management teams who need to coordinate multiple short- and long-term initiatives and business strategies.

In business, unexpected threats to operations can arise at any moment. Whether it’s economic turbulence, a global health crisis, or supply chain interruptions, every company needs to be ready. ClickUp’s Business Continuity Plan Template lets you prepare proactively for these unforeseen challenges.

The template organizes tasks into three main categories:

• Priorities: Tasks that need immediate attention
• Continuity coverage: Tasks that must continue despite challenges
• Guiding principles: Resources and protocols to ensure smooth operations

The Board view makes it easy to visualize all the tasks under each of these categories. And the Priorities List sorts tasks by those that are overdue, the upcoming ones, and then the ones due later.

In times of uncertainty, being prepared is your best strategy. This template helps your business not just survive but thrive in challenging situations, keeping your customers, employees, and investors satisfied. 🤝

Looking to execute your business plan the “lean” way? Use ClickUp’s Lean Business Plan Template . It’s designed to help you optimize resource usage and cut unnecessary steps—giving you better results with less effort.

In the Plan Summary List view, list all the tasks that need to get done. Add specific details like who’s doing each task, when it’s due, and which part of the Business Model Canvas (BMC) it falls under. The By Priority view sorts this list based on priorities like Urgent, High, Normal, and Low. This makes it easy to spot the most important tasks and tackle them first.

Additionally, the Board view gives you an overview of task progression from start to finish. And the BMC view rearranges these tasks based on the various BMC components. 

Each task can further be broken down into subtasks and multiple checklists to ensure all related action items are executed. ✔️

This template is an invaluable resource for startups and large enterprises looking to maximize process efficiencies and results in a streamlined and cost-effective way.

The Small Business Action Plan Template by ClickUp is tailor-made for small businesses looking to transform their business ideas and goals into actionable steps and, eventually, into reality. 

It provides a simple and organized framework for creating, assigning, prioritizing, and tracking tasks. And in effect, it ensures that goals are not just set but achieved. Through the native dashboard and goal-setting features, you can monitor task progress and how they move you closer to achieving your goals.

Thanks to ClickUp’s robust communication features like chat, comments, and @mentions, it’s easy to get every team member on the same page and quickly address questions or concerns.

Use this action plan template to hit your business goals by streamlining your internal processes and aligning team efforts.

For larger businesses and scaling enterprises, getting different departments to work together toward a big goal can be challenging. The ClickUp Strategic Business Roadmap Template makes it easier by giving you a clear plan to follow.

This template is packaged in a folder and split into different lists for each department in your business, like Sales, Product, Marketing, and Enablement. This way, every team can focus on their tasks while collectively contributing to the bigger goal.

There are multiple viewing options available for team members. These include:

• Progress Board: Visualize tasks that are on track, those at risk, and those behind
• Gantt view: Get an overview of project timelines and dependencies
• Team view: See what each team member is working on so you can balance workloads for maximum productivity

While this template may feel overwhelming at first, the getting started guide offers a step-by-step breakdown to help you navigate it with ease. And like all ClickUp templates, you can easily customize it to suit your business needs and preferences.

Microsoft’s 20-page traditional business plan template simplifies the process of drafting comprehensive business plans. It’s made up of different sections, including:

• Executive summary : Highlights, objectives, mission statement, and keys to success
• Description of business: Company ownership and legal structure, hours of operation, products and services, suppliers, financial plans, etc.
• Marketing: Market analysis, market segmentation, competition, and pricing
• Appendix: Start-up expenses, cash flow statements, income statements, sales forecast, milestones, break-even analysis, etc.

The table of contents makes it easy to move to different sections of the document. And the text placeholders under each section provide clarity on the specific details required—making the process easier for users who may not be familiar with certain business terminology.

No business template roundup is complete without an Excel template. This business plan template lets you work on your business financials in Excel. It comes with customizable tables, formulas, and charts to help you look at the following areas:

• Highlight charts
• Market analysis
• Start-up assets and expenses
• Sales forecasts
• Profit and loss
• Balance sheet
• Cash flow projections
• Break-even analysis

This Excel template is especially useful when you want to create a clear and visual financial section for your business plan document—an essential element for attracting investors and lenders. However, there might be a steep learning curve to using this template if you’re not familiar with business financial planning and using Excel.

Try a Free Business Plan Template in ClickUp

Launching and running a successful business requires a well-thought-out and carefully crafted business plan. However, the business planning process doesn’t have to be complicated, boring, or take up too much time. Use any of the above 10 free business plan formats to simplify and speed up the process.

ClickUp templates go beyond offering a solid foundation to build your business plans. They come with extensive project management features to turn your vision into reality. And that’s not all— ClickUp’s template library offers over 1,000 additional templates to help manage various aspects of your business, from decision-making to product development to resource management .

Sign up for ClickUp’s Free Forever Plan today to fast-track your business’s growth! 🏆

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How to Write a Detailed Business Plan, Step-by-Step (Free Templates)

Posted november 14, 2022 by noah parsons.

Writing a business plan is one of the most valuable things you can do for your business. Study after study proves that business planning significantly improves your chances of success by up to 30 percent . That’s because the planning process helps you think about all aspects of your business and how your business will operate and grow.

In fact, writing a business plan is one of the only free things you can do to greatly impact the success and growth of your business. Ready to write your own detailed business plan? Here’s everything you need ( along with a free template ) to create your plan.

Before you write a detailed business plan, start with a one-page business plan

Despite the benefit of planning, it’s easy to procrastinate writing a business plan. Most people would prefer to work hands-on in their business rather than think about business strategy. That’s why, to make things easier, we recommend you start with a simpler and shorter one-page business plan .

With a one-page plan, there’s no need to go into a lot of details or dive deep into financial projections—you just write down the fundamentals of your business and how it works. A one-page plan should cover:

• Value proposition
• Market need
• Your solution

Competition

Target market.

• Sales and marketing
• Budget and sales goals
• Team summary
• Key partners
• Funding needs

A one-page business plan is a great jumping-off point in the planning process. It’ll give you an overview of your business and help you quickly refine your ideas.

If you’re ready to work on your one-page plan, check out our guide to writing a one-page business plan . It has detailed instructions, examples, and even a free downloadable template .

When do you need a more detailed business plan?

A one-page plan doesn’t always capture all the information that you need, however. If that’s the case, then it may be time to expand into a more detailed business plan.

There are several reasons for putting together a detailed business plan:

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

Flesh out the details 

A one-page business plan is just a summary of your business. If you want to document additional details such as market research, marketing and sales strategies, or product direction—you should expand your plan into a longer, more detailed plan. 

Build a more detailed financial forecast

A one-page plan only includes a summary of your financial projections. A detailed plan includes a full financial forecast, including a profit and loss statement , balance sheet , and cash flow forecast —one of the most important forecasts for any business.

Be prepared for lenders and investors

While investors might not ask to actually read your business plan, they will certainly ask detailed questions about your business. Planning is the only way to be well-prepared for these investor meetings.

Selling your business

If you’re selling your business, a detailed business plan presentation will be part of your sales kit. Potential buyers will want to know the details of how your business works, from marketing details to your product roadmap.

How to write a detailed business plan

When you do need to write a detailed business plan, focus on the parts most important to you and your business. If you plan on distributing your plan to outsiders, you should complete every section. But, if your plan is just for internal use, focus on the areas that will help you right now.

For example, if you’re struggling with marketing, spend time working on your target market section and marketing strategy and skip the sections covering the company organization.

Let’s go step-by-step through the sections you should include in your business plan:

1. Executive summary

Yes, the executive summary comes first in your plan, but you should write it last, once you know all the details of your business plan. It is truly just a summary of all the details in your plan, so be careful not to be too repetitive—just summarize and try to keep it to one or two pages at most. If you’ve already put together a one-page business plan, you can use that here instead of writing a new executive summary.

Your executive summary should be able to stand alone as a document because it’s often useful to share just the summary with potential investors. When they’re ready for more detail, they’ll ask for the full business plan.

For existing businesses, write the executive summary for your audience—whether it’s investors, business partners, or employees. Think about what your audience will want to know and just hit the highlights.

The key parts of your plan that you’ll want to highlight in your executive summary are:

• Your opportunity: This is a summary of what your business does, what problem it solves, and who your customers are. This is where you want readers to get excited about your business
• Your team: For investors, your business’s team is often even more important than what the business is. Briefly highlight why your team is uniquely qualified to build the business and make it successful.
• Financials: What are the highlights of your financial forecast ? Summarize your sales goals , when you plan to be profitable, and how much money you need to get your business off the ground.

2. Opportunity

The “opportunity” section of your business plan is all about the products and services that you are creating. The goal is to explain why your business is exciting and the problems that it solves for people. You’ll want to cover:

Mission statement

A mission statement is a short summary of your overall goals. It’s a short summary of how you hope to improve customers’ lives with your products and services. It’s a summary of the aspirations of your business and the guiding north star for you and your team. 

Problem & solution

Most successful businesses solve a problem for their customers. Their products and services make people’s lives easier or fill an unmet need in the marketplace. In this section, you’ll want to explain the problem that you solve, whom you solve it for, and what your solution is. This is where you go in-depth to describe what you do and how you improve the lives of your customers.

In the previous section, you summarized your target customer. Now you’ll want to describe them in much greater detail. You’ll want to cover things like your target market’s demographics (age, gender, location, etc.) and psychographics (hobbies and other behaviors). Ideally, you can also estimate the size of your target market so you know how many potential customers you might have.

Every business has competition , so don’t leave this section out. You’ll need to explain what other companies are doing to serve your customers or if your customers have other options for solving the problem you are solving. Explain how your approach is different and better than your competitors, whether it’s better features, better pricing, or a better location. Explain why a customer would come to you instead of going to another company. 

3. Execution

This section of your business plan dives into how you’re going to accomplish your goals. While the Opportunity section discussed what you’re doing, you now need to explain the specifics of how you’re going to do it.

Marketing & sales

What marketing tactics do you plan to use to get the word out about your business? You’ll want to explain how you get customers to your door and what the sales process looks like. For businesses that have a sales force, explain how the sales team gets leads and what the process is like for closing a sale.

Depending on the type of business that you are starting, the operations section needs to be customized to meet your needs. If you are building a mail-order business you’ll want to cover how you source your products and how fulfillment will work .

If you’re building a manufacturing business, explain the manufacturing process and the facilities you need to use. This is where you’ll talk about how your business “works,” meaning, you should explain what day-to-day functions and processes are needed to make your business successful.

Milestones & metrics

Until now, your business plan has mostly discussed what you’re doing and how you’re going to do it. The milestones and metrics section is all about timing. Your plan should highlight key dates and goals that you intend to hit. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section, just key milestones that you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. You should also discuss key metrics: the numbers you will track to determine your success.

Use the Company section of your business plan to explain the overall structure of your business and the team behind it.

Organizational structure

Describe your location, facilities, and anything else about your physical location that is relevant to your business. You’ll also want to explain the legal structure of your business—are you an S-corp, C-corp, or an LLC? What does company ownership look like?

Arguably one of the most important parts of your plan when seeking investment is the “Team” section. This should explain who you are and who else is helping you run the business. Focus on experience and qualifications for building the type of business that you want to build. 

It’s OK if you don’t have a complete team yet. Just highlight the key roles that you need to fill and the type of person you hope to hire for each role.

5. Financial plan and projections

Your business plan has now covered the “what”, the “how”, and the “when” for your business. Now it’s time to talk about money. What revenue do you plan on bringing in and when? What kind of expenses will you have?

Financial Forecasts

Your sales forecast should cover at least the first 12 months of your business and ideally contain educated guesses at the following two years in annual totals. Some investors and lenders might want to see a five-year forecast, but three years is usually enough.

You’ll want to cover sales, expenses, personnel costs, asset purchases, and more. You’ll end up with three key financial statements: An Income Statement (also called Profit and Loss), a Cash Flow Statement , and a Balance Sheet .

If you’re raising money for your business, the Financing section is where you describe how much you need. Whether you’re getting loans or investments, you should highlight what you need, and when you need it. Ideally, you’ll also want to summarize the specific ways that you’ll use the cash once you have it in hand.

6. Appendix 

The final section of your business plan is the appendix. Include detailed financial forecasts here as well as any other key documentation for your business. If you have product schematics, patent information, or any other details that aren’t appropriate for the main body of the plan but need to be included for reference.

Download a business plan template

Are you ready to write your business plan? Get started by downloading our free business plan template . With that, you will be well on your way to a better business strategy, with all of the necessary information expected in a more detailed plan.

If you want to elevate your ability to build a healthy, growing business, you may want to consider LivePlan.

It’s a product that makes planning easy and features step-by-step guidance that ensures you cover everything necessary while reducing the time spent on formatting and presenting. You’ll also gain access to financial forecasting tools that propel you through the process. Finally, it will transform your plan into a management tool that will help you easily compare your forecasts to your actual results.

Using your plan to grow your business

Your business plan isn’t just a document to attract investors or close a bank loan. It’s a tool that helps you better manage and grow your business. And you’ll get the most value from your business plan if you use it as part of a growth planning process . 

With growth planning, you’ll easily create and execute your plan, track performance, identify opportunities and issues, and consistently revise your strategy. It’s a flexible process that encourages you to build a plan that fits your needs.  So, whether you stick with a one-page plan or expand into a more detailed business plan—you’ll be ready to start growth planning. 

Ready to try it for yourself? Learn how LivePlan can help you use this modern business planning method to write your plan and consistently grow your business.

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Free business plan template—and how to write your own

I wrote my first business plan when I was six. I've learned a lot since then, and in hindsight, I can see why the investors around my family's Christmas table didn't take my space Marine cowboy ranch pitch seriously. I didn't put a lot of thought into what it would take to make the idea work, and I certainly didn't do the market research. Also, it was a space Marine cowboy ranch business.

My point is that thinking about the outcome before considering the many variables that pave the way is counterproductive. A business plan may not seem like the most critical or complicated document, but it can guide an entire organization, keeping success at the top of everyone's mind. It's the difference between a successful investor pitch and crying on Christmas.

To show you what I mean, I've put together a simple business plan template to get you started.

Table of contents:

Simple business plan template + example

After some good old-fashioned data entry, you should have a polished business plan that's ready to share. Regardless of what stage your business is in, this template is flexible enough to accommodate your needs.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a document that clearly defines your company's goals, strategies, and operational details. It's essentially a roadmap for your team and investors. Think of it as boiling your entire business (concept, vision, dreams, and everything in between) down to one document. 

A formal business plan will include an overview of your products or services, marketing and sales strategies, targeted markets, financial details, and even a description of what you're building. 

Of course, business plans are unique snowflakes, so there's no one size fits all. Depending on what you're trying to do—attract investors, guide project expansion, align team members—your plan will look a little different. I'll dig into the different types of business plans in a bit.

What makes a business plan so important?

In its simplest form, a business plan turns your concept into a reality. In more tangible terms, it also helps you achieve necessary business goals like securing funding. You'll have a hard time finding investors if you show up to a pitch meeting with only a winning smile and a can-do attitude—a strong business plan can show them a clear path to a return on their investment.

Investors and their judgmental silence aside, this document is critical for guiding internal decision-making, setting goals, and providing a clear direction for the business and its vision.

Key components of a business plan

Before your business partners can understand your vision, you need to make sure you do. Before you start putting your business plan together, ask yourself whether your idea is feasible, whether it's different from what's already out there, if there are any competitors, and if they're doing something unique. Also consider your prices and customer base.

You likely already know most of the answers to these questions. My Christmas pitch all those years ago could have gone differently if I'd put crayon to paper and answered these questions myself. My family couldn't follow my spur-of-the-moment speech, and neither will your team or investors—they need it spelled out as clearly as possible.

While no two business plans will look the same, there's a handful of key components virtually all good business plans have in common. So, if you haven't already looked through the template with the optimism that my six-year-old self lost that Christmas, here's what you can expect to find.

Title page: Impress readers with a unique presentation. This is your first opportunity to showcase your brand. 

Table of contents: No one likes being lost in a document. A TOC can help readers navigate the various sections and get an overview of what's inside.

Executive summary: Provide an overview of the business, summarizing its mission, goals, and key highlights.

Market analysis: Include your research and data on the target market. Make sure to outline industry trends, competition, and customer demographics.

Products/services: Detail your services or products. You'll want to expand on your unique selling points and customer benefits.

Marketing and sales strategy: Outline your plans for promoting your business. If you've already identified marketing and sales channels, include those, too.

The organization: Showcase how your business will function on a structural level. Make sure to talk about your team's different positions and functions, and how it will all be managed.

Types of business plans

Let's say you have a well-established construction manufacturing business. If you're looking to expand the business into a new location, you don't want to repurpose the same simple startup business plan. You'd want to build on it (pun intended) with an expansion business plan. 

Unlike your original business plan, which outlined your original milestones and goals, an expansion plan would include an analysis of your expansion and its development, purpose, feasibility, market, and reasoning. It would still outline your overarching goals for the business as a whole, but with additional information about the expansion and what that entails.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For example, internal and strategic business plans serve an internal purpose. These are the types that are written for your team rather than your business partners. They're created to pin down the long-term game plan and keep team members aligned.

Making the business plan template your own

A business idea and a feasible business plan are two very different things. Follow these steps to solidify your ideas into a clear roadmap. 

1. Define your mission statement

2. outline a detailed company description.

Don't be shy about the details. Provide your readers with a comprehensive overview of your company, its history, founders, legal structure, location, and the concept it's all built around. You might even include photos and illustrations for an extra flair.

3. Set your business goals

4. detail your services/products, 5. analyze your target audience, 6. set milestones for marketing and sales.

Showcasing that you've identified your target audience isn't enough. You need to prove that you know how to speak to it and how to appeal to it while promoting your products and services. Some businesses set up milestones such as X amount of sales, Y number of acquired clients, or, in my case, the successful integration of Cowboy Ranch into the International Space Station.

7. Perform a financial analysis

Conduct a thorough financial analysis that includes details such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. Outline your financial projections and your funding requirements. This section should prove how financially feasible your business concept is.

Once you have these points outlined and fleshed out, it's only a matter of representing each and every one of them in detail, ensuring that the voice and tone of your business plan reflect your brand and embody the unique concept you want to get across.

Future-proofing your business plan

In summary: investors are not mind readers, and cowboys should stay on Earth. 

Your business plan is the sum of your ideas, passion, vision, and the lessons you learn as your business develops. Over the years, it will likely go through a few iterations and changes, but the plan you write today will guide you through the beginning stages. 

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Hachem Ramki

Hachem is a writer and digital marketer from Montreal. After graduating with a degree in English, Hachem spent seven years traveling around the world before moving to Canada. When he's not writing, he enjoys Basketball, Dungeons and Dragons, and playing music for friends and family.

• Sales & business development
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Powerful business plan templates

Plan for the future, no matter what your business plans are or the size of your business with these designs and templates. whether it's just one big project or an entire organization's worth of dreams, these templates will keep you and your company on track from ideation to completion..

Put your ideas to work with simple templates for every business plan

Every successful business took a lot of planning to get there, and these templates will be cornerstones of your future success. Whether you're looking to attract new business, pitch your services or reimagine your company, with these simple, customizable templates at your fingertips you can turn complexity into something tangible. These templates can become marketing assets or simply remain internal touchpoints for your team. And as your dreams change, you'll always have this template to refer to – it's easy to change what exists on paper. If you're a small business, focusing on your niche can help you dominate in your field, and you can forge a plan to figure out exactly what that niche might be and how to target your ideal customer . When it's time to share your vision with stakeholders, craft a presentation that outlines your plan succinctly and with style. Let these templates from Microsoft Designer be your partner in business strategy for years to come.

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How to Create an Internal Business Plan for a New Company Initiative

It is important to put together a complete, comprehensive internal business plan for a few reasons.

Business plans for start-up companies have become mainstays in the business world. But more and more company initiatives and projects have begun to require business plans as a way of validating prudent investments and company spend as maturing businesses look for innovation within to drive future revenue growth. A time may come in a business or a division when you have a new idea or product you believe will equal big revenue for the company, but how do you convey your message to the larger organization? As the world turns towards innovation and technology to drive growth in this mature economy, creating an internal business plan is becoming more and more commonplace, if not a necessity.

If you have a good working relationship with your executive team, business ideas should not be popping up out of the blue. Instead, you should have a platform for discussion in either staff meetings or one-on-one sessions with the executives. However, it is important to put together a complete, comprehensive internal business plan for a few reasons:

• It shows that you have your stuff together and can be organized and methodical about your plan.
• You will need to evangelize your new plan quickly and succinctly throughout the organization, and a detailed business plan is the most effective way to disseminate information.

Here are a few suggestions for inclusion in your business to improve the probability of gaining approval:

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary may be the most important part of the internal business plan as it cements the audience’s first impression of the project. This may be the only page many executives have time to read and discuss, so make sure it tells the story in a summarized manner. Style, visualization, and financial accuracy are all important aspect of this page.

Questions to ask and answer include:

• What is the idea?
• Where did it come from?
• How much to you believe its worth?
• What is the duration of investment?
• What is the financial impact?
• What is the mechanism we need to enact and unlock this new revenue stream?
• How does this project tie into and/or complement the overall strategy for the business and any other growth initiatives? (It is important to see how this product or service will become an integral part of the organization for years to come and not a one-off fad or an ill-conceived idea.)

It is very important to lay out your marketing strategy, as this will be the main focus point for management in understanding how realistic it will be to achieve your results. First, you need to identify your target market, whether it be a specific demographic or fanbase or creating a new segment. You will need to be very specific about your methods of attracting your target customers and the message you are going to represent to the overall market. If you are tapping into a new market, how will you get your message out there? If you are stealing share or competing against another rival, what will be your differentiation to gain share?

Without the right combination of message and means of delivering the message, even truly superior new products may have trouble gaining traction in the marketplace. If you can show that you already have customers lined up ready to purchase your products or services, this makes your case more convincing.

Management Team

Executives want to support new projects and new ideas, but they need to be confident in the people you put in charge. If you, as the author of the internal business plan, will not be directly operating the new product or service, but someone else on your team will be the main contact, you want to make sure they are a good fit for the project.

The team structure has to go beyond just your normal, everyday team configuration. It must show how each team member’s background and accomplishments contribute essential elements needed to succeed with this new venture. The project may involve more than one department, so you will want to show that you put time and effort into determining the team and define the responsibilities of each member. Make sure that you have a diverse group of people that have the availability to dedicate time to the project with a good mix of senior and junior employees.

Financial Projections

As the executive team decides whether they are going to approve of the investment in this new product or service, they have to consider whether they are going to get a sufficient return on their investment. Not only do they have to consider ROI, but in many companies where resources are limited and staffing up can be a political nightmare, business units also have to consider opportunity costs or tradeoffs related to moving individuals and not having them concentrate on already productive and proven products and services.

The financial projections provide clues about how well thought out the new products and services are as well as their financial viability. The executive team will look for whether the team has presented a reasonable forecast for revenue and profit growth that is both aggressive, but realistic for the business unit. When they see projections that seem unattainable, the project immediately loses credibility. Executive teams also want to see whether the management team backed up the projections with sound assumptions based on hard data obtained from industry sources – or were the projections simply guesswork. Financial projections in a business plan do not need to be voluminous or excessively complex. However, they do need to be clear and reasonable while being exciting from a ROI standpoint.

Getting Support for Your Internal Business Plan

While you may include additional information in your business plan, it is important to keep it short and succinct. It is also important that you dedicate the correct resources to develop, publish, and present this business plan. Our team at 8020 Consulting has experience putting together business plans for project and initiatives. You can contact us to learn more .

If you’d like to learn more about internal momentum toward business goals, we invite you to download our operational review program guide . It offers insights into how to organize meetings and set roles to encourage organizational traction:

About the Author

Lester has over 15 years of professional finance experience in strategic planning, forecasting and budgeting, financial analysis, and business evaluation. Prior to joining 8020 Consulting, Lester was the Director of Business Planning and Analysis at Warner Bros. and had previously worked as a Senior Manager of Retail Analysis and Manager of Finance for The Walt Disney Company. Additionally, Lester has held positions at Thomson Reuters and Public Financial Management. In his career, Lester also operated as the Chief Financial Officer for a consumer goods start-up company, where he oversaw the Accounting, Finance, Operations and HR functions. Lester’s expertise centers around FP&A, budgeting and forecasting, financial modeling, cause of change analysis, consolidation, industry analysis, and project management. Lester holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University, and an MBA in Corporate Strategy and Finance from The University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.

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How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated May 7, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

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• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

Free business plan templates and examples

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How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan
• Templates and examples

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The Ultimate Business Plan Template

May 22, 2023 - 10 min read

Business plan templates set you up for success by providing a framework to guide you through setting goals and planning crucial aspects of your business, like operations, marketing, and financials. 

A one-page business plan template compiles the essential information you need to explain your business and present it in the best light to investors, partners, suppliers, vendors, and employees. It is a brief document that organizes and communicates the most impressive, practical, and persuasive details of your business.

Depending on your business case — e.g., raising funds, launching a new product, or updating workflows and processes — you can add or remove specific sections in your business plan template to fit your needs. Using a business plan template frees up and saves valuable time and effort by providing guidance on what to include and highlight while ensuring you don’t overlook any necessary details.  

There are many business plan types, including startup business plans , expansion plans, business operational plans , and lean or one-page business plans. These plans have different goals and help entrepreneurs and small business owners sustain momentum and growth through different phases. 

This article will teach you how to write a business plan effectively. We ’ ll discuss the essential sections of a business plan, tips to complete each one, and mistakes to avoid. You can begin right now by downloading one of Wrike’s business-focused templates .

Is a business plan really necessary? 

As the world of work accelerates with the speed of innovation, globalization, and remote work , many practices are changing. Transactions and negotiations that would have taken months to complete can now transpire in hours or days using video conferencing and other collaborative tools . Seeking confirmation, giving feedback, signing contracts, and closing deals are done more efficiently and across many borders. 

But even so, business plans are as essential and valuable as ever. Widely used is the one-page business plan, which is a quick, concise way to summarize and present your business ’ s status, current needs, and projected future. One-page business plans help illustrate where your business is and how you plan to achieve its potential. Investors, partners, and stakeholders can see the main points at a glance and decide whether to continue conversations, turn down the offer, or agree to your ask. 

Business plan templates help simplify the process of creating thorough and effective business plans. They get you past the initial blank page and provide a structure for building your own professional and comprehensive business plan in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. These templates make it easy to visualize viable exit strategies and desired business outcomes, promoting strategic and impactful decision-making as a sole entrepreneur, small business, or CEO of a fast-growing startup answering to shareholders.

Business plans help to: 

• Get more clarity on your business roadmap : Whether you ’ re a first-time entrepreneur or a small business owner looking to raise funds, business plans clarify your goals and organizational objectives for different periods, e.g., one to five years. Clear goals translate to actionable plans. Teams can break them down into tasks and projects and chart a timeline to achieve milestones. 
• Pitch and raise funds from investors: The most common reason people do the hard task of creating business plans in the first place is to pitch their startup or business idea to investors, bankers, or venture capitalists. A business plan shows you're serious about your business and communicates the business's potential. If your plan is clear and investors are convinced, you can raise the funds you need. 
• Convince stakeholders: There are many instances in business when you have to convince others to buy into a new idea or try new ways to improve the company ’s bottom line. Teams and project managers create internal business plans to present their cases and convince stakeholders about the viability of their proposed solution. A well-done business plan can win the necessary sponsorship and stakeholder support you need.
• Navigate potential risks: A business plan template ensures you cover all crucial aspects of your business. It creates visibility into potential risks and challenges the business or project may face as well as an opportunity for proactive brainstorming and strategy development to mitigate these risks.

How long should your business plan be?

A conventional business plan can be many pages long. The ideal length is whatever is required to explain the business adequately and excite your readers about its potential. Business plans can be from as few as five to as many as 25 pages. However, it’s advisable to keep it as short as possible to hold your readers ’ attention through most of it. 

A one-page business plan is a condensed, lightweight version of a conventional business plan. The one-page plan illustrates what your business does by summarizing its mission, operations, marketing, and financial forecasts on one page. 

You use visual elements like graphs and charts, bullet points, summaries, and clever formatting to keep the one-page plan informative, engaging, and clear for readers to understand. Answer frequently recurring questions in the appendices and carry along useful, additional documents to provide details and proof of work when seeking investment. Investors want to know your business can be profitable, and they can cash out. They ’ d like to see evidence of a viable market and customer interest. 

How do I write a simple business plan?

Before you begin writing your business plan, talk to your customers and employees to validate and shape your business concept. It doesn ’ t matter if you ’ re just beginning to grow your business or raising another round for expansion. 

Writing a business plan starts with speaking to people on the ground — customers, leads, residents, consumers, employees, and any other groups that directly use and experience your products, services, and business management . 

Once you have their input, you can start writing your business plan by completing the seven sections below. 

Essential components of a business plan

Every business plan should include the following sections:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Products and services
• Market analysis
• Management team
• Financial plan
• Operational plan

These seven parts cover the crucial areas that keep a business running and successful. Without clarity on any section, you may struggle to build a thriving business. 

1. Executive summary

The executive summary outlines your one-page business plan. It introduces what readers can expect in the following sections and highlights the most impressive statistics and information in the business plan to pique their interest.

Executive summaries should be concise. Every sentence should be necessary and add value to the plan. Here ’ s an example of a one-page business plan executive summary:

Marigold Panes, a joint venture between a shipping and manufacturing company, aims to expand its successful European portfolio and capture a significant percentage of the rapidly growing North American window pane renovation market, focused on modern styles for residential and commercial spaces. This niche market is expanding at 12.6% yearly. It generated $19 billion in the US alone in the last year. Building on its success in Europe, Marigold Panes aims to establish a similarly structured company in the US within the next six months, using a hyper-localized go-to-market strategy across selected major cities.

2. Company description

The company description section should explain what your business does, highlighting your business model, industry, and type.

Include a clear mission and vision statement to set the foundation for your organization’s purpose, values, and long-term goals. This provides clarity and context around your business presence, creating a shared understanding of the business’s key objectives, guiding decision-making, inspiring teams, and setting the stage for long-term success.

Stating your mission and vision statements early in the business plan helps establish a sense of purpose from the outset. Be firm yet flexible to allow room for adapting to changing market conditions while remaining true to the company’s core values.

Continuing with the Marigold Panes example, let ’ s see what a company description may look like.

• Introduction: Marigold Panes is a partnership between a shipping and a manufacturing company focused on winning window pane renovation projects from North America.
• Business type: Joint venture (JV) , i.e., a partnership between two entities: a shipping company and a manufacturing company. 
• Founding team: Partnering companies have a track record of delivering high-quality projects in their industries. This JV brings a double assurance of quality and standards for the market in North America. Both companies have strong executive and management teams with experience and expertise in fields apart from the core two.
• Business mission: Marigold Panes ’ mission is to source, manufacture, and ship the highest - quality window panes worldwide. 
• Establish a trustworthy brand presence in North America.
• Grow customer base >15% month on month.
• Meet a revenue target of $2 billion from the North American market within three years

3. Products and services

Your plan ’ s products and services section should outline all the business ’ s products and services. This should include your current products and services, those in the pipeline, and any others you plan to launch. Add necessary details about each one, so readers have a concise yet clear understanding of them.

Ensure you ’ re clear about ownership and copyright issues for every product or service listed. Share details about the workflows and processes that enable your business production and allow you to deliver successfully to customers.

Continuing with Marigold Panes, its products and services section may look like this: 

• Procurement of window pane materials
• Manufacturing of window panes
• Shipping of window panes
• Managing window pane disposal
• Windowpane renovation projects

4. Market analysis

Your market analysis section should highlight the most important peculiarities about your target market and customer types, presenting research that validates the products and services. Depending on the stage your company is at, your market research section may be more focused on total market size, percentage of market share, rate of market share growth, or competitor activities. 

Break down your total market into smaller segments based on factors such as demographics, location, and priority needs. This will help identify the size and value of a specific target audience within the broader market, enabling you to create tailored marketing strategies for reaching and appealing to different market segments.

Market research helps you learn about your industry ’ s current demand and supply balance, how best to position yourself to solve the market ’ s needs, the most viable segments within it, and the best strategies for achieving product/market fit. It helps teams understand target customers’ pain points, needs, and preferences. That way, companies can create a product or service that effectively addresses particular needs, leading to high demand and customer satisfaction.

You can use the popular SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) technique to show your company ’ s positioning and competitive advantages. SWOT analyses are excellent complements to one-page plans as they convey so much information about your business operations, positioning, and potential using little space on the page. 

For Marigold Panes, it would start by listing all the window pane companies in North America operating for over two years and conducting above $500 million in annual revenue. It can then research the shortlisted companies and learn its business weaknesses and strengths compared to them. 

5. Management team

The management team section outlines your business ’ s top, most critical personnel and their expertise, experience, and credentials. This should show your organizational hierarchy and business ’ s legal structure. 

For Marigold Panes, it may list the personnel working on the new partnership from the executive and management teams of both companies.

Ensure that every team member in your business plan is credible, competent, and quick at their job — with the capacity and ability to convey your business goals and convince stakeholders your team and organization can execute their projects. 

6. Financial plan

Not all business plans need an in-depth financial plan, but every one needs a well-done forecast and estimations to show where the business is currently and how you plan to grow from there. A financial plan section provides a snapshot of your business ’ s current and future financial health. It shows investors whether your business will become profitable, where you spend the most money, and how fast you spend it. 

For a one-page plan, you only need an overview of your financial activities and projections, including where your capital came from, how much runway you have, the cash burn rate, how much investment you need for the next round, and how you plan to use the money. 

Your finances may be in the red and making losses when you ’ re just starting your business. Investors expect this and are more interested in learning how and when you plan to break even, pay off any loans, and start to make profit. 

Our example, Marigold Panes, is a partnership between two existing companies. Its financial plan for the new joint venture would include a balance sheet summary showing assets, liabilities, and capital of the new joint venture, as well as additional financial data including periodic projections.

7. Operational plan

The operational plan section in your one-page business plan should include a summary of what needs to be done to transform your raw materials into finished products and how they will be delivered to customers. 

The operational plan outlines your business ’ s main goals and the processes, tasks, and milestones to reach them. Think of how your products and services are created from scratch. What essential tasks, expenses, and steps must be taken every time to create the product/service or achieve a goal? Operational planning is best optimized with project tracking software such as Wrike to ensure smooth and efficient collaborative workflows, encouraging progress from one phase to the next.

For Marigold Panes, the operational plan may include getting procurement quotes from international suppliers, a system for estimating production costs on each new project, manufacturing equipment to design the panes, and manufactured/sales inventory for shipping to customers.

Business plan example

Here is a one-page business plan example to inspire your own. This business plan example has fields for your: 

• Executive summary: In this section, write a brief, compelling summary of your business plan
• Company description: Detail a comprehensive overview of your company, including its legal structure, mission, vision, and objectives
• Products and services: Here, you focus on the products or services your company offers, highlighting the unique selling points that differentiate your offerings from competitors
• Management team: Introduce your management team, emphasizing their skills, experiences, and qualifications that are relevant to your industry and company
• Marketing analysis: In this section, present a thorough analysis of your target market, including market segmentation, target audience identification, market size, growth potential, and competitor analysis
• Financial plan: In this section, outline the company’s financial projections and goals
• Operational plan: List the day-to-day processes, tools, and procedures required to run the business effectively

Business plan best practices

Follow the following best practices to create an effective plan for your business: 

• Be realistic: Use figures as close to current reality as possible to create budgets and estimate fixed and variable costs over time. This applies to timelines and schedules as well. Take note when the actual work being done begins to deviate from the planned work and resources . 
• Conduct quality research: Gather the figures, dates, and other data used in preparing your business plan from reputable, unbiased, authoritative sources. Cite these sources in the appendices of your plan.
• Review and iterate: One-page business plans are lean enough to be easily adjusted to reflect market fluctuations, economic changes, and any other variations. Iterating and updating your business plans regularly ensures your team members and stakeholders work using the latest findings and stay aligned on the same goals and timelines. 
• Focus on your business strengths: Showcase the best reasons for anyone to want to partner, support, or invest in your business. If you have impressive financial projections or a highly skilled management team, emphasize these sections in your plan. When you illustrate weaknesses, ensure you have a solution for them in your roadmap. 
• Have your documents on hand: Your readers may want to look deeper into some assumptions of your plan. Have answers to frequently asked questions in the appendices and hold on to copies of practical documents you can share. 

What to avoid when writing a business plan

Business plans are developed to communicate business goals and convince important stakeholders to believe in, and possibly invest in, your company. It is important to keep this in mind when creating a business plan. This way, you write to impress and convince the reader rather than simply presenting facts and figures about the business. Keep the following tips in mind and avoid commonly made mistakes in business planning:

• Make your business plan easy to scan. Separate sections, color-code where possible, and format your document to look inviting. Avoid long blocks of text and vary the way you present your data, e.g., using visual charts and bullet points.
• Avoid including irrelevant information in your plan. You have limited space on a single page, so make sure every sentence and section serves a purpose. Your business plan should be packed with data that shows your business is on track to increase profitability with your team and anticipated resources.
• Avoid ambiguity. Be clear about where you are in your business and what you need to get to the next stage so your readers or investors know exactly what’s required and how they can be a part of it. Put yourself in their shoes and consider what ’ s most important for them to know to make a favorable decision. For instance, instead of focusing on your product ’ s features and technology, you focus on your audience ’ s needs, e.g., the financial viability and operational feasibility of your plan.
• Maintain a realistic perspective: Avoid overly optimistic projections, especially in the financial projections, day-to-day capabilities of the team, and estimated output and revenue at key milestones. This helps to plan a realistic runway, show your resource management strategies, and lead your business toward success. Overconfident estimates can also damage your business’s credibility and discourage potential investors. Make sure to address your competitors’ activities to show how you plan to differentiate and position your company.

Use Wrike to create the best business plan for your growing business

Wrike helps entrepreneurs, business owners, intrapreneurs, and teams create business plans easily. You can organize your projects using folders and sub-folders and assign them to specific team members or groups with a shared timeline and completion date. Wrike takes business planning from passive to active in this way. 

You can begin writing your project objectives , invite involved team members and stakeholders, and request their input in creating the business plan where necessary. For example, the accounting manager fills out the details required in the financial plan section, while the operations manager fills out the operations guidelines. 

Even a solo team can gain many benefits from planning with Wrike. From templates to reduce rework to workload charts that show your task assignments, Wrike helps make planning and managing your business efficient. Get started with a free trial today to plan and run your business better.

Kelechi Udoagwu

Kelechi is a freelance writer and founder of Week of Saturdays, a platform for digital freelancers and remote workers living in Africa.

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Writing an internal business plan

Beyond external, there are many internal reasons to write a business plan to support business success.

Related posts

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• How to write a business plan
• Business banking: Best banks and accounts for UK businesses

While all of the reasons for writing a business plan are usually described as external, such as landing investors or recruiting quality talent – there are plenty of reasons to make an internal business plan as well. Generally, such a plan is there to act as a roadmap for the company’s success; something to remind everyone of the joint vision they are working towards.

Business plan writing tips & advice for the avid entrepreneur

Why is a business plan important and who is it for, can a business plan improve your organisational performance, why make an internal business plan.

Generally, many large businesses utilise internal business plans to make sure that the overall company vision is not compromised and easily communicated to everyone. That sort of strategic direction is not easy to achieve solely by meetings and memos, especially if sprawling corporate structures are involved. Plus, the information laid out in such ways is always prone to change; which is why business plans are there to provide a more long-term, future-oriented set of values and motives.

Apart from that, as you will see in detail below; internal business plans are less focused on the financial aspect of running a business, at least when everything is functioning correctly in that regard. Instead, such plans are more often used to establish a set of metrics that the staff can use to see how hard they are working. Additionally, they are there to enable better performance management by upper management; ensuring that everyone realised what they need to do for their job performance not to suffer, and precisely what is expected of them in the workplace.

Overall, internal business plans allow for a higher degree of control and coordination among different levels of management and employees. Not only is communication vastly improved by the elimination of superfluous dilemmas; but the staff is also better able to voice their pleasure or concerns about where the company is going in the commercial and cultural sense. Such a plan is as much suited for staff empowerment as it is for better management .

Mission statement

If vision is about imagining and looking forward; your mission is very much about the present, and doing. In other words – you want to focus your mission statement on the practical, everyday actions that company employees can undertake to itch closer to the future forecast of the vision statement. So, make sure to lay out what kind of behaviours and actions must be done for your business to get where you want it to go.

For customer-oriented companies, the mission statement can also contain a succinct description of what the most average target consumer is for the company; something all employees will keep in mind. And then, tackle the public image of your company; what it is currently, what you want it to become, and what everyone needs to do to attain that image. That will bring a unique definition to your business in the eyes of the public, and give everyone a sense of clarity about what kind of collective they’re in.

If you want to bring even more clarity to your business, the only thing you can do is provide more specific desired outcomes for the future of your business. With that in mind, make sure to use your internal business plan to lay out a clear set of objectives for everyone who has access to it. Once you manage that, you will have a perfect guiding light to keep everyone involved headed in the proper direction.

Unlike the broader mission statement, your objectives should be less long-term and much more detail-oriented and specific. For example, you may want to choose a realistic revenue target and a reasonable date for hitting it. Then, think of what all of your employees need to do to manage this. And give them a set of objectives all of them are capable of understanding and working towards. Naturally, these must be in perfect alignment with your mission and vision, for the business plan to give a meaningful structure to your company culture .

Strategies are more general activities that your management must employ to reach the desired objectives. You want to make sure these are spelt out clearly, but they can be pretty broad in terms of scope. Remember – these will act as a bridge between your objectives and the practical actions that must be taken.

If you’re looking for examples, think in terms of detailed quarterly or monthly reviews, and better measurements of certain metrics to reach specific objectives. For example, most of your employees may need to work on revamping the quality control process at all production stages.

Action plans

Action plans are a part of the internal business plan; usually there to tie in a particular activity from a strategy with your set of objectives. Let’s clear this up a bit. Actions could mean the creation of a new product or a more modern marketing plan. It could also be the process of developing or investing in new systems. That is something you want to plan out annually and with strict deadlines.

Sustainability

Before you round out your internal business plan, there’s one crucial question you need to ask yourself. Namely, is your company capable of doing everything that this plan sets out to do? After all, with so many different management plans that are a part of this overall plan, it may all seem a bit overly ambitious. And while it sometimes just seems a bit confusing until everyone gets more comfortable with it; in many situations, an internal business plan may be too lofty to be realistic.

There’s no shame in making amendments to your internal business plan after it’s been circulated the company. After all, some things may prove to be not feasible after a couple of months. Or, an idea which seemed great to you, in the beginning, is now looking pretty outdated.

On the other hand, you don’t want to throw things out of the plan whenever they prove difficult to do; that’s also a recipe for disaster. Finding that middle ground between following an intricate, but realistic plan, and changing one that’s just not viable – that is something only a truly great manager is capable of.

Related topics

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Free Internal Communication Plan Templates

By Becky Simon | May 26, 2022

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We’ve compiled a collection of the most helpful free internal communication plan templates. Use these templates as a starting point for planning and executing your organization's communication outreach. 

Included on this page, you’ll find an internal communication plan template , an internal action plan template , and a crisis communication plan template . Plus, get tips on how to use an internal communication plan template .

Internal Communication Plan Template

Download Internal Communication Plan Template Microsoft Word | Microsoft PowerPoint

Use this internal communications plan template to create a document designed to meet the needs of your stakeholders. Enter each stakeholder, their interests, preferred communication platforms (such as text, email, or newsletter), and contact frequency. You can also include feedback or measurable results in the Comments column. 

Check out these internal communications management templates for additional resources to manage shared information within your organization.

Corporate Communications Plan Template

Download Corporate Communications Plan Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word  

This step-by-step template includes all the necessary sections for creating a detailed and complete corporate communications plan. Start by writing your mission statement and a plan summary. Complete the template with your analysis, a list of stakeholders, and the target audience. Documenting these key details will help your internal stakeholders understand the big picture and overall goals of the corporate communication process. 

To get the most out of your communications plan template, check out this article that includes strategy templates and expert tips .

Sample Internal Communications Planning Template

Download Sample Internal Communications Planning Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word  

This simple internal communications planning template allows you to identify internal stakeholders and their interests, along with contact frequency and method. This sample template is ideal for managing shared information. Strategize with your marketing team before completing the plan to guarantee you enter accurate and complete details.

Internal Action Plan Template

Download Internal Action Plan Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft PowerPoint | Smartsheet  

Share information that your stakeholders need and meet their expectations using this internal action plan template. Begin by writing your company’s overall communication goal. Then assign each department a course of action for sharing specific details. Use the Action Description column to document the results you want to achieve. 

Check out this article about creating a project communication plan for additional resources and best practices.

Internal Communications Plan Template for Excel

Download Internal Communications Plan Template for Excel

This internal communication plan template is the perfect tool for gathering information to share within your organization. First, decide what details to share with your stakeholders. Then enter the project goals and target audiences, as well as how to share content such as press releases, blogs, webinars, and websites. Use this template to keep a comprehensive account of past communications and adapt your strategy when necessary.

Crisis Communication Plan Template

Download Crisis Communication Plan Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Smartsheet   

Use this crisis communication plan template to keep things running smoothly when the unexpected occurs. Identify your communication team, spokesperson, and stakeholders, and add messaging details. Establish notification and monitoring systems and create holding statements. Prepare for a crisis in advance by brainstorming potential scenarios and a plan of action. Update this information regularly so that it’s easily available in times of need.

Check out this collection of business-specific crisis communication templates if you need a plan that better fits your industry.

Organizational Internal Communications Template

Download Organizational Internal Communications Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Smartsheet   

Use this streamlined internal communication plan for any project. The template includes all the necessary columns for effective communication outreach. Enter the purpose of the communication, key messages, the frequency of shared information, and the target audience. You’ll also find columns for documenting comments or concerns.

Crisis Communication Strategy Template

Download Crisis Communication Strategy Template Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF  

This crisis communication template provides all necessary sections for building an effective strategy in the event of a crisis. Add information about your communication team, spokesperson, and stakeholders. Use the brainstorming section to plan for potential scenarios so that you’re prepared for any situation. Refresh this information regularly so that you and your team can easily access the most updated information.

What Is an Internal Communications Plan Template?

An i nternal communication plan template clearly outlines the goals and process of an

organization’s internal communication outreach. It’s a well-documented plan that includes information about stakeholders, along with their key interests, preferred communication, and contact frequency.  

If you are a project manager or communication specialist or you work on your organization's marketing team, it's imperative to have a communication plan in place. Doing so ensures you deliver valuable information in an efficient way and achieve an effective outcome.

An internal communication plan template typically includes the following sections: 

• Communication Channels: The methods you will use to deliver information such as email, text, social media, or meetings.
• Crisis: A dilemma within an organization that requires immediate action. 
• Frequency: How often you share specific information through your communication channels. 
• Goal/Objective: Document the expected outcome of your process. 
• Key Interest: This information is what’s most relevant to internal stakeholders — areas where they have a vested interest. 
• Stakeholders: These people are heavily vested in the organization’s mission. They can be employees, shareholders, managers, and board members. 
• Target Audience: The specific people you want to reach with your information.

Expertly Execute Your Communication Plan with Smartsheet

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The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

• Oak Engage named ClearBox Intranet Choice Winner 2024! Learn more

Internal Communication Plan: A Step By Step Guide with FREE Template

   Minute Read     Internal Comms

Table of Contents

An internal communication plan is essential to the operations of a business. To improve internal comms you need some sort of communication strategy. 

Most organisations have carefully constructed strategies for communicating with clients, stakeholders, new hires and employees. When you apply the same level of care to your employee communication plan, you're destined to see a definite uplift in employee engagement.

Hayley Lambert, Communications Manager at Havebury Housing, spoke about the benefits of a defined strategy of comms across the business in the State of IC Report: "Communication is more streamlined and integrated. There is a comms place at the beginning of every project plan. The strategy is continuously evolving in collaboration with the leadership team. “

In this blog we’ll cover:

• What is an internal communication plan?
• How do companies typically communicate?
• Why do companies need an internal communication plan?
• How to access your current internal communication plan
• How do you create an internal communication plan? (5 steps)
• Why an internal communication plan is beneficial
• Internal Communication Strategy Plan Template [FREE DOWNLOAD]

What Is an Internal Communication Plan?

An internal communications plan is a long, medium or short-term internal communications strategy on how, when and why the business communicates, with clear objectives and should align with those of the wider organisation. 

However, the second biggest obstacle for internal comms is a misalignment with across other departments!

We’re here to show you how to create a successful strategy and avoid the typical roadblocks that come with enhancing your plan. An effective internal communication plan includes transmitting important company information and includes key elements such as:

• Company objectives, mission and values
• Key organisational messages
• Communication channels
• Employee responsibilities and processes
• External marketing and communication plan

How Do Companies Typically Communicate?

Email is still the main form of communication for many organisations, or they will receive communications across multiple channels such as What's App groups, Teams, etc. 

Research from The McKinsey Global Institute reports that the average employee spends 13 hours a week reading and responding to email and 69% of employees are overwhelmed by the number of communication channels they need to use at work.

There are so many communication channels available now that when organisations set employees up with several of them it comes to the detriment of employees and their work.

The Impact of Poor Communication

The limitations of using email or several disparate channels. Here are just a few:

• Missed messages
• Multiple content sources
• Waste and expense 
• Struggle to reach deskless workers
• Don’t reach the right people at the right time 

Why Do Companies Need an Internal Communication Plan?

Having a strong internal communication plan has multiple benefits that help lead to the overall success of your business. These include:

• Increases Productivity - Employees are provided with the knowledge they need to effectively do their jobs and understand priorities. This leads to a more productive workforce. Employee productivity increases by 20 to 25% in organisations where employees are connected.
• Fewer Mistakes - Mistakes can be costly to your business, and in many cases they are avoidable. The lack of communication can often lead to employee errors.
• Boosts Employee Engagement - Internal communication is a proven way of boosting employee engagement levels. 85% of employees said they’re most motivated when management offers regular updates on company news. 
• Better understanding of corporate goals - Ensures that your employees are on the same page and understand your vision, mission, and other corporate purposes.
• Improves working relationships - Communicating between different departments and teams leads to better relationships between employees. 

How to Access Your Current Internal Communication Plan

If you’re reading this, you’re likely to already have an internal communication plan in place, so it’s always best to start accessing your current strategy and doing some internal research. 

For those accessing your current plan, here are things you need to address when revamping your internal communication strategy:

Where You Currently Are

• How has your current strategy performed?
• What are your biggest strengths and weaknesses in your strategy?
• Who is currently involved in your plan and who could you add in to improve it?

Where You’ll Eventually Be

• Where would your strategy be if you changed your plan?
• Is it going to address your entire team?

How You Plan to Get There

• What is it going to take to start achieving your objectives?
• What type of content will resonate the most with your employees?

How Long It Should Take

• How many resources are needed to reach your company objectives?
• What's the difference between how long it will take vs a realistic timeline for your team?

Who’s Involved?

• Is your current internal comms team too small?
• Are there any more people you can add who will improve your strategy?

Planning to answer all of these questions is such an important part of re-evaluating our strategy. You want to deliver the right message to your employees, so you should spend some time thinking about these issues.

How Do You Create an Internal Communication Plan? (5 Steps)

Below are 5 easy steps to creating a successful internal communication plan that will boost your employee engagement and communication.

Step 1: What Do You Want to Achieve?

You should start by analysing your current communication goals so that you can build a better internal communication plan and define the right objectives for your company.

One of the most effective and easy ways to do this is by using the SMART approach:

Another important factor to consider is whether your employees are integrating with your company's goals. You need to find out if they understand them and communicate what their part is in achieving them.

To determine the goals you should ask a series of questions:

• Is productivity as high as it could be?
• Do employees understand the company culture?
• Is employee retention high or low?
• Do our staff have a great experience when they come to work?
• Do employees use the company communication intranet platforms often?

Once the goals are established and their success (or failure) has been determined it’s time to plan how to achieve the goals, in conjunction with the support of all members of your organisation.

Step 2: Who Do You Want to Reach?

It’s particularly important when producing an internal communication action plan to understand who the target audience is. 

Your final plan should be available to everyone in the company. This will include the key stakeholders, management, administration and frontline workers. Each of these departments should be considered when developing your internal communications plan.

Understanding your audiences can ensure that you distribute relevant content to those who need to see it - reducing information overload and irrelevant information being sent to the rest of the organisation.

Step 3: What Tools Will You Use?

One of the most common tools for internal communication is an intranet. Your company intranet can be tailored to your organisation, perfect for communicating information to each of your employees. 

Below are a lost of common internal communication examples for your strategy to include, all of which can be communicated on an intranet:

• Emergency announcements
• Legislative changes
• Health & Safety information
• HR information
• Training Opportunities
• Internal events
• New Projects
• Celebrating successes

Step 4: How Will It Be Measured?

When you have your internal communication plan in place and in motion, it’s time to measure the results. It’s essential to know how effective your internal communications have been by gathering quantitative and qualitative data. 

Analytics tools will help you to gather quantitative information - how many people have viewed an intranet page for example. Other internal communication channels such as email won't be able to give you this data.

There are other ways to measure the effectiveness of internal communication as well. For example:

• Has productivity increased?
• Are profits up?
• Are there fewer mistakes being made?
• Has workplace health and safety improved?
• Has employee retention improved?
• Have levels of absenteeism lowered?
• Have your employee engagement levels improved?
• Are your customers more or less satisfied?
• Were you successful in a specific goal such as employee uptake of a training course or participation in an event?

Having these measurements requires action. If your strategy is not effective, you need to evaluate where it went wrong and what you can do to improve internal communication .

Step 5: Implementation and Review

You should always look at the bigger picture when implementing your internal communication plan. Identify which strategy serves your goals and objectives. The best way to do this is by testing, testing and more testing. When you have the specific data from measuring your plan, you can narrow down your objectives to the ones that will be most effective for your company. Review your strategy plan on a regular basis. High performing companies regularly meet to review and update their plans. It’s a great way to evaluate which part of your internal communications plan is working and what needs some improvement.

Internal Communication Plan: Best Practices

One-way communication is certainly a thing of the past. Employees who feel as though they’re being listened to are more likely to stay at their company and contribute to the business’ success.

However, 39% of employees believe that people in their own organisation don't collaborate enough. 

Below are our best practices that will help you continually improve your strategy and make sure you’re using your internal communication channels effectively.

Strengthen Company Culture

Whether you need to design a communication strategy that shares your content with remote and mobile workers, or you simply need to break down the walls between generations. The future of communication will be all about overcoming engagement issues through shared goals. As a company, you should be communicating your company culture and goals regularly to your employees. 

Recommended Reading 📖: Company Culture: Ultimate Guide

Keep It Simple

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to an internal communication strategy. Naturally, some of your employees will prefer to use email and some will prefer a more social approach.

The key is to be clear about which tools are meant to accomplish which tasks. It's then key to identify one centralised location for employees to go to for information that can then point them to the next relevant place.

Empower Your Employees

Your goal is to empower your employees to become brand advocates. Already, 98% of your employees are using a social media site in their free time, and 50% of that group already use these platforms to connect with your brand. 

By transforming your employees into content marketers, you introduce a peer-to-peer dynamic into your internal communications strategy. This improves both your employer's brand and increases your chances of better leads, more qualified hires and stronger business results.

With a strong employee advocacy solution, businesses can strengthen company culture and engage their most valuable employees, while also amplifying their share of market voice. After all:

• Brand messages are re-shared 24 times as often when they’re delivered by employees instead of the brand.
• The leads that come from employee advocacy convert 7 times more than any other lead.
• Employee generated, and shared content gets 8 times more engagement than anything produced by brand channels.
• Customers that are referred by employee advocates have a 37% higher retention rate.

Why an Internal Communication Plan is Beneficial 

Great internal communications planning will make sure your employees are engaged in their workplace. At its core, communication is an instrument of strategy because it helps you share your mission, vision and values with employees.

It will help you achieve specific goals. It creates a sense of community and trust with employees, creating a line of sight for them and engaging them to make the business successful.

5 Benefits of Having a Strong Internal Communication Strategy

• Employees understand the big picture and how they fit in
• Employees are more productive
• Better leaders are created
• Produces a culture of communication
• Employee retention will increase

What Is Internal Communication Planning?

An effective internal communication plan includes important company information and includes key elements such as:

• Company objectives

How Do You Create an Internal Communication Plan?

You should follow the 5 main steps:

• What do you want to achieve?
• Who do you want to reach?
• What tools will you use?
• How will it be measured?
• Implementation and review

Why Do Companies Need Internal Communication Plans?

For a company to achieve successful growth, it needs to communicate with its employees regularly. Communications should be engaging and make employees feel part of the bigger picture.

Oak Engage 

We work with some of the world's biggest brands to help elevate their internal communication strategies and drive engagement. Oak Engage has proven to be an incredibly effective internal communications tool for businesses everywhere. With a user-friendly interface and centralised platform, internal comms professionals can easily communicate with and engage employees from any location. 

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Internal Communications Plan: 7-Step Strategy and Template

We hear all the time that internal communication functions are stretched thin.

“There are too many priorities. Everything’s important. We have so many messages to get out to employees. So many vehicles but we’re not sure which work and which don’t. We don’t have the time to get it all done or enough people or enough budget…”

Sound familiar?

Having a strategic internal communications plan in place for your function is a critical step to getting your time organized, prioritizing, planning, resourcing, and operating at its optimum.

This may sound basic, but all too often we find that internal communications functions don’t have clear plans in place.

And having a clear plan in place is critical to:

• Focus internal communications where the business needs them the most
• Empower internal communication leaders and teams to be more proactive consultants to the business with a focus on delivering value and impact
• Get internal communications teams out of the reactive fire-fighting that causes strain and fatigue
• Advocate for employees and their information needs  
• Calibrate a range of business and communication messages and needs so they are connected, relevant, and digestible for your audiences
• Leverage existing and new channels to reach employees where they are
• Measure and demonstrate progress against business and organizational outcomes that matter

What is a Strategic Internal Communications Plan?

A strategic internal communication plan is a tool for leaders to help drive employee behaviors and actions that create desired business outcomes. It should directly support an organization’s key business outcomes. An internal communication plan should be updated every year to support the business strategy, rather than on an ad hoc basis or as an afterthought. When a plan is truly strategic, it is also given the same priority and resources as an external plan that works effectively together to achieve business outcomes for an organization.

Internal Communication Planning Best Practices

A strong internal communication plan is never just a list of tactics. Instead, the tactics should be part of the overall plan and reflect what you’re going to do to achieve your measurable business objectives.

There are many ways to achieve a smart internal communications strategy. Our best advice is to pick a format that works for you and always have a plan in place.

Adjustments are fine and expected, but the fundamental goals and vision for communication need to be woven into the plan and used for guidance to make smart decisions around priorities and areas of focus.

As you dive into your internal communications planning, consider these key components of any strong internal communications strategy:

• A clear explanation of the current business environment and any challenges your business faces
• What you want to accomplish (your business goals and communication goals)
• Who you need to talk with (your audience)
• What you want to say (your core messages)
• How you will communicate (your internal communication strategies, tactics, and channels )
• When you will communicate (your calendar), and
• How you will measure your progress

What a Smart Internal Communication Strategy Achieves

When done well, strategic communication plans can help you achieve strong results for your business. Based on the scores of organizations we've helped to develop and implement strategic plans, we’ve seen significant results:

• Turn a strategy into action and embed new behaviors into an organization, such as reducing safety incidents and engaging employees in diversity and inclusion initiatives
• Help employees with a change
• Address important industry issues
• Inform employees on sensitive topics
• Align and activate organizations around a new strategy
• Improving culture to elevate the employee experience and performance goals

Any time you have a lot to say and do, think about having a communication plan to orchestrate how best to engage teams and drive the narrative with your audiences and outcomes in mind.

How to Create an Internal Communication Plan in 7 Steps

Your communications plan doesn’t need to be long – a few pages is fine or even a one-pager works. Use these seven steps as a framework when you develop your plan.

Step 1: Summarize the Situation

Provide a situation overview and what’s prompting the need for communications. Map the current situation, consider business needs, and talk to key stakeholders to help with this process.

For example, is there a shift in organizational priorities because of the marketplace or industry? Low employee engagement scores? New products or services? Are you starting a new employee initiative and you need to keep them informed and engaged in the process?

This section includes research and analysis, and addresses the variables at play and what’s currently being done to address the issue.

This is also the section that describes the business and communication context and why a communication plan is necessary.

Step 2: Determine Your Desired Outcome

We spend a good amount of time talking with the leaders we work with about “desired outcomes” – the first step in planning any kind of communication. When we ask, “What’s the outcome you seek?” we often hear people say, “We want to produce an email message, or we’re thinking about a newsletter or video.” This isn’t what we mean by outcomes because those are just tactics. They alone cannot solve the business challenge outlined in Step 1 .

To get to the real outcome, instead start by answering this question: What do you want to achieve for the business? Once you answer that, you can decide what communication strategies and tactics are best suited to achieve that business outcome.

Here’s the two-step process we suggest to identify your critical outcomes:

• Business and Organizational Outcomes (the business need) – When you define the business need, don’t start with what you need to do, but why you need to do it. Indicate – as best you can – a direct connection between the organization’s objectives or bottom line. Be sure to list specific and measurable desired organizational outcomes in this section. Think: What will be different in the business when we’ve achieved our plans?  
• Communication Outcomes / Objectives – Think about the business outcome you want to achieve through communication and what role communications can play to help achieve the business need. For example, is it to increase engagement , so you can benefit from things that come from higher engagement – like less absenteeism or better safety outcomes or higher quality performance? Is it to increase order fill or to create a behavior change among employees?

Use SMART Objectives

• S pecific – What are we going to do for whom?
• M easurable – Is it quantifiable and can we measure it?
• A ttainable / A chievable – Can we get it done within the time frame and with the resources we have?
• R elevant – Will this objective have an effect on the desired goal or strategy?
• T ime-bound – When will this be accomplished?

Follow this SMART Template to Guide You

To develop SMART objectives, use the SMART Objectives Template and two-page guide by clicking the image below. It covers what SMART objectives are, provides an example, and concludes with the template you see here:

You don’t need to limit yourself to one desired outcome but you should try to cap it at three.

Note: All too often communication plans only focus on communication goals. Remember to take your plan to the next level by linking the communication goals to specific business or organizational goals.

Step 3: Define Your Audience

To help you think through how best to communicate with different groups of employees, it’s important to define who they are. Who are the most relevant groups you need to influence and drive to action?

List different audience groups (sometimes referred to as job families) and their mindsets (where they’re coming from on the topic that you’re communicating), and consider what you want them to know, feel, and do as a result of your communication with them. That will help you focus, find the common ground for your messages, as well as adapt your messages for different audience segments based on their unique information needs.

Audience job families or segments may be a specific business unit, senior executives, geographies, functional roles (such as frontline employees, sales teams, and customer-facing teams), shareholders, employee affiliate groups, or people leaders. Job families also vary by industry – so in healthcare, there are segments such as physicians, nurses, volunteers, environmental services, and the like. Other organizations may have call center or customer service employees or plant/site employees.

Consider using a template like this to outline relevant audience segments and what you want them each to know, feel, and do as a result of your communications. It’s a great way to stay focused on the key audiences and outcomes you want to achieve and to identify what your key messages should be for each.

Note: Don’t confuse the audience(s) with stakeholders. Stakeholders are the people and organizations that have an influence on the desired outcome. Audiences are the receivers of messages.

Step 4: Develop Your Messages

Based on your audiences, next outline the most important messages (or points) you need to communicate to your audiences. Keep it to about three messages (that’s usually all that people can retain!). Then consider supporting points to reinforce those key messages. These are the facts, data, anecdotes, and stories that support and bring your points to life.

5 Ws and an H

Want to ensure you don’t forget a critical detail in your messaging? Think 5 Ws and an H to cover all the key points on your audiences’ minds and the all-important context, so you can make it relevant for them.

• Why – Why is it the right decision? Why now? Why is it important?
• What – What’s the decision? What does it mean for us? What should I know? What’s in it for me?
• Where – Where is this decision coming from? Where/what locations will it affect? Where can I get more information?
• When – When is this happening?
• How – How was the decision made? How will it be implemented? How will communications flow internally and externally? How does it impact me?
• Who – Who made the decision? Who’s in charge? Who does it impact?

In communicating your message, the order is important. Adult learners want to know the “why” first and then the “what.” The rest can follow logically.

Here are some additional tips to make your messages stick:

• Keep them simple: People remember things based on simple ideas
• Be unexpected: When you take people by surprise they tend to remember it later – such as a compelling stat or story framed in a stand-out way
• Communicate clearly: Human actions and sensory information, images, and proverbs help people understand an idea
• Be credible: Use facts, figures, and examples, and believable sources
• Inspire and create an emotional connection: People remember things that tap into their emotions – whether it’s something funny that makes them laugh or causes them to reflect
• Tell stories: Narrative can influence feelings and sometimes behavior

No matter how you develop your messages, use a template to keep yourself organized, consistent, and concise. For example, we use our award-winning messagemap methodology to get all the most important messages organized and prioritized on one page. The messagemap is used to develop all the communication tactics (in Step 5) so that messages are consistent and strategic.

Step 5: Decide What Your Strategy Is and What Channels and Tactics You’ll Use

How you deliver your messages is as important as what you say. During this step, you can identify your internal communications strategies – in other words, how you’ll approach communicating your key messages with your audiences. This is the step where you outline specifically which channels and tactics are most effective at reaching each audience, so they understand and connect with the key messages.

Very often communicators are asked to jump right into producing materials and delivering tactics first. This shortcuts the strategic steps to the planning process and risks the tactics not being as effective – so you won’t save any time in the long run. You’ll likely just have more cleanup to do later.

Note: It helps to strategize potential tactics and channels as a communications team. Organize a working session with plenty of post-it notes, flip charts, and pens/markers to generate ideas and stick them on the wall. Vote on the top 6-8 tactics for each objective, repeat, and consolidate. Hold on to this and use it for communication planning during the year for other programs and priorities, too.

The channels you choose will depend on what you want to achieve from your communications and the audience you need to reach. The right channels for raising awareness would probably be the wrong ones for gaining ownership and commitment. Similarly, the needs of desk-based employees will be very different to sales teams or factory workers who aren’t on computers during the day.

A well-coordinated use of multiple voices and channels will be needed for maximum impact. 

It’s also important to draw on any employee communication data and insights that already exist in your organization. Look to engagement and communication effectiveness surveys, channel audits and feedback, and employee listening sessions to help you make data-driven decision making around which channels and tactics to use.

Keep in mind these communication best practices:

• Face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) communication is best for making a personal connection and overcoming resistance to change. If you’ve got a sensitive or complex message, this is usually your best bet.
• Meetings are best for communicating more complicated ideas or when you want input from team members.
• Paper (such as handouts at a meeting or a flier on a bulletin board) is best when details are important, or dates need to be referenced.
• Electronic (such as email or an intranet page) works well for those who have frequent access to computers; consider also visual display boards for break rooms, elevators, lobbies, and central meeting locations.
• Video is best to use when you want to appeal to visual and audio senses and to tell a story. More and more companies are using short, grassroots-type videos to get messages across. Consider captions for multiple languages and/or open work environments where noise is a concern.
• Internal social media can help to build a culture of collaboration and rapport among dispersed team members.
• Think about frequency. For example, huddles with your team could happen daily, while town hall meetings might be best quarterly.

Actionable Communication Strategies Make Your Tactics More Impactful

The tactics are how you plan to make the internal communication strategies happen. Make each tactic relate back to at least one strategy (if not multiple). Include key deliverables and how you will monitor execution.

Then plot key activities into a calendar, so you can see how the communications will unfold throughout the year.

In this section, also add in any considerations that might negatively or positively impact the success of the implementation to inform your tactics and timing. For example, employees have noted in engagement surveys that they prefer small-group meetings to receive information from their managers.

Step 6: Populate Your Communications Calendar

It’s helpful to have a full view of the communications channels and tactics you are using to implement your plan (and timing to go along with it). This becomes your project tracker, so you can look at the year ahead and note which communications will be happening and when. That will help ensure you have a consistent cadence of communications that is timed around – and in support of – key business and organizational milestones. The key is enough communications to keep what’s important on people’s radars, but not too much that it becomes noise and people tune out.

Use a template like this to map your action plan (adding as many rows as you need):

Step 7: Measure Your Progress

List how you will measure success. This should connect directly back to your outcomes or SMART Objectives (see Step 2). It’s how you’ll know if your internal communication strategies are working or not and informs future planning.

For example, will it be through improved survey scores? Feedback forms from specific communications events? Increased share value or product sales? Increases in employee sign-ups? Better retention rates?

You can use a combination of measurement techniques, but the main thing is to make sure you measure .

Remember – what gets measured, gets done.

Bonus: 8 Internal Communication Best Practices for Remote Employees

One of the most important things we’ve learned from so many people working remotely is the importance of communicating predictably. As you develop your communication plan, keep these tips in mind for better communication, particularly when a good portion of your workforce is remote:

• Be planful and strategic about keeping in touch with your team, especially during times of change when they may be worried and/or need more connection and encouragement.
• Set regular meeting times and encourage dialogue during meetings. Be sure team members understand that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind.
• Explain the best ways that employees can reach you if they need to. This helps them know their input and questions are welcome and gives them a sense of when to expect feedback.
• Respond quickly. An afternoon can seem like an eternity to someone who is waiting for your input. Even a quick email or text is helpful to acknowledge receipt of a message and say when you can respond.
• Share what you know, what you don’t know, and what you’re figuring out. Especially during times of change , employees need to hear from you more often, even when you don’t have everything figured out. Resist the temptation to wait for more answers, more clarification, and more details. Instead, recognize that you probably know a lot more than you think.
• Appreciate frequently. The little things mean a lot to employees who have few interactions with their manager or colleagues. Show appreciation for good work and recognize employees who deliver what you need. “Thank you” and “I appreciate you” go a long way (and don’t cost a thing).
• Schedule more personal touchpoints. Especially when there are fewer in-person touchpoints, you need to plan for more regular personal communication with employees.
• Make sure supervisors know their role to lead through communication and set them up for success. Reinforce the role of the supervisor and their communication expectations. Set them up for success with training and tools , so they have the right communication cadence in place and can deliver messages with confidence and impact.

Final Thoughts

An internal communications plan is necessary for many reasons and the necessity has only grown with the changing workplace dynamics and employee demands. Some of the benefits include:

• Provides a clear roadmap for consistently communicating with employees, so they feel informed about goals for your organization, or a specific initiative, so they can take action and help achieve those goals;
• Defines what internal communications strategies are important to focus on, how and when they’ll be implemented, and how they’ll be measured to demonstrate value and impact to the business;
• Keeps the internal communications team focused and guides their efforts, so they’re spending their time on the right things that are most important to the business in a most efficient and effective way; 
• Enables important conversations and engagement with business leaders and partners about internal communication strategies that can best deliver on key business needs and opportunities; and
• Helps communications team plan and deliver value. Communication teams are stretched thin and planning helps you focus team efforts on what the business needs (and values) most and secure the time, talent, and resources needed to get the job done.

Think of a great internal communications plan as your roadmap for how to take your communications forward, so you can move employees to action, drive value for your organization, and demonstrate strategic impact.

Are you ready to create your own Communication Plan? Download this free Communication Plan Template, which aligns with the content in this post, to guide you.

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Other posts you might be interested in, how to measure the impact of internal communication, measuring internal communications: metrics, kpis and examples, drive business results with communication planning, subscribe to the leadercommunicator blog.

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