The Business Plan

Having told you what you should think about when you are creating your business plan, I will now seek to help you in the actual creation of a good business plan. The hardest part about creating a business plan is getting the energy together to get started.

At first it seems like a horribly daunting task. But once you get going you'll find that writing the business plan is not as tough as it seems. You can begin with some of the easy steps first. Some of these are as follows:

• Describe your business and what makes it stand out
•  Talk about the specific market you are targeting
• Explain what stage of development your business is in such as is it brand new or are buying someone else out.

If you get hung up on a particular part of the plan, don’t worry because you can skip it for now and just come back and fill it in later. You also don't have to worry about making a perfect first draft either because you can just get some thoughts down to get the process going and you can always come back and fix it up later.

Keep your audience in your head

Throughout the writing of your business plan you want to keep in mind who your intended audience is going to be and why you are writing the plan in the first place. For example if you are trying to attract equity investors you are going to want to emphasize the big upside of your business’ profit potential.

While doing this, you will also need to be particularly careful to make sure that you choose to adequately disclose the risks and uncertainties that are involved in your business, because investors will often look for someone to blame if their investment disappears.

If you are trying to get debt financing for your business then you are going to want to emphasize not the huge upside profit potential but rather the certainty that the debt can be repaid. In fact, when you talk of big profits you may just scare away debt financiers because high profit potential usually means high risks as well.

If you are writing a business plan that is meant to help you run the business better you may want to skip or write very simple sections with all of the general background information on the company and the industry, and instead focus most of your plan on the areas of your plan that are currently most important to you.

Strategy is Important

Basically the first half of the business plan is going to be geared towards helping you to develop and support and solid business strategy. This is where you will look at the market, the industry itself, customers and competitors. You will also have to look at your customer needs and the benefits of the various current products and services that are available to you.

You will have to really look at the strengths and weaknesses of each competing like business in your area and try to find any opportunities for your and your ideas in the marketplace. All of these steps are largely aimed at helping you create a strategy for your business.

The second half of the business plan is going to be used to execute your selected business strategy. Your pharmacy’s products and services, your marketing and your operations should all closely tie in with your strategy. So while it may be easy for you to choose a well thought out strategy for your plan, I would personally recommend you give a lot of thought to the strategy that will set the course for your business.

Think in a Competitive Way

In today's crowded marketplace, you're probably going to have serious competition no matter how creative and original your own business concept is. That is why you are going to need to think as competitively as possible throughout your entire business plan.

You need to be able to realistically identify where you will do things in similar manner as your competitors, as well as where you will do things differently. You will want to acknowledge where you have real strengths and where you have real weaknesses.

You should also fully understand that in order for you to try to run a major aspect of your business significantly better than your competitors may be a very difficult challenge; especially since there are so many of them out there today. Because of this, you are better off if you focus your planning on being different than your competition rather than just on competing with them less directly. For example: Can you find a particular market niche to focus on? Can you find a unique strategy to build your business on?

Be realistic with your goals

A lot of business plans sound good on paper, but don't work at all when they are used in the real world marketplace. It's often very difficult to attract people to a new business when there are so many out there already. Just because its better doesn't mean people are going to switch to it because most of us have been going to the same businesses in our communities our entire lives.

People or companies have established buying patterns and are currently doing business with someone else. In order for you to get them to do business with you, you are going to need to do more than the others do in order to attract them to your place of business instead.

You've got to steal them away from someone else's business basically so be ready for this. It's also quite possible that when you enter the marketplace, that your competitors may react with their own new products or services or by cutting their prices or offering even more or similar strategies as you.

You need to know that while it's easy to overestimate sales projections it's just as easy to underestimate how much it will cost to run it as well; especially for a start-up business. There are always going to be a hefty amount of cost overruns, expensive problems, and specialty items that you need that you have simply overlooked. So you will want to be very conservative and try to have an extra wad of cash hidden away just in case.