A business plan is as important as the business itself. Startups that invest in building a robust business plan through hired services are not only strengthening their current situation but also securing the growth and sustainability of their business and future.

How to Select Business Plan Writing Services

Introduction

Why do many startups fail to thrive? Despite having the right product or service, many companies fail badly. For any dream or effort to become successful, there should be perfect planning to implement it in the right way. This is very much true when it comes to business because to stabilize and run a business successfully is not a cakewalk. It needs intense market research, customer preferences analysis, knowledge of techniques to raise funds, and team building & management. Business plan preparation services professionally do this to enable entrepreneurs to launch and run businesses successfully.

Advantages of a Business plan for startups

Many startups get into business without much exploration or planning. They think that spending a lot of time on planning will delay commercialization and slow down growth. Such companies go ahead with the first plan they see. This idea may work sometimes, but many times startups tend to lose to their competitors who have well-explored planning.

James Bilefield, in an interview with Mckinsey, asserted that the founders and employees of a startup have to be extremely fast, hardworking, and agile to satisfy their first customers, attract the right talent and ensure a steady flow of funds. The above-mentioned goals can be achieved only when there is a clear-cut business plan. It gives momentum to the ambitious ideas and competitive spirit of the founder. He also states the need to understand customer requirements and meet market demands. An entrepreneur should be able to predict product-market fit and do scaling accordingly, to avoid losses. A Business plan with accurate market forecasting will be of great help to achieve this end.

As per research in the Harvard business review by Greene and Hopp, a business plan is very important for any startup. It acts as a map that shows the direction of a company. They can organize, plan and move in the right direction. A business plan gives clarity on three aspects of a startup: where do we stand now? Where are we supposed to go? How do we get there?

For a company to grow it should identify and seize the right opportunity. A business plan helps them do this perfectly. Not just that, it helps a startup figure out the resources needed and may be the reason for attracting the much-needed investment by banks and other investors like venture capitalists. This instills confidence in investors that the entrepreneur gives importance to business and is serious about it. Also, it makes employees and other stakeholders committed to the work.

Greene and Hopp argue that entrepreneurs who had clear-cut planning are 16% more likely to succeed than those entrepreneurs who did not have formal planning. Ultimately, a business plan motivates or drives an entrepreneur to convert his/her dreams into tangible outcomes in the form of success.

In an article on Forbes, Justin Goodbread reinforces the necessity of a business plan. When the company requires capital, a business plan is essential to get money from banks or other investors. It assures them about the profitability of the business and their growth along with the company.

A business plan helps founders identify the opportunities and impending challenges to business. Also, it aids in understanding the company’s strengths and weak points. This goes a long way in ensuring the desired profitability for a startup.

Business Planning-related Challenges

Knowing right what to do

This is one of the major challenges for any startup. One may have the aspiration to make it big, but don’t know how and when to start. The internet has the answers to all your questions, but it can never substitute for a mentor.

As given in a Forbes study, entrepreneurs who have mentors are more successful and their businesses are more profitable. A mentor imparts his experiences to the founder. This helps the founder take the right decisions regarding investments, employee handling, hiring the right talent, and building business.

Identifying the right idea

An entrepreneurial venture is started based on an idea, which may or may not work out. Founders may be driven by ideas based on some research, experiences, and passion. These may prove to be wrong many times and get changed by customer feedback, turnover, and competition over time. 

An entrepreneur may sometimes quit the business or alter their ideas to suit customer demands. It is indeed painful to change the idea from the beginning, which took months and years of preparation. This entire process of redefining will help the founders figure out the right idea.

Raising Capital

After finding the right timing and right idea to launch the startup, raising capital for the business poses a big challenge. Not all projects can be done by the founder alone. The workforce has to be hired and paid in time. Fundraising should be done at the same time while running the business. Even though it is exhausting to do two jobs simultaneously, it has to be done. Putting the business on pause until fundraising is done is not advisable. It may affect the company’s progress and profitability badly.

Whom to Hire

Forbes identifies three aspects to be concentrated on while having a team: who should be hired? Who should be hired first? How should the team be managed and evaluated? When the founder does not have clarity about the team, it may cost dearly. Especially when someone starts a business in an unfamiliar area, the losses will be huge due to investments in the wrong persons and mismanagement of the team.

Performance Evaluation

Evaluation of the team is yet another challenge. The entrepreneurs have to decide whether to use long-term or short-term evaluation cycles. Not just that, it is essential that teamwork contributes to the company’s profitability and aligns with organizational goals.

How to attract buyers

The biggest challenge for any startup is how to attract buyers. Founders have to decide on the mode of marketing, whether it would be inbound or outbound. To do this precisely, they should know their customer’s needs and demands, how their competitors reach the customers, how the customers perceive the new product or service, and whether to invest in just one or more ways of marketing. When these points are not addressed properly, the company may have to face huge losses.

What is a business plan

A business plan defines the core objectives of a company and how the goals are achieved. It creates a roadmap for the effective functioning of every department of a company. A business plan serves three purposes

1. To evolve a strong strategy to ensure growth
2. Identify the company’s financial needs for growth
3. To attract investment

According to an article on Forbes by Ritternberg and Main, a business plan communicates the vision of a company. It has capital requirements, long-term goals, short-term goals, and everything that is needed to kick-start a company. 

A business plan is the outcome of thinking, researching, and strategizing to arrive at conclusions to effectively utilize the opportunities. In other words, it is a collaboration of facts, assumptions, and future projections. Forbes research gives the difference between business plan and business planning. They cite the example of a car. A plan is like a parked car whereas planning is like driving a car.

Planning helps entrepreneurs to evaluate the actual performance of the company against the projections made in the plan. It helps to assure whether the plan is written well if everything is going as per plan or if more research is needed. Also, it highlights the external challenges affecting the business.

Why is hiring business plan writing service better? 

To write a strong business plan, just writing skills are insufficient. A business plan writer has to be well versed in many domains. He/she is expected to have in-depth knowledge in various fields like management consulting, research, and business analysis. 

An entrepreneur cannot be an expert in every domain, but a business can be run successfully only when there is a thorough knowledge of every domain of business and perfect planning. This is where a hired business plan preparation service comes to help. Plan writers do market and feasibility studies, business forecasting & budgeting, and human resource planning professionally.

Capital is the lifeline of any successful business. The main importance of a business plan lies in its ability to attract investments. Hired business plan writing services do this deftly and ensure adequate capital inflow. Not just ensuring money flow, but a well-defined business plan helps build a network with current and future business partners.

Another important reason for a successful business is being futuristic. This helps the founders make precise budgeting, human resource planning, etc..for the upcoming years. Hired business plan makers support the founders with their accurate assumptions and business forecasting.

Human resources are as important as capital. A company can be successful only if it rightly manages its workforce. These business plan specialists make it a point to draft an effective plan to lead the team on the path to success.

Some entrepreneurs get into business without much research and just give it a try. Their ideas and products may go down well with the customers, but it is also possible that they may fail miserably. When founders seek the assistance of a business plan writer the chances of failure are greatly reduced. They do a feasibility study and market demand assessment before writing the business plan. This goes a long way in confirming if the right idea or product is chosen. 

Some startups scale without gaining the right product-market fit. This will lead to huge losses and drive the player out of the market. On the other hand, the company might have achieved product-market fit but finds it difficult to meet the customer demand. At this juncture, the business plan provides appropriate findings of market demand and possible ways to tackle it and ensure profitability. 

When there is no guidance and the founder looks for clarity in certain aspects of business, a hired business plan preparation service is no doubt the best choice. These planners know various business reports and insights. Based on them they make reasonable assumptions and create a precise business plan that acts as a road map at difficult times.

How to hire the right business plan writing services

If an entrepreneur decides to hire a service, it is highly important to choose the proper organization. Certain features make a service provider outstanding.

• In the first place, it is important to know the company’s track record. How old is the company? How many projects has it worked on? What is the amount of funding it has raised so far? These details are of great importance.
• Employees are the backbone of a company. It is essential to know the efficiency of the business plan makers of the service provider. They should have vast knowledge in different domains of business and have reasonable experience in writing business plans.
• Not just facts and numbers, but the presentation also does the magic. The service provider should be an expert in designing and graphics as well. The visual appearance of the plan should render superior impact. Adding to it, the design should be such that the potential investor gets to know all vital information in a short time.
• It is crucial to confirm that the business plan maker is capable of creating a powerful pitch deck. Investors always may not have time to read the elaborate business. So an attractive pitch deck is necessary to create interest in the company and motivation to invest.
• Each business and its requirements are different. So customized business plans have to be developed. Business plan makers should involve the founder and, if necessary, the employees in the plan-making process. Their ideas and requirements should be incorporated into the business plan. If the planner wants to make changes in the plan, it should be communicated to the client.
• Flexibility is a salient feature to be noted in a service provider. It is likely on the part of the entrepreneur to add some ideas or make alterations in the course of business plan making. The service should be flexible to accept changes at different stages of development and at the same time maintain the pace of progress.
• On the whole, the business plan specialist should be able to work hand in hand with the client at every stage, have a friendly style of work, and set the company on success projectile. 

Prominent business plan writing services

Sixpl business plan writing services

it is one of the major organizations in the market. They offer a range of business plan writing services to acquire funding, entrepreneurial visa, plan to open a bank account and guide the team.

They have well-trained and experienced business plan writers who do accurate forecasting. The business plan makers do this by way of business analysis and forecasting, extensive research, budgeting, feasibility study, market suitability study, human resource planning, perfect assumptions, concrete pitch deck, one-page summary, plan to design, and an attractive executive summary.

Sixpl is a business plan specialist with 10 years of experience. They have extended business plan preparation service to about 16 industries and have delivered 135 entrepreneurial visas and 465 business plans. Sixpl has successfully raised funds to the tune of $2.5b in 10 years of service.

Their business plan preparation service is unique. 

• Initially, they give the new client a questionnaire to know their business’s basic ideas and requirements. Then the business plan makers do a quick research and share their understandings and views with the client.
• Secondly, a table of contents, enclosing various ideas that are to be included in the business plan, is developed. It gives a clear picture to the client as to what can be expected from the plan. Adding to it, it helps the service providers in delegating each piece of work to a specific business plan specialist.
• Based on the table of contents a first draft will be developed. Financial experts work extensively and develop balance sheets, profit and loss details, etc. Thus raw data and calculations are prepared at this stage and presented for client reference.
• In the fourth stage, a revised business plan is prepared in consultation with the client. Their business plan writers are flexible enough to incorporate changes in the plan even at this stage.
• Finally, a complete business plan is derived at this point. An edible form of the plan, which can be edited by the client, will be handed over.      

           Thus their plan is simple and effective. At sixpl transparency is maintained at every stage. Customers can track the progress made in planning and can also give their suggestions to get the project right. Thus there is a high first draft high acceptance rate.

Liveplan

They have been in business plan writing services for more than 20 years. To their credit, their business plan preparation services are being taught as a subject in some universities in the US. 

Liveplan has an experienced team of business plan writers. They had written hundreds of successful business plans. So whatever industry an entrepreneur belongs to, there will be a writer to support the person.

How do they work? 

• In the first place, they do a lot of research based on the industry of the startup and study the needs of the customer. Their business plan makers collect data and further discover information based on additional requirements of the customer.
• Secondly, the plan is written based on the data collected in the previous stage. The business plan specialists convert the raw data into a viable business plan.
• In the third stage, financial planning is done. Cash flow assessment, balance sheet formulation, etc..are carried out with due diligence. It helps the company to plan its current and future monetary needs.
• Finally, the business plan is reviewed to give an impressive outlook. Business plan specialists format the events in sequential order. The plan will be designed in such a manner that it attracts investments.

Upwork

It is one of the major business plan writing services in the market with many years of experience. Talented business plan writers are in abundance at upwork. How do they work?

• First, the client has to give as much information as possible regarding their business and their expectations of a business plan.
• They respond to the customer within 24 hours. Valid proposals will be sent to them. The customer can choose the candidates whom they think are the best and hire them to write the business plan.
• The entrepreneurs can track the project at any point in time through the upwork application. There are provisions to chat and video calls, sharing of files, and other necessary data to get the work done.
• Payment is also made simple through the application. The client is supposed to pay only for the work they authorize.

Conclusion

As discussed earlier, it is tough to establish and run a business successfully. Lots of challenges have to be faced by entrepreneurs. Many businesses fall apart half way through. This is when a business plan supports a determined entrepreneur with promising business ideas, to make accurate decisions at the right time and succeed and sustain. To fulfill this, an exceptional business plan writing service should be chosen. This can be done by comparing the characteristics of the service provider with the criteria stated above. Some founders may find it a waste of time and money to hire a writing service, but it is an investment in the real sense. They help the startups identify their strengths and weaknesses, product or service feasibility, ways and means to raise funds, paths to create networks, effective team management, and sustained profits. The demands of these different aspects of a business need professional attention. So it goes without saying that business plan writing services are a boon in disguise for startups.