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Writing a business plan

Discussion in 'Whatnots' started by Silvery, Dec 15, 2009.

  1. Silvery

    Silvery I won't pretend to be your friend coz I'm just not ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran

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    HELP!

    Me, Rob and a friend of ours are about to buy a garage and I've been elected to write the business plan! I really need to make it a good one as we're going to have to convince the bank to lend us a lot of money.

    I have no idea where to start as the business plans I've written in the past have never been presented to a lender or anything. Anyone have any clues where to start?
     
  2. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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  3. Silvery

    Silvery I won't pretend to be your friend coz I'm just not ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran

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    This is why I love you guys!
     
  4. Morgoth

    Morgoth La lune ne garde aucune rancune Veteran

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    There are a couple of things that always helped me when writing papers:

    1. Try to be clear as possible.
    You must describe the right amount of information. Too much and the reader might feel insulted, too little and the reader will ask questions or make wrong assumptions, which you'll have to work with when you will be discussing the document with the banker.
    If you want to make sure that the reader will understand your document, you must place yourself into the position of the reader and read your own work with a critical eye. Do this a few hours after writing, because you need to have forgotten about all the details and ideas you had in your mind while writing. You don't want to remember these when your are reading, because those little ideas and thoughts form the mental make-up from which you wrote the document. The reader won't have have this make-up and so he won't be able to understand what you are trying to say. You can explain the facts and assumptions that he needs to build the make-up, but do that before he is going to need it.

    2. Try to make the reading as painless as possible. If it becomes to hard to read, people will skip sections or refuse to read it at all. Watch spelling and grammar.
    This is related to the previous point: when people don't understand what you're saying, they will skip and make wrong assumptions.
    The banker is not going to make any large effort to read your document because they are not really forced to do so, they have other applications to read and another refusal is not that much of an issue to them. You are the one who needs to do the effort to convince them. A document that requires very little effort to read helps a lot!

    3 - Formatting. Add images, but make those look professional. Watch line-breaks. Use nice fonts (Arial and Times New Roman are favourites.)
     
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