business plan for secretarial services

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Secretarial Services Business Plan : free template

Welcome to the comprehensive guide on crafting a winning Secretarial Services Business Plan for (Secretarial Services Ltd). In this article, we will delve into essential sections that will form the foundation of your business plan, from the executive summary to financial forecasts. By carefully strategizing each aspect, you’ll gain valuable insights into the market, effectively position your services, and showcase the strength of your management team. Join us as we embark on this journey to create a roadmap for success in the dynamic world of secretarial services. Let’s begin!

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Secretarial Services Business Plan: Executive Summary

Introduction.

The executive summary of (Secretarial Services Ltd) provides a concise overview of the company’s business plan. This section outlines the key components of the plan, offering potential investors and stakeholders a glimpse into the company’s objectives, strategies, and financial projections.

Company Overview

(Secretarial Services Ltd) is a dedicated secretarial service provider aimed at offering comprehensive administrative support to businesses of all sizes. With a team of skilled professionals and a commitment to excellence, our company strives to become a leading player in the industry.

Mission and Vision

Our mission is to assist businesses in streamlining their operations by providing efficient secretarial services. We aim to become a trusted partner for our clients, enabling them to focus on their core competencies while we handle administrative tasks. Our vision is to set new standards in the secretarial services sector by delivering outstanding solutions that drive business growth.

Market Opportunity

The executive summary highlights the market opportunity that (Secretarial Services Ltd) seeks to capitalize on. With the increasing demands of the corporate world and a growing trend of outsourcing administrative functions, there is a significant market for reliable and professional secretarial services.

Competitive Advantage

(Secretarial Services Ltd) differentiates itself through its experienced and skilled team, cutting-edge technology adoption, and a customer-centric approach. By leveraging our competitive advantages, we aim to carve a distinct space in the market and gain a competitive edge.

Financial Snapshot

This section offers a summary of the financial forecasts and projections for (Secretarial Services Ltd). It outlines the anticipated revenue growth, cost structure, and potential return on investment for prospective stakeholders.

In conclusion, the executive summary encapsulates the essence of (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s business plan. As we embark on this journey, we are confident that our dedication, expertise, and market opportunities will propel us toward success and establish (Secretarial Services Ltd) as a leading provider of secretarial services.

Secretarial Services Business Plan: Product and Service

Service offerings.

At (Secretarial Services Ltd), we offer a comprehensive range of secretarial services tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients. Our core services include:

1. Administrative Support

We provide a wide array of administrative support, including document preparation, data entry, appointment scheduling, and email management. By outsourcing these tasks to us, businesses can optimize their time and resources, leading to increased productivity.

2. Virtual Assistance

Our virtual assistants are highly skilled professionals who can handle various tasks, such as travel arrangements, event planning, and internet research. By utilizing our virtual assistance services, businesses can operate more efficiently without the need for additional in-house staff.

3. Transcription Services

Accurate and timely transcription is vital for many businesses. We offer transcription services for audio and video recordings, interviews, meetings, and more, ensuring that our clients have accurate records of their important conversations.

4. Data Management

Managing data can be time-consuming and complex. Our data management services encompass data entry, data cleaning, database maintenance, and data analysis. This helps businesses maintain organized and reliable data systems.

5. Language Translation

As businesses operate on a global scale, language barriers can present challenges. We offer professional language translation services to help clients communicate effectively with international partners and customers.

Custom Solutions

In addition to our core services, (Secretarial Services Ltd) understands that each client has unique requirements. We work closely with our clients to develop custom solutions that address their specific needs, ensuring maximum satisfaction and value.

Quality Assurance

Our commitment to quality is unwavering. We have established robust quality assurance processes to maintain high standards across all our services. Rigorous reviews and checks are conducted to deliver error-free and top-notch services to our clients.

Customer Support

At (Secretarial Services Ltd), we prioritize excellent customer support. Our team is available to assist clients promptly, address any concerns, and provide ongoing support throughout the engagement

Secretarial Services Business Plan: Market Analysis

Industry overview.

The market analysis section delves into the broader industry in which (Secretarial Services Ltd) operates. The secretarial services industry plays a crucial role in supporting businesses by handling administrative tasks efficiently. As companies continue to focus on core competencies, the demand for reliable secretarial services has witnessed steady growth.

Market Size and Growth

The market analysis reveals the current market size of the secretarial services industry and its projected growth. Factors such as increased outsourcing of administrative functions, expansion of businesses, and the rise of startups contribute to the industry’s growth prospects.

Target Market

Identifying the target market is essential for (Secretarial Services Ltd) to channel its resources effectively. Our services cater to a diverse clientele, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), startups, entrepreneurs, busy professionals, and corporations seeking to optimize their operations.

Competitor Analysis

In this section, we analyze the key competitors in the secretarial services industry. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors helps (Secretarial Services Ltd) devise effective strategies to position ourselves favorably in the market.

Competitive Advantages

Building upon the earlier executive summary, this subsection reiterates (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s competitive advantages. Our team’s expertise, technological infrastructure, personalized services, and commitment to customer satisfaction set us apart from competitors.

Market Entry Barriers

Entering the secretarial services market requires overcoming certain barriers. These may include initial investment costs, building a reputation in the industry, and establishing a reliable customer base. (Secretarial Services Ltd) has identified these barriers and devised strategies to mitigate them effectively.

Market Trends

Staying attuned to market trends is essential for any business’s long-term success. This section highlights the emerging trends in the secretarial services industry, such as the adoption of advanced technologies, remote work arrangements, and the need for sustainable practices.

Regulatory Considerations

Navigating the legal and regulatory landscape is critical for business operations. (Secretarial Services Ltd) complies with all relevant laws and regulations, and this section outlines the key compliance areas to assure potential investors and stakeholders.

The market analysis reaffirms (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s understanding of the secretarial services industry and its position within it. Armed with this knowledge, our company is well-prepared to leverage opportunities and overcome challenges to achieve sustainable growth

Secretarial Services Business Plan: Marketing & Sales Strategy

Target audience.

Identifying and understanding our target audience is crucial for developing an effective marketing and sales strategy. (Secretarial Services Ltd) has segmented its target audience based on industry, company size, and specific needs to tailor our marketing efforts accordingly.

Brand Positioning

In this section, we outline (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s brand positioning in the market. Our brand is positioned as a reliable and professional secretarial service provider, offering comprehensive solutions tailored to meet the unique requirements of our clients.

Marketing Channels

The marketing and sales strategy of (Secretarial Services Ltd) involves leveraging various channels to reach our target audience effectively. These channels include:

1. Digital Marketing

We employ digital marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, and email campaigns to enhance our online visibility and attract potential clients.

2. Networking and Partnerships

Networking with relevant industry players, attending conferences, and forming strategic partnerships enable us to expand our reach and gain referrals from businesses in complementary sectors.

3. Website and Online Presence

Our website serves as a vital tool to showcase our services, success stories, and customer testimonials. A user-friendly website with clear calls-to-action enhances customer engagement and conversions.

4. Advertising and Promotions

Strategic advertising through online platforms, industry publications, and local media helps create brand awareness and attract potential clients.

Sales Approach

(Secretarial Services Ltd) employs a consultative sales approach to understand the unique needs of each client. By analyzing their requirements, we can propose tailored solutions that highlight the value we bring to their business.

Customer Relationship Management

Establishing and maintaining strong customer relationships is a priority for (Secretarial Services Ltd). We utilize customer relationship management (CRM) tools to keep track of interactions, ensure timely follow-ups, and provide personalized services.

Client Retention

Repeat business and client retention are vital for long-term success. We implement loyalty programs, discounts for ongoing services, and exceptional customer support to foster strong relationships with our existing clients.

Measuring Success

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure the success of our marketing and sales efforts. These KPIs include customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and client satisfaction.

The marketing and sales strategy of (Secretarial Services Ltd) is designed to create a strong brand presence, attract potential clients, and build lasting relationships. By utilizing diverse marketing channels and a customer-focused approach, we aim to achieve sustainable growth and success in the market.

Secretarial Services Business Plan: The Management Team

The success of (Secretarial Services Ltd) heavily relies on the skills, expertise, and dedication of its management team. This section introduces the key members of the management team and their roles in driving the company forward.

Founder and CEO: [Founder’s Name]

As the visionary behind (Secretarial Services Ltd), [Founder’s Name] brings extensive experience in the secretarial services industry. Their strong leadership and strategic decision-making skills have been instrumental in shaping the company’s mission and goals.

Chief Operating Officer (COO): [COO’s Name]

[COO’s Name] oversees the day-to-day operations of (Secretarial Services Ltd). With a deep understanding of business processes and a focus on efficiency, they ensure that the company delivers high-quality services to its clients consistently.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO): [CFO’s Name]

Financial management is crucial for any business’s success, and [CFO’s Name] plays a pivotal role in (Secretarial Services Ltd). Their expertise in financial forecasting, budgeting, and risk management helps the company maintain financial stability and make informed decisions.

Director of Sales and Marketing: [Director’s Name]

Driving business growth and expanding the client base is the responsibility of [Director’s Name]. Their in-depth knowledge of marketing strategies and sales techniques enables (Secretarial Services Ltd) to reach its target audience effectively.

Head of Customer Relations: [Head’s Name]

Customer satisfaction is at the core of (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s values, and [Head’s Name] leads the team dedicated to achieving this goal. They ensure that clients receive exceptional service and that their feedback is taken into account for continuous improvement.

Human Resources Manager: [HR Manager’s Name]

The well-being of the company’s employees is overseen by [HR Manager’s Name]. They are responsible for talent acquisition, employee development, and fostering a positive work culture within (Secretarial Services Ltd).

Advisory Board

Apart from the core management team, (Secretarial Services Ltd) benefits from the expertise of its advisory board. The advisory board comprises industry experts, consultants, and successful entrepreneurs who provide valuable guidance and strategic insights.

Team Expertise and Experience

Each member of the management team brings a wealth of experience and expertise in their respective fields, making (Secretarial Services Ltd) a well-rounded and capable organization.

The management team at (Secretarial Services Ltd) plays a vital role in the company’s growth and success. Their combined efforts, experience, and dedication position the company for a promising future, with a focus on delivering top-notch secretarial services and exceeding client expectations

Secretarial Services Business Plan: Financial Forecasts or Projections

The financial forecasts section provides an in-depth analysis of (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s projected financial performance. These forecasts are based on careful analysis, market trends, and the company’s growth strategies.

Revenue Projections

This subsection outlines (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s expected revenue over the next few years. It factors in the projected growth in the client base, potential upselling opportunities, and the introduction of new services.

Expense Projections

To maintain financial stability, it is crucial to anticipate and manage expenses effectively. This part of the financial forecasts details the expected operational costs, including employee salaries, office rent, technology investments, marketing expenses, and more.

Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement

The P&L statement showcases the projected revenue and expenses of (Secretarial Services Ltd) over a specific period. It provides a clear overview of the company’s profitability and financial performance.

Cash Flow Projections

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, and this section projects (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s future cash inflows and outflows. It helps identify potential cash flow gaps and ensures the company’s ability to meet financial obligations.

Break-Even Analysis

The break-even analysis determines the level of revenue needed to cover all fixed and variable costs. It helps (Secretarial Services Ltd) understand when it is expected to become profitable and how changes in costs or pricing affect the bottom line.

Financial Ratios

This subsection presents important financial ratios that provide insights into (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s financial health and performance. Ratios such as liquidity ratios, profitability ratios, and efficiency ratios offer valuable information for decision-making.

Contingency Plans

Despite careful planning, unforeseen events can impact a business. In this section, (Secretarial Services Ltd) outlines contingency plans and risk management strategies to address potential challenges and ensure continuity.

The financial forecasts and projections demonstrate (Secretarial Services Ltd)’s potential for growth and profitability. These projections are a result of diligent planning and a commitment to financial prudence, positioning the company for a successful and sustainable future

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Administrative Service Business Plan

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Everywhere Assistant

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.

Everywhere Assistant is a new start up virtual assistant business.  The company is a sole proprietorship with Sadie Clark as the founder and sole employee.  The company was formed and will serve a diverse geographic customer segment.

The Market Everywhere Assistant has identified three distinct market segments which will be targeted.  The first segment is companies of various sizes.  In the current business climate, there has been a common occurrence to have wide scale corporate downsizing.  This is helpful for Everywhere Assistant because the downsizing means that people kept within the company are busier than ever.  Typical in a downsizing climate there is the outsourcing of projects/jobs that the current staff cannot handle.  Everywhere Assistant believes that the majority of their sales (relative to the other customer segments) will come from the companies.

The second customer segment is individuals.  This is an attractive segment because as our daily lives become busier and busier we have less and less free time.  Using a virtual assistant (VA) is one way to create more free time, or at least not have to do tasks that we may not prefer to.  It is anticipated that the services provided to individuals will be more menial relative to the services provided to companies.

The last customer segment is not for profit organizations. These organizations, in large part due to their status as a not for profit do not have excess capital.  As a consequence, they have tried to maximize employee’s tasks and responsibilities as much as possible.  This means most employees are quite busy.  When a random tasks comes up the organization typically does not have an employee that can just take handle the task.  This is good for VA’s who can quickly and seamlessly take over tasks.  This saves the company money because they are only paying for the labor needed to complete the task.

Services Everywhere Assistant offers a wide range of services.  The bulk of the services are administrative in nature, whether data entry, mailing list updates, etc.  These will be the services that will be billed out at the lower end of the billing spectrum of $25-$45.  Services that are billed out near the top of the range are those that require higher levels of skills such as accounting, marketing, and graphic design.   In the middle will be services such as concierge services and travel arrangements which are in themselves a wide range of services.  The offered services will be things that the customer does not have time for or things that they choose not to do, something they would prefer someone else to take care.

Competitive Edge The majority of VA services are secretarial in nature.  They are jobs that an administrative assistant can handle.  Everywhere Assistant will be using their competitive edge of a wide range of skills to their fullest.  In addition to the more menial tasks, Everywhere Assistant is able to offer clients a wide range of more technical skills such as a proficiency with QuickBooks Pro for accounting issues, graphic design with skill in both Photoshop and PageMaker, and well-honed marketing and research skills.  This is a competitive edge because once a client has found a VA they have an economic incentive to continue to use them as opposed to finding someone else (assuming that they are happy with the level of service and the work product).  The problem occurs when the client is happy with the VA but needs work on a project that the VA does not have skills in, consequently, the client must look elsewhere.  An advantage is created when the VA (Everywhere Assistant) has a wider and more complex range of skills, they are then able to offer more value to the client.

Everywhere Assistant is an exciting application of the virtual assistant business model, providing a wide range of customer services from a remote location, leveraging the power of the Internet.  This is a very efficient business model and will provide Sadie with reasonable income and the flexibility to handle the jobs when and how she chooses.  The sales forecast indicates revenue will rise for year two and year three along with corresponding net profit increases.

1.1 Keys to Success

• Offer a wide range of services allowing Everywhere Assistant to handle any type of task.
• Maintain a flexible enough schedule so last minute projects can be completed.
• Ensure accurate billing and project estimates.

1.2 Mission

Everywhere Assistant’s mission is to offer the highest level of administrative assistant services from a remote location.  Everywhere Assistant will be able to handle a wide range of tasks with a level of professionalism and trust that is hard to come by in today’s world.  Everywhere Assistant will exceed customer’s expectations.

1.3 Objectives

• To generate over $35,000 in the first year.
• To develop enough income to make the job full time position.
• To be able to decrease the marketing expenses after couple of years because there is sufficient word of mouth projects to remain busy.

Company Summary company overview ) is an overview of the most important points about your company—your history, management team, location, mission statement and legal structure.">

Everywhere Assistant has been formed as a sole proprietorship by Sadie Clark.  The company will incur some start expenses detailed in section 2.2.

2.1 Company Ownership

Sadie Clark has formed Everywhere Assistant as a sole proprietorship.  Sadie will invest money of her own as well as money received from her family.

2.2 Start-up Summary

The following equipment/services will be needed for purchase to allow Everywhere Assistant to begin operations:

• Windows computer
• Mac computer
• Laser printer
• Broadband Internet connection
• Fax machine
• Various software including Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop and PageMaker, Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, and QuickBooks Pro
• Attorney services to develop a standard contract template for clients

Everywhere Assistant provides a wide range of administrative assistant functions from a remote location.  Everywhere Assistant will serve a wide range of clients from businesses to individuals to not-for-profit organizations.  The following is a list (not exhaustive) of the different services offered.  Please note that as long as Sadie has the skills to complete a task, she will be willing to undertake whatever project the client may wish:

• Word processing
• Accounting/bookkeeping
• Desktop publishing
• Travel arrangements
• Mailing services
• Maintain electronic mailing lists
• Maintain vendor files
• Concierge services

This is of considerable value to the customer.  The client incurs no payroll taxes, no insurance costs as well as no fringe benefit expenses.  The client is not responsible for providing office space or equipment.  This is contained in Everywhere Assistant hourly rate.  The hourly rate is $25-$45 depending on the activity.  More menial tasks such as data entry will be billed out at $25, activities such as graphic design, accounting, and other more skilled tasks will be billed out at $45.

Everywhere Assistant will be operating out of Sadie’s home.  A room has been dedicated to the business in the house and rent will be paid for the use of the room.

Market Analysis Summary how to do a market analysis for your business plan.">

Everywhere Assistant has segmented the market  into three attractive, distinct, customer segments.  Services will targeted to companies, individuals, and not for profit organizations.  Market research indicates that these are the most likely consumers of remote administrative assistants.  The virtual assistant is fairly new, proliferating with the Internet which allows service providers in remote locations to serve a large geographic range of clients.  Membership records within the larger virtual assistant associations indicates that there are typically 10-15 virtual assistants within each state.

4.1 Market Segmentation

Everywhere Assistant has identified three customer segments which are the most attractive for the virtual assistant industry.  These segments are customers who tend to consume the largest amount of virtual assistant services. 

Companies For a variety of reason companies are an attractive segment.  Some companies have been going through corporate downsizing as a means for decreasing overhead/ the burn rate.  While this does assist reducing monthly expenditures, often the company soon there after realizes that were certain necessary services being provided by the personnel that were let go.  Companies also use virtual assistants for projects that come up with little notice and they need a helping hand.  The virtual assistants are particularly useful because the companies only pay for the services rendered, there is no continual employment or equipment overhead.

• There are 36,554 potential customers
• Sizes for companies range from small organizations of a few people to large corporations
• Some companies will use Everywhere Assistant on a random basis, others may sign Everywhere Assistant initially on a retainer basis.  This arrangement is initial because once business become more full, the highest billing rate work will be sought out since the number of hours available is limited.

Individuals Virtual assistants are also useful to may different individuals.  The individuals are likely to use the assistants for tasks that they do not have time for or tasks that they simply do not enjoy.  These tasks could be business related, but research indicates that many of the requested tasks are personal in nature, assisting the individual with something that they do not have time for.  One unexpected tasks is trip planning.  The client provides the assistant with some guidelines and the assistant performs a comprehensive search of options as well as discounts/ specials. 

• Typically ages 30-55
• Median individual income is $51,000
• 91% of the individuals have a college degree
• 32% have a graduate degree

Not-for-Profit Organizations These organizations are attractive customers because they are often in a funding crunch.  They often do not have the funding to have some sort of assistant always on staff ready to do work as it comes along.  The not-for-profit organizations are often as trim as possible regarding staffing.  This sets up an excellent opportunity for Everywhere Assistant who can provide administrative services when needed, but are not a resource drain when there is no work.  Everywhere Assistant will serve a wide range of not-for-profit organizations.

4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

The targeted customers: companies, individuals, and not for profits were chosen because they all are likely to have a need for a virtual assistant, all for different reasons.  As companies continue to become as efficient as possible, they are keeping their current employees as busy as possible. Often they are to busy to take care of projects that come up randomly, that is were Everywhere Assistant comes in.

Individuals will have a demand for Everywhere Assistant for tasks that they either do not have the time for or do not want to do.  This is especially true as we (Americans) have less and less free.  This then fuels our desire to pick and choose the activities that we have time for or care to do, and then subcontracted out the things we do not do.  Not for profits are also attractive as they are the organizations who often have the least funds so creative options to complete tasks are always considered.  Everywhere Assistant  allows them to have someone complete the task with out the typical overhead associated with the worker. 

4.3 Service Business Analysis

Virtual Assistants is a fairly new industry that has arisen from the convenience of the Internet.  The Internet created a medium where people could communicate, transfer files electronically, do research, and find people all from one’s home.  In essence the Internet has created a “web” connecting people in remote locations. 

The other factor that fueled the growth of virtual assistants was the downsizing of the business world.  This created a lot of opportunities for virtual assistants because companies were getting slimmer and slimmer and for the small, random projects that would pop up they would just subcontract out the work.  When you combine the market need for projects and the Internet as the connection to these remote people, you have a new business model. 

There has also been the development of a few organizations that specifically serve virtual assistants that has assisted the growth and legitimacy of the industry.  The associations have developed certification programs that has assisted growth by helping establish trust between two unknown parties.  The certifications provide indications of minimum levels of skills as well as work product.

As technology increases, more and more tasks will be able to be accomplished remotely, sending the finished product electronically as well as even having face to face video conferences remotely allowing to simulate a face to face meeting, however, the two parties could be half way around the world.  

4.3.1 Competition and Buying Patterns

By virtue of the nature of virtual assistants (VA), competition does not have a significant physical boundaries.  While there typically is 10-20 registered/ certified VA’s per state, there is no advantage in choosing a VA from one state relative to another state.  VAs therefore compete on availability, costs, work product and skill set.

Strategy and Implementation Summary

Everywhere Assistant will leverage their competitive edge of having a wide range of services offered.  This will be especially useful since once a client has found a VA that they are happy with they will tend to continue to use them assuming the VA can handle all of the tasks that the client has.

Everywhere Assistant’s marketing strategy will develop visibility and awareness for the company as a virtual assistant.  This will be accomplished by using several marketing mediums.  Lastly, Everywhere Assistant will highlight in their sales strategy the high level of customer satisfaction that Everywhere Assistant offers.  This is especially important since because repeat business from a customer is likely if they are kept happy.

5.1 Competitive Edge

Everywhere Assistant’s competitive edge is the wide range of skills that they offer to clients.  While many of the VA’s can offer basic administrative skills and tasks, Everywhere Assistant has an expanded selection of skills that includes accounting/bookkeeping, graphic design, and marketing.

Having the wider range of skills is significant because the nature of the industry is that once a good service provider is found the client tends to use the VA for all of the needs the VA can fill.  If there are tasks that the VA cannot do the client will look elsewhere to have those tasks completed.  Here in lays the danger, the possibility that the client will find a new VA, one that is more diverse and stay with the new VA.  By offering a wide range of services Everywhere Assistant can be the one stop VA serving all of the client’s needs.

5.2 Marketing Strategy

Everywhere Assistant marketing strategy will seek to raise awareness of Everywhere Assistant as a premier VA.  The first method that they will use is membership  to the International Virtual Assistant Association (IVAA).  This association offers a certification process which is useful when you are trying to sell the services over the Internet and the prospective customer does not know you.

The certification develops some degree of trust because the certification provides an indication of professionalism, acceptable work products, and appropriate skills.  This will tend to speed up the process of developing trust between Everywhere Assistant  and the remote client.  Being a member of the association is also useful because it includes Everywhere Assistant in their VA directory.  This comes into play when clients are looking for a VA an they will often visit an associations website looking for a VA and they will see Everywhere Assistant’s listing. 

Everywhere Assistant will also have a website developed that will be a showcase for the services that they offer.  This must be a professional site because other than phone conversations, this is the impression that is initially left on the client, the more professional the site looks, the better the image that is bestowed on Everywhere Assistant. 

Everywhere Assistant will also place some advertisements in a couple newspapers.  The choice of newspaper will be based on several factors:

• Low cost, high readership
• In a region that has had significant corporate downsizing
• A concentrated urban area

The effectiveness of a newspaper advertisement in somewhat unknown.  The ads will be run a few times and a costs benefit analysis will be done to decide future use.

5.3 Sales Strategy

The sales strategy will be based on ensuring complete customer satisfaction.  This will be addressed because the chance of repeat business is very high.  This is intuitive because once you have found a remote assistant and have used them for a while a trust relationship builds where you begin to feel more and more comfortable with this new person.

There then is a decreased chance of looking for a different VA because the switching costs increase because of the time it takes to find someone new and build trust.  Everywhere Assistant will be successful in developing superior customer satisfaction so that the majority of their clients will become repeat clients.  As more and more business is repeat business, marketing costs fall because with a one person business, there is a finite amount of business that Everywhere Assistant can handle in a month.

The more business that is received through repeat business, the less business Everywhere Assistant will have to market them selves.  Additionally, the more business that comes to Everywhere Assistant the more selective they can be (assuming they are reaching full capacity) in choosing the projects.  Projects with higher billing can be chosen increasing revenue for the same amount of hours worked. 

The key to customer satisfaction is ensuring that all customers are more than happy.  If it turns out of the customers is not happy with the project it is worthwhile to correct the situation, even if it is costly in the short run.  In the long term, the customer should be convinced to remain with Everywhere Assistant  and is even likely to tell others about how Everywhere Assistant went out of their way to correct the problem.  This develops incredible good will.  Even if services have to be given away to ensure complete satisfaction, that short term cost will be a worthwhile investment for the long term sustainability of the business.

5.3.1 Sales Forecast

A sales forecast has been developed to measure the sales by month for the first year and yearly for years two and three.  The sales forecast has been used to help predict the Break-even Point by measuring revenue against expenses.

A conservative forecast has been adopted to increase the chance of meeting the sales goals.  The sales has been broken down by the specific customers as a method of tracking where the business is coming from.  The following charts and graphs provide quantifiable data and graphic representations of the sales.

5.4 Milestones

Everywhere Assistant has chosen several different quantifiable milestones for the company.  Milestones are being used as a method of setting goals as well as then tracking progress toward the attainment of the goals.  The following goals have been chosen:

• Business plan completion
• First customer
• Profitability
• Full time employment
• Decreased marketing costs

Please review the following table for more detail regarding the milestones.

Web Plan Summary

The website will be developed to provide information of Everywhere Assistant and the services that they offer.  In addition to providing information, the website will serve as a way of creating an image or facade of Everywhere Assistant to customers who are in remote locations.  Said another way, the more professional that the website is, the more professionalism that is exuded toward Everywhere Assistant.  For many the website will be the first impression of Everywhere Assistant.  As we all know first impressions can be quite important so Everywhere Assistant has decided to invest money into the site to ensure a professional looking site.

6.1 Website Marketing Strategy

The website will be primarily marketed through the following methods:

• Search engine submission . When someone is interested in finding a virtual assistant they will often type “virtual assistant” into a search engine such as Google! and they will receive a list of sights that have relevance to the key word. Everywhere Assistant will submit their site and applicable key words to various search engines to ensure that they are high on the list of results.
• URL on all printed material . For advertisements in the news paper or any correspondence from Everywhere Assistant, the website will be listed on the printed material encouraging people to visit the site and find more information.
• Association membership . One of the values of being a member of a VA association is being included in their directory of service provider websites. Some people will go right to the association’s web page to research various VAs. In this case they will find links to Everywhere Assistant’s site.

6.2 Development Requirements

The site will be professionally developed for the cost of $5,000.

Management Summary management summary will include information about who's on your team and why they're the right people for the job, as well as your future hiring plans.">

Sadie Clark received her undergraduate degree in business administration from the University of Washington.  Upon graduation Sadie went to work for the Microsoft Corporation supporting their marketing department.  While her position had the majority of responsibilities as an administrative assistant, she was cross trained in a variety of areas including some graphic design, accounting and marketing.

This was fairly unusual for Microsoft which typically has narrow job descriptions for their employees.  However, in the marketing department, it was smaller, closer knit group of people so when the group needed something done they would often have it accomplished by someone within the group.  If the person did not know the skill but there was someone in the group that did, they would often train the other person which would in effect increase the flexibility of the department.  It was the time spent in this department that Sadie developed her large repertoire of skills. After five years at Microsoft Sadie had a child and took two years off to raise the child. 

Upon entering back into the working world, Sadie began to realize that jobs were more difficult to come by.  At the same time Sadie began considering a non traditional job that would give her more flexibility to spend wit her family.  A friend of hers was telling her about an acquaintance of theirs who started her own VA company.  This intrigued Sadie, she had the skills to pull it off, it just made her a bit nervous to start her own business, the process seamed overwhelming.

At this point Sadie had to decide something so she began to write a business plan and then make the decision as to whether to continue with the VA idea or to find something else.  When she was working on the business plan, forced to consider and make decisions regarding a wide range of topics that effect a business, she began to feel more comfortable about starting her own business.  The writing of the plan forced her to conceptualize a lot of topics and she quickly realized that starting a business was well within her ability. The plan was completed, and she started operations.

7.1 Personnel Plan

Sadie will be the sole employee.  While the business could generate more revenue if she hired and trained additional people, her need for reasonable income, flexibility, enjoyable work, and full time employment was satiated so it will remain a one person business.  Sadie will be taking a base salary with the expectation that she will also be able to use some of the net profit one it starts accumulating.

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

The following sections will outline important financial information.

8.1 Important Assumptions

The following table details important Financial Assumptions.

8.2 Break-even Analysis

The Break-even Analysis indicates what will be needed in monthly revenue to reach the break-even point.

8.3 Projected Profit and Loss

The following table and charts will indicate Projected Profit and Loss.

8.4 Projected Cash Flow

The following table and chart will indicate Projected Cash Flow.

8.5 Projected Balance Sheet

The following table provides information regarding the Projected Balance Sheet.

8.6 Business Ratios

The following table provides information regarding business ratios specific to Everywhere Assistant as well as rations specific to the Administrative Service Consultant industry. Please note that making a comparison of a virtual assistant and a administrative service consultant is a difficult comparison.  It is expected that the ratios will be quite different between the two as a VA is a home based, in this case single individual business.

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Starting a Secretarial Business

Tell us what a secretarial service does and the types of services you can offer.

Well, typically a secretary at an office provides typing, which today is called word processing, and in addition to just plain typing they also provide a variety of office support services, which could include filing, anything that a business needs, basically. To be more specific, typing can mean typing letters, invoices, proposals, it can be business plans, contracts, papers, applications, and even complete books or procedure manuals, anything, so as a secretarial service you will get small jobs and you will get large jobs. Another service that’s quite popular is what people refer to as data entry, and most of that really means typing addresses and putting on mailing labels. In addition to some services like typing, some people will offer additional services that require more advanced skills, and that can be fliers and brochures and newsletters, which is traditionally called desktop publishing. When the Macintosh came out with Pagemaker, it was called desktop publishing. Today I don’t hear that term that much, but I refer to anything that requires more layout skills and also you may be asked to answer telephones, record keeping and so on, although practically it happens very little that home-based secretarial services provide answering service. There are people that actually put up a whole telephone system, and there are people that even provide mailing services and have specialized mailing equipment. So it can really vary from typing services to anything that people need. It can be Internet research, it can be even resume writing, most secretarial services do provide resume typing, but if you really want to learn the skills of resume writing it’s not that hard to do, and it can create additional profits. Transcription is one of the things that I recommend that everyone provide because it creates a lot of additional hours of work and it’s very profitable and you can get a lot of repeat business when you do transcription. And I’m not referring here to medical transcription or legal transcription. It’s a little area that’s not very well known, what they call business transcription. You can transcribe anything from interviews that your clients will do, like a writer who needs interviews transcribed, Insurance companies, public speakers use a lot of them. It’s a good area to get into as a secretarial service.

What about payroll and bookkeeping? Are these the types of services that are provided by some secretarial services?

They can be. Mostly not payroll services because they’re more advanced kind of work, they’re more specialized. But regular bookkeeping is provided by some secretarial services, but not by the majority of them. What’s the difference between a secretarial service and a virtual assistant?

There’s not that much difference. A virtual assistant considers themselves more experienced. They also do a larger variety of work. They can do Internet research, they can specialize in Web design or copywriting or other promotional writing. They need to be more Internet knowledgeable because they have to be able to upload files and download files. In general, they feel superior to secretarial services, but the main difference really when it comes down to it is that the secretarial service typically provides services to local people, where the VA can provide services to anyone. But you can call yourself a VA when you’re a secretarial service.

What are some of the advantages for companies who hire secretarial services?

There’s quite a lot of advantages. Businesses don’t have time to type, they don’t have time to do their own filing, so they farm those jobs out because then they can do what they’re doing best. It’s a more productive way for them to work conduct their business. They don’t need extra computers, they don’t need extra desks, so they’re saving some space. You usually can do a better job when you’re creating documents than the owners of a business would do because that’s what you’re specializing in. And they don’t have to learn a bunch of stuff they don’t want to do.

Is it hard to learn how to do? Are there secretarial schools or can you take a secretarial course?

You have to have typing skills. You don’t have to be fast, but you have to know how to type and you have to be able to learn some of the formatting features that your clients are going to want. You have to know how to line up paragraphs nicely, how to create bullets, things like that. In general, you can learn it yourself if you want to, that’s basically what I personally did with a few extra classes that I did take. I do recommend that you do take a couple computer classes. You can take Windows classes so you don’t get in trouble using your old computer. You can take word processing classes, Excel classes, anything you want to learn. A good place to do that is look at your local community colleges. They’re very good. There’s also career centers, there is regional occupational programs, they’re called ROP. There are traditional secretarial schools. They’re really used by people who want to work in an office. No one will ask you for a degree. None of your clients will ask you for a degree. A lot of the VA websites are actually selling certificates for VA’s, but the bottom line is your clients are not interested in a certificate or in a degree, what they’re really interested in is that you can do the job, and that you do it well. So regardless how you learn your skills, the bottom line is you have to do them and you have to do them well, and all the rest is really not that important.

Do most people who start a secretarial service have previous experience as a secretary or administrative assistant?

The secretarial business appeals to people that have the experience that have been secretaries in the past, but I also know a lot of people that had no experience whatsoever, that just had a computer, they know how to type, and they wanted to make money at home with their computer. So they answer is some do have previous experience and some don’t. It helps if you do have the experience, but it’s not necessary.

What do you need to get started? I mean, how much does it cost to get started in this business?

If you have a computer and a printer, then it costs very little. Of course if you don’t have a computer, it costs you the cost of a computer, but you can have any basic system if you’re just going to provide word processing services. Any computer that you buy today, any new computer will do everything you need done. You can buy used computers for almost nothing, some people will give away their old computers, so it doesn’t have to cost anything if you’re a little bit creative. You do have to have a printer, so that’s one expense that some people have to make because they may not have a printer for their own use. And pretty much you get a ream of paper, you make business cards, you get a telephone, and you can be in business.

Can companies hire you for just a small job, or do most secretarial services require some sort of longer term contract, or can you work on a retainer basis?

Yes, you can do that when you first get started. You will get a lot of small jobs. Personally I don’t really want to do them anymore, but at the beginning I took just about any work I could get. What’s important, though, is that you charge a minimum fee. I will charge $20 even just to change an address or change someone’s name, or anything, even a one-line change, a five minute change, will cost them $20. And people really don’t complain about it. There are people that make an agreement, and that’s a really, really good thing to do, but very few people actually do it. The people that do it do very well. You can have an ongoing agreement for a minimum amount of work. And let’s say your client will pay you 20 hours of work and in compensation for that you give them a discount on the work. It works for both people, and you’re guaranteed to get that work. So it’s a very good marketing technique, but that very, very few secretarial services are actually using.

Can you offer a secretarial or virtual assistant service to businesses say in another part of the country, or do most people limit their services to their local area?

I recommend when you first get started, that you contact your local clients. It’s easier to get local clients than to get clients that you don’t know that are far away. It has the advantages that you can meet with people the first time, although I hardly see any of my clients. I see them the first time, and then everything else is done by e-mail, most of the time, so I hardly ever see my clients. I even have a pickup box where when the work is done, if it’s physically work, if it’s printed work that they have to pick up, they can just come to my door and pick it up from the outside without really even coming in. But it is harder for someone who gets started to work like a VA does to get clients that they have no personal contact with.

How much do most secretarial businesses charge for their services.

The prices are all across the board. You have students that only charge like $10 which is really ridiculous. And if you really want to be a professional secretarial service, you have to calculate all your non-billable hours, it’s not because a secretary in an office makes $10 an hour that you should only charge $10 an hour. You’re not going to have forty hours a week billable time. You’ll have to spend some time marketing, you’ll have to spend some time doing administrative tasks and so on, so my recommendation is that you charge a minimum of $25 an hour, and you should ideally get about $30 an hour. But it varies, mostly depending on how confident you feel about your services. That’s really the bottom line.

What are some ways you can find customers for your secretarial service? What kind of marketing and advertising do you recommend?

The best kind of marketing is word-of-mouth. And of course that takes time. I love referrals personally, but you don’t get them when you first get started. So at first you have to start doing a lot of networking, contacting people in person, talk to your friends, ask them for referrals, ask them who they know, visit businesses, do yellow page advertising, do direct mail, you can send out letters, you can hand out business cards to anyone that you meet, you can send out fliers, any of those things. The main thing with marketing is you want to do it on an ongoing basis. People think, one mailing I send out twenty letters or even a hundred letters, and they don’t get results immediately and they get discouraged. Well, that’s not how direct marketing works. You have to send out letters or postcards. Postcards is actually what I recommend more than letters. You send out postcards and a month later or two months later, you send them out again, and then again. It’s just not a one time shot. It’s an ongoing thing.

Are there a lot of typing scams out there? What are some red flags you should look for?

There’s a lot of people promising things they don’t deliver. One of the main scams are people buying lists of clients, and they present it as people that have typing work. Number one, those people don’t have typing work, they just use lists from the phone book, I mean you’re better off actually compiling your own local lists of the types of businesses that you want to work with. There’s also your old envelope typing scam, which is worthless as you know, but people still fall for that. Just a lot of promises of people that don’t deliver. I actually have a really good report about typing scams on my website. If you go to the website at the top right there’s a little box that you can click on to get a report about typing scams.

Should you offer to pay referral fees if customers recommend your service?

I don’t recommend paying referral fees, but I do recommend giving people an incentive to give you referrals, and one of the incentives can be that you give people a discount, you give them part of the work for free, but they still always have to buy something. Like you can give people a free resume update or something. You could give them a one page free if they buy a minimum of thirty dollars, something along that line. It’s really good to give them an incentive. And another thing is also to upsell your existing clients. Not only ask people for referrals, but also tell them what other kind of work you can do for them, so you get more work from your existing clients.

Are there useful magazines or books or websites related to this industry that would be helpful?

There’s no magazines that I know of, there used to be some newsletters. The books I’ve found in the past were really all outdated and I haven’t seen any good ones or know of any good ones recently. What I do recommend is really look on the Internet, subscribe to some on-line newsletters about marketing about small businesses, even bookkeeping for small businesses, things like that, copywriting, because anything you promote involves copywriting, so those are all good skills that you can learn and that you can find online by subscribing to some ezines or newsletters. There are a couple good products out there that I am aware of that I have read, and one of them is Michelle Miller’s book about medical transcription , and the other one is Lisa Taliga’s book about becoming a VA . There used to be an organization for secretarial services, and today everything is targeting towards VA’s. There is an organization for virtual assistants, it’s called the International Virtual Assistants Association . I also recommend that you join local computer user groups. I used most of what I learned at the beginning from going to, at the time what was a Macintosh user’s group, I don’t recommend today that you get a Mac, basically because of the incompatibilities, and because most of your clients are using a PC, but there are a lot of computer user groups, and they’re very useful in learning your computer skills basically. And I do recommend that you network with other secretarial services, and if there’s no organization in your area you could start an informal group yourself and network with other people. I have a breakfast with other secretarial services on a regular basis here locally and that works very well. You get referrals from people, you get information, you can have someone that you can call and ask a question, you get a lot of information when you form a group like that that people normally wouldn’t give you if they don’t know you.

What are the biggest mistakes people make when they’re just starting a secretarial service?

There are two big mistakes that people make, and the first one is that they charge too little money. And you can’t stay in business if you don’t charge enough for your services. That’s the biggest mistake I know people make. And the other mistake is they really expect business to come to them instead of going out of their way and marketing their business on an ongoing basis. They think they can just market once and be done with it, and then they stop marketing.

Leva Duell is the creator of The Secretarial Business-In-A-Box.

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How to start a secretarial services business best guide of 2022, by ankita tripathy starting a business 25 april 2022.

Did you know that the secretary is one of the most important members of a company? People who work as secretaries have a major role in the business or company. They are responsible for the efficient working of the people in the company.

As a result, they act as the link between the owner and the employees in most companies. They ensure that the employees implement the decisions that the directors take.

In other words, a secretary plays a pivotal role in maintaining a link between the directors and the employees in a company and manages the smooth working of the business.

But hiring a secretary is a massive task. It is almost like a luxury, especially for small businesses . This is why there has been a growth in the secretarial services business.

If you think you need to hire a secretary to maintain the administration of your work, many secretarial services are available. Don’t know what it is? Stick till the end to know more.

What Is Secretarial Services?

Many businesses provide secretarial assistance to the companies and businesses that need it. This is the secretarial services business.

In other words, in this type of business, you assist companies that cannot afford the luxury of hiring a secretary.

The help that you offer can be dealt with physically or even virtually.

Read More: Top 10 Business Name Generators Based on Customer Reviews

Secretarial Services: Why Do Companies Need Them?

Most of the time, people or business experts call secretaries the company’s backbone. So it is because they play a major role in managing the smooth functioning of the company.

There are many reasons why companies and even small businesses look for secretarial assistance. Some of these needs are.

• Arranging meetings
• Arranging the annual reports
• Maintains the registers
• Looks after the details of the events
• Makes the working of the company smoother

How To Start A Secretarial Services Business?

Do you want to start a secretarial services business to provide secretarial services to the businesses? It is totally possible.

If you want to start a secretarial services business, you should know a few things. They are,

1. Acquire The Skills

Why would someone choose you or your business for their company if you cannot show them that you have the skills to do their job effectively? Have you ever thought like that?

To become someone who can provide secretarial assistance to other companies, you need to have basic skills. You need experience.

Many companies look for secretaries with certificates. That shows how eligible a candidate is for doing their work. The Chartered Governance Institute is a great body for Company Secretaries in this matter.

2. Write An Effective Plan

Without having a plan, you cannot start anything. A plan is needed for you to have a direction. All the decisions you make as the owner of a secretarial Services Business have to be in line with the plan.

Have a business plan that is practical and not far-fetched.

Start by outlining the kinds of services you wish to provide to the customers or clients seeking secretarial assistance.

3. Networking

Networking is one of the most important things to do when starting your secretarial services business. Network and connect with business owners looking for assistance, and make them know that yours is a business that provides the services they need.

Distribute your business cards if you feel like it and connect with people who are looking for help. 

4. Analyze Your Competition

Analyzing the competition is something that you need to do even before starting your business and promoting it. First, analyze the competition that exists in your field and location.

If you think that no other company provides B2B assistance to the businesses (big, medium, or small) or brands that require it, go ahead with your plan.

Only after knowing whether there are any companies who provide similar services like yours will you be able to make a strategy that will best work for your company.

Promoting your business is something that can never skip your mind. People will not know about your company and your services unless you tell them.

Your target audience needs to know about your business for connecting with you and purchasing your services. Make sure that you promote your brand on all platforms. Many social media platforms are great for advertising .

Mistakes To Avoid

Even after starting your secretarial services business, you may find that you are not gaining results. This failure can be because of some mistakes that you are making.

Here are the mistakes that you need to avoid.

You May Like To Read This: How To Start A Business Under $500? A Step-By-Step Guide Of 2022

1. Fix The Charge

If there is one mistake that people make while starting their secretarial services business, then it is not fixing their charge. Most of the time, they charge very less for their services.

If you do not charge enough money for the services that you are providing, you will not be able to sustain yourself for a long time.

2. Don’t Sit And Hope

Most business owners make the huge mistake of not being on their feet. Instead, they think and hope that businesses that require assistance will come to them.

They do not go out in search of companies that need assistance. So if you have to maintain your business, you need to always keep networking.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Q1. what is company secretarial services.

A company or corporate secretarial services refers to the administrative functions that help provide great corporate assistance and governance to the company. It helps to manage the administrative works of the company in compliance with the rules and regulations that govern businesses.

Q2. What Does Secretarial Work Mean?

A professional who manages the administrative works of a business or a company is known as a secretary. A secretary needs to do all the jobs that ensure the company’s proper functioning, from preparing documents to deliberating in decisions of the directors to the employees.

Q3. What Are Secretarial Skills?

The most important skill that is required to become a secretary is that of being organized. Without organizational skills , someone can’t become a secretary. In addition , professional communication is also a necessary skill required to manage the company’s communications.

Q4. What Are Secretarial Services For Small Businesses?

There are many virtual secretarial services that provide administrative support on a virtual level to small and medium-sized businesses and organizations. Westside Secretarial Services is one such example that helps small businesses.

And That’s A Wrap!

A secretary is often known as the backbone of the company. This is because they ensure that the employees know about the directors’ decisions and implement them effectively. They also ensure the smooth working of the business.

A Secretarial Services Business is a B2B marketing where you provide secretarial assistance to the businesses who need it. You can easily start providing secretarial services from your home. All you need to do is have necessary skills, network and promote your brand .

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Ankita Tripathy

Ankita tripathy loves to write about food and the hallyu wave in particular. during her free time, she enjoys looking at the sky or reading books while sipping a cup of hot coffee. her favourite niches are food, music, lifestyle, travel, and korean pop music and drama..

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Hiring a full-time secretary is a luxury many small business owners can’t afford, so instead, they outsource their administrative tasks to home secretarial businesses.. Home secretaries are expected to handle a wide range of tasks from filing, accounts receivable and accounts payable, managing schedules, making travel arrangements, answering customer phone calls and emails, blogging and they may even be tasked with running errands and assisting with event planning. Home secretarial businesses are a low-cost startup for individuals who are organized and ready to assist busy entrepreneurs and executives.

Take inventory of your skill set and determine what types of secretarial skills you have to offer executives and small business owners. Look to your previous work and volunteer experience, as well as education to help you decide if this is a business that fits your knowledge and abilities.

Identify which industries you’re comfortable performing service for. If your background experience is in education, you may plan to contact day care owners and directors, or tutoring companies, while if you have experience in the pharmaceutical fields, you may approach a health care copywriter or doctor’s office with your services.

Come up with a name for your home secretarial business that describes the services you provide, industries you serve or your work ethic. Your business name should immediately tell potential clients that you can help them reduce their administrative workload, so they can focus on tasks essential to growing their businesses.

Contact your local Chamber of Commerce to find out how to register a business in your area. Register your business name and apply for any necessary licenses.

Decide whether you’ll run your secretarial business as a virtual business, or if you’ll make yourself available to business owners who need you to handle tasks in their offices or in the neighborhood.

Determine the types of services you plan to offer. Make a list and attribute a cost to each service you plan to provide. You may opt to get paid by the hour, per project or you may offer clients a monthly retainer for ongoing services.

Set up a home office in an area of your home that’s free from distractions, such as your spouse, children, pets and the television. Equip your office area with a desk, printer, fax machine, telephone, printer, book case, wall calendar, common office supplies, such as pens and pencils.

Decide what type of software you need to run your business. Get software that allows you to do word processing, create databases, create spreadsheets, design marketing materials and edit websites. As you book clients, you’ll get a better idea of the types of software you need to fulfill the tasks they want you to complete.

Hire a graphic designer and web designer to help you create a website, logo, business card and brochures. Each of these items will help you market your business.

Join local business and professional associations and begin to network with business owners. Make them aware of the services you provide and distribute business cards to those who express interest.

• Entrepreneur: How to Start a Business Support Service; June 2001
• Entrepreneur: Starting a Virtual Assistant Business; Carolyn Moncel; July 2004
• Entrepreneur: How to Start a Virtual Assistant Business; Lyn Toomey; July 2008

Miranda Brookins is a marketing professional who has over seven years of experience in copywriting, direct-response and Web marketing, publications management and business communications. She has a bachelor's degree in business and marketing from Towson University and is working on a master's degree in publications design at University of Baltimore.

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How to Write a Business Plan in 9 Steps (+ Template and Examples)

Every successful business has one thing in common, a good and well-executed business plan. A business plan is more than a document, it is a complete guide that outlines the goals your business wants to achieve, including its financial goals . It helps you analyze results, make strategic decisions, show your business operations and growth.

If you want to start a business or already have one and need to pitch it to investors for funding, writing a good business plan improves your chances of attracting financiers. As a startup, if you want to secure loans from financial institutions, part of the requirements involve submitting your business plan.

Writing a business plan does not have to be a complicated or time-consuming process. In this article, you will learn the step-by-step process for writing a successful business plan.

You will also learn what you need a business plan for, tips and strategies for writing a convincing business plan, business plan examples and templates that will save you tons of time, and the alternatives to the traditional business plan.

Let’s get started.

What Do You Need A Business Plan For?

Businesses create business plans for different purposes such as to secure funds, monitor business growth, measure your marketing strategies, and measure your business success.

1. Secure Funds

One of the primary reasons for writing a business plan is to secure funds, either from financial institutions/agencies or investors.

For you to effectively acquire funds, your business plan must contain the key elements of your business plan . For example, your business plan should include your growth plans, goals you want to achieve, and milestones you have recorded.

A business plan can also attract new business partners that are willing to contribute financially and intellectually. If you are writing a business plan to a bank, your project must show your traction , that is, the proof that you can pay back any loan borrowed.

Also, if you are writing to an investor, your plan must contain evidence that you can effectively utilize the funds you want them to invest in your business. Here, you are using your business plan to persuade a group or an individual that your business is a source of a good investment.

2. Monitor Business Growth

A business plan can help you track cash flows in your business. It steers your business to greater heights. A business plan capable of tracking business growth should contain:

• The business goals
• Methods to achieve the goals
• Time-frame for attaining those goals

A good business plan should guide you through every step in achieving your goals. It can also track the allocation of assets to every aspect of the business. You can tell when you are spending more than you should on a project.

You can compare a business plan to a written GPS. It helps you manage your business and hints at the right time to expand your business.

3. Measure Business Success

A business plan can help you measure your business success rate. Some small-scale businesses are thriving better than more prominent companies because of their track record of success.

Right from the onset of your business operation, set goals and work towards them. Write a plan to guide you through your procedures. Use your plan to measure how much you have achieved and how much is left to attain.

You can also weigh your success by monitoring the position of your brand relative to competitors. On the other hand, a business plan can also show you why you have not achieved a goal. It can tell if you have elapsed the time frame you set to attain a goal.

4. Document Your Marketing Strategies

You can use a business plan to document your marketing plans. Every business should have an effective marketing plan.

Competition mandates every business owner to go the extraordinary mile to remain relevant in the market. Your business plan should contain your marketing strategies that work. You can measure the success rate of your marketing plans.

In your business plan, your marketing strategy must answer the questions:

• How do you want to reach your target audience?
• How do you plan to retain your customers?
• What is/are your pricing plans?
• What is your budget for marketing?

How to Write a Business Plan Step-by-Step

1. create your executive summary.

The executive summary is a snapshot of your business or a high-level overview of your business purposes and plans . Although the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, most people write it last. The length of the executive summary is not more than two pages.

Generally, there are nine sections in a business plan, the executive summary should condense essential ideas from the other eight sections.

A good executive summary should do the following:

• A Snapshot of Growth Potential. Briefly inform the reader about your company and why it will be successful)
• Contain your Mission Statement which explains what the main objective or focus of your business is.
• Product Description and Differentiation. Brief description of your products or services and why it is different from other solutions in the market.
• The Team. Basic information about your company’s leadership team and employees
• Business Concept. A solid description of what your business does.
• Target Market. The customers you plan to sell to.
• Marketing Strategy. Your plans on reaching and selling to your customers
• Current Financial State. Brief information about what revenue your business currently generates.
• Projected Financial State. Brief information about what you foresee your business revenue to be in the future.

The executive summary is the make-or-break section of your business plan. If your summary cannot in less than two pages cannot clearly describe how your business will solve a particular problem of your target audience and make a profit, your business plan is set on a faulty foundation.

Avoid using the executive summary to hype your business, instead, focus on helping the reader understand the what and how of your plan.

View the executive summary as an opportunity to introduce your vision for your company. You know your executive summary is powerful when it can answer these key questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What sector or industry are you in?
• What are your products and services?
• What is the future of your industry?
• Is your company scaleable?
• Who are the owners and leaders of your company? What are their backgrounds and experience levels?
• What is the motivation for starting your company?
• What are the next steps?

Writing the executive summary last although it is the most important section of your business plan is an excellent idea. The reason why is because it is a high-level overview of your business plan. It is the section that determines whether potential investors and lenders will read further or not.

The executive summary can be a stand-alone document that covers everything in your business plan. It is not uncommon for investors to request only the executive summary when evaluating your business. If the information in the executive summary impresses them, they will ask for the complete business plan.

If you are writing your business plan for your planning purposes, you do not need to write the executive summary.

2. Add Your Company Overview

The company overview or description is the next section in your business plan after the executive summary. It describes what your business does.

Adding your company overview can be tricky especially when your business is still in the planning stages. Existing businesses can easily summarize their current operations but may encounter difficulties trying to explain what they plan to become.

Your company overview should contain the following:

• What products and services you will provide
• Geographical markets and locations your company have a presence
• What you need to run your business
• Who your target audience or customers are
• Who will service your customers
• Your company’s purpose, mission, and vision
• Information about your company’s founders
• Who the founders are
• Notable achievements of your company so far

When creating a company overview, you have to focus on three basics: identifying your industry, identifying your customer, and explaining the problem you solve.

If you are stuck when creating your company overview, try to answer some of these questions that pertain to you.

• Who are you targeting? (The answer is not everyone)
• What pain point does your product or service solve for your customers that they will be willing to spend money on resolving?
• How does your product or service overcome that pain point?
• Where is the location of your business?
• What products, equipment, and services do you need to run your business?
• How is your company’s product or service different from your competition in the eyes of your customers?
• How many employees do you need and what skills do you require them to have?

After answering some or all of these questions, you will get more than enough information you need to write your company overview or description section. When writing this section, describe what your company does for your customers.

The company description or overview section contains three elements: mission statement, history, and objectives.

• Mission Statement

The mission statement refers to the reason why your business or company is existing. It goes beyond what you do or sell, it is about the ‘why’. A good mission statement should be emotional and inspirational.

Your mission statement should follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For example, Shopify’s mission statement is “Make commerce better for everyone.”

When describing your company’s history, make it simple and avoid the temptation of tying it to a defensive narrative. Write it in the manner you would a profile. Your company’s history should include the following information:

• Founding Date
• Major Milestones
• Location(s)
• Flagship Products or Services
• Number of Employees
• Executive Leadership Roles

When you fill in this information, you use it to write one or two paragraphs about your company’s history.

Business Objectives

Your business objective must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.) Failure to clearly identify your business objectives does not inspire confidence and makes it hard for your team members to work towards a common purpose.

3. Perform Market and Competitive Analyses to Proof a Big Enough Business Opportunity

The third step in writing a business plan is the market and competitive analysis section. Every business, no matter the size, needs to perform comprehensive market and competitive analyses before it enters into a market.

Performing market and competitive analyses are critical for the success of your business. It helps you avoid entering the right market with the wrong product, or vice versa. Anyone reading your business plans, especially financiers and financial institutions will want to see proof that there is a big enough business opportunity you are targeting.

This section is where you describe the market and industry you want to operate in and show the big opportunities in the market that your business can leverage to make a profit. If you noticed any unique trends when doing your research, show them in this section.

Market analysis alone is not enough, you have to add competitive analysis to strengthen this section. There are already businesses in the industry or market, how do you plan to take a share of the market from them?

You have to clearly illustrate the competitive landscape in your business plan. Are there areas your competitors are doing well? Are there areas where they are not doing so well? Show it.

Make it clear in this section why you are moving into the industry and what weaknesses are present there that you plan to explain. How are your competitors going to react to your market entry? How do you plan to get customers? Do you plan on taking your competitors' competitors, tap into other sources for customers, or both?

Illustrate the competitive landscape as well. What are your competitors doing well and not so well?

Answering these questions and thoughts will aid your market and competitive analysis of the opportunities in your space. Depending on how sophisticated your industry is, or the expectations of your financiers, you may need to carry out a more comprehensive market and competitive analysis to prove that big business opportunity.

Instead of looking at the market and competitive analyses as one entity, separating them will make the research even more comprehensive.

Market Analysis

Market analysis, boarding speaking, refers to research a business carried out on its industry, market, and competitors. It helps businesses gain a good understanding of their target market and the outlook of their industry. Before starting a company, it is vital to carry out market research to find out if the market is viable.

The market analysis section is a key part of the business plan. It is the section where you identify who your best clients or customers are. You cannot omit this section, without it your business plan is incomplete.

A good market analysis will tell your readers how you fit into the existing market and what makes you stand out. This section requires in-depth research, it will probably be the most time-consuming part of the business plan to write.

• Market Research

To create a compelling market analysis that will win over investors and financial institutions, you have to carry out thorough market research . Your market research should be targeted at your primary target market for your products or services. Here is what you want to find out about your target market.

• Your target market’s needs or pain points
• The existing solutions for their pain points
• Geographic Location
• Demographics

The purpose of carrying out a marketing analysis is to get all the information you need to show that you have a solid and thorough understanding of your target audience.

Only after you have fully understood the people you plan to sell your products or services to, can you evaluate correctly if your target market will be interested in your products or services.

You can easily convince interested parties to invest in your business if you can show them you thoroughly understand the market and show them that there is a market for your products or services.

How to Quantify Your Target Market

One of the goals of your marketing research is to understand who your ideal customers are and their purchasing power. To quantify your target market, you have to determine the following:

• Your Potential Customers: They are the people you plan to target. For example, if you sell accounting software for small businesses , then anyone who runs an enterprise or large business is unlikely to be your customers. Also, individuals who do not have a business will most likely not be interested in your product.
• Total Households: If you are selling household products such as heating and air conditioning systems, determining the number of total households is more important than finding out the total population in the area you want to sell to. The logic is simple, people buy the product but it is the household that uses it.
• Median Income: You need to know the median income of your target market. If you target a market that cannot afford to buy your products and services, your business will not last long.
• Income by Demographics: If your potential customers belong to a certain age group or gender, determining income levels by demographics is necessary. For example, if you sell men's clothes, your target audience is men.

What Does a Good Market Analysis Entail?

Your business does not exist on its own, it can only flourish within an industry and alongside competitors. Market analysis takes into consideration your industry, target market, and competitors. Understanding these three entities will drastically improve your company’s chances of success.

You can view your market analysis as an examination of the market you want to break into and an education on the emerging trends and themes in that market. Good market analyses include the following:

• Industry Description. You find out about the history of your industry, the current and future market size, and who the largest players/companies are in your industry.
• Overview of Target Market. You research your target market and its characteristics. Who are you targeting? Note, it cannot be everyone, it has to be a specific group. You also have to find out all information possible about your customers that can help you understand how and why they make buying decisions.
• Size of Target Market: You need to know the size of your target market, how frequently they buy, and the expected quantity they buy so you do not risk overproducing and having lots of bad inventory. Researching the size of your target market will help you determine if it is big enough for sustained business or not.
• Growth Potential: Before picking a target market, you want to be sure there are lots of potential for future growth. You want to avoid going for an industry that is declining slowly or rapidly with almost zero growth potential.
• Market Share Potential: Does your business stand a good chance of taking a good share of the market?
• Market Pricing and Promotional Strategies: Your market analysis should give you an idea of the price point you can expect to charge for your products and services. Researching your target market will also give you ideas of pricing strategies you can implement to break into the market or to enjoy maximum profits.
• Potential Barriers to Entry: One of the biggest benefits of conducting market analysis is that it shows you every potential barrier to entry your business will likely encounter. It is a good idea to discuss potential barriers to entry such as changing technology. It informs readers of your business plan that you understand the market.
• Research on Competitors: You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and how you can exploit them for the benefit of your business. Find patterns and trends among your competitors that make them successful, discover what works and what doesn’t, and see what you can do better.

The market analysis section is not just for talking about your target market, industry, and competitors. You also have to explain how your company can fill the hole you have identified in the market.

Here are some questions you can answer that can help you position your product or service in a positive light to your readers.

• Is your product or service of superior quality?
• What additional features do you offer that your competitors do not offer?
• Are you targeting a ‘new’ market?

Basically, your market analysis should include an analysis of what already exists in the market and an explanation of how your company fits into the market.

Competitive Analysis

In the competitive analysis section, y ou have to understand who your direct and indirect competitions are, and how successful they are in the marketplace. It is the section where you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, the advantage(s) they possess in the market and show the unique features or qualities that make you different from your competitors.

Many businesses do market analysis and competitive analysis together. However, to fully understand what the competitive analysis entails, it is essential to separate it from the market analysis.

Competitive analysis for your business can also include analysis on how to overcome barriers to entry in your target market.

The primary goal of conducting a competitive analysis is to distinguish your business from your competitors. A strong competitive analysis is essential if you want to convince potential funding sources to invest in your business. You have to show potential investors and lenders that your business has what it takes to compete in the marketplace successfully.

Competitive analysis will s how you what the strengths of your competition are and what they are doing to maintain that advantage.

When doing your competitive research, you first have to identify your competitor and then get all the information you can about them. The idea of spending time to identify your competitor and learn everything about them may seem daunting but it is well worth it.

Find answers to the following questions after you have identified who your competitors are.

• What are your successful competitors doing?
• Why is what they are doing working?
• Can your business do it better?
• What are the weaknesses of your successful competitors?
• What are they not doing well?
• Can your business turn its weaknesses into strengths?
• How good is your competitors’ customer service?
• Where do your competitors invest in advertising?
• What sales and pricing strategies are they using?
• What marketing strategies are they using?
• What kind of press coverage do they get?
• What are their customers saying about your competitors (both the positive and negative)?

If your competitors have a website, it is a good idea to visit their websites for more competitors’ research. Check their “About Us” page for more information.

If you are presenting your business plan to investors, you need to clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors. Investors can easily tell when you have not properly researched your competitors.

Take time to think about what unique qualities or features set you apart from your competitors. If you do not have any direct competition offering your product to the market, it does not mean you leave out the competitor analysis section blank. Instead research on other companies that are providing a similar product, or whose product is solving the problem your product solves.

The next step is to create a table listing the top competitors you want to include in your business plan. Ensure you list your business as the last and on the right. What you just created is known as the competitor analysis table.

Direct vs Indirect Competition

You cannot know if your product or service will be a fit for your target market if you have not understood your business and the competitive landscape.

There is no market you want to target where you will not encounter competition, even if your product is innovative. Including competitive analysis in your business plan is essential.

If you are entering an established market, you need to explain how you plan to differentiate your products from the available options in the market. Also, include a list of few companies that you view as your direct competitors The competition you face in an established market is your direct competition.

In situations where you are entering a market with no direct competition, it does not mean there is no competition there. Consider your indirect competition that offers substitutes for the products or services you offer.

For example, if you sell an innovative SaaS product, let us say a project management software , a company offering time management software is your indirect competition.

There is an easy way to find out who your indirect competitors are in the absence of no direct competitors. You simply have to research how your potential customers are solving the problems that your product or service seeks to solve. That is your direct competition.

Factors that Differentiate Your Business from the Competition

There are three main factors that any business can use to differentiate itself from its competition. They are cost leadership, product differentiation, and market segmentation.

1. Cost Leadership

A strategy you can impose to maximize your profits and gain an edge over your competitors. It involves offering lower prices than what the majority of your competitors are offering.

A common practice among businesses looking to enter into a market where there are dominant players is to use free trials or pricing to attract as many customers as possible to their offer.

2. Product Differentiation

Your product or service should have a unique selling proposition (USP) that your competitors do not have or do not stress in their marketing.

Part of the marketing strategy should involve making your products unique and different from your competitors. It does not have to be different from your competitors, it can be the addition to a feature or benefit that your competitors do not currently have.

3. Market Segmentation

As a new business seeking to break into an industry, you will gain more success from focusing on a specific niche or target market, and not the whole industry.

If your competitors are focused on a general need or target market, you can differentiate yourself from them by having a small and hyper-targeted audience. For example, if your competitors are selling men’s clothes in their online stores , you can sell hoodies for men.

4. Define Your Business and Management Structure

The next step in your business plan is your business and management structure. It is the section where you describe the legal structure of your business and the team running it.

Your business is only as good as the management team that runs it, while the management team can only strive when there is a proper business and management structure in place.

If your company is a sole proprietor or a limited liability company (LLC), a general or limited partnership, or a C or an S corporation, state it clearly in this section.

Use an organizational chart to show the management structure in your business. Clearly show who is in charge of what area in your company. It is where you show how each key manager or team leader’s unique experience can contribute immensely to the success of your company. You can also opt to add the resumes and CVs of the key players in your company.

The business and management structure section should show who the owner is, and other owners of the businesses (if the business has other owners). For businesses or companies with multiple owners, include the percent ownership of the various owners and clearly show the extent of each others’ involvement in the company.

Investors want to know who is behind the company and the team running it to determine if it has the right management to achieve its set goals.

Management Team

The management team section is where you show that you have the right team in place to successfully execute the business operations and ideas. Take time to create the management structure for your business. Think about all the important roles and responsibilities that you need managers for to grow your business.

Include brief bios of each key team member and ensure you highlight only the relevant information that is needed. If your team members have background industry experience or have held top positions for other companies and achieved success while filling that role, highlight it in this section.

A common mistake that many startups make is assigning C-level titles such as (CMO and CEO) to everyone on their team. It is unrealistic for a small business to have those titles. While it may look good on paper for the ego of your team members, it can prevent investors from investing in your business.

Instead of building an unrealistic management structure that does not fit your business reality, it is best to allow business titles to grow as the business grows. Starting everyone at the top leaves no room for future change or growth, which is bad for productivity.

Your management team does not have to be complete before you start writing your business plan. You can have a complete business plan even when there are managerial positions that are empty and need filling.

If you have management gaps in your team, simply show the gaps and indicate you are searching for the right candidates for the role(s). Investors do not expect you to have a full management team when you are just starting your business.

Key Questions to Answer When Structuring Your Management Team

• Who are the key leaders?
• What experiences, skills, and educational backgrounds do you expect your key leaders to have?
• Do your key leaders have industry experience?
• What positions will they fill and what duties will they perform in those positions?
• What level of authority do the key leaders have and what are their responsibilities?
• What is the salary for the various management positions that will attract the ideal candidates?

Additional Tips for Writing the Management Structure Section

1. Avoid Adding ‘Ghost’ Names to Your Management Team

There is always that temptation to include a ‘ghost’ name to your management team to attract and influence investors to invest in your business. Although the presence of these celebrity management team members may attract the attention of investors, it can cause your business to lose any credibility if you get found out.

Seasoned investors will investigate further the members of your management team before committing fully to your business If they find out that the celebrity name used does not play any actual role in your business, they will not invest and may write you off as dishonest.

2. Focus on Credentials But Pay Extra Attention to the Roles

Investors want to know the experience that your key team members have to determine if they can successfully reach the company’s growth and financial goals.

While it is an excellent boost for your key management team to have the right credentials, you also want to pay extra attention to the roles they will play in your company.

Organizational Chart

Adding an organizational chart in this section of your business plan is not necessary, you can do it in your business plan’s appendix.

If you are exploring funding options, it is not uncommon to get asked for your organizational chart. The function of an organizational chart goes beyond raising money, you can also use it as a useful planning tool for your business.

An organizational chart can help you identify how best to structure your management team for maximum productivity and point you towards key roles you need to fill in the future.

You can use the organizational chart to show your company’s internal management structure such as the roles and responsibilities of your management team, and relationships that exist between them.

5. Describe Your Product and Service Offering

In your business plan, you have to describe what you sell or the service you plan to offer. It is the next step after defining your business and management structure. The products and services section is where you sell the benefits of your business.

Here you have to explain how your product or service will benefit your customers and describe your product lifecycle. It is also the section where you write down your plans for intellectual property like patent filings and copyrighting.

The research and development that you are undertaking for your product or service need to be explained in detail in this section. However, do not get too technical, sell the general idea and its benefits.

If you have any diagrams or intricate designs of your product or service, do not include them in the products and services section. Instead, leave them for the addendum page. Also, if you are leaving out diagrams or designs for the addendum, ensure you add this phrase “For more detail, visit the addendum Page #.”

Your product and service section in your business plan should include the following:

• A detailed explanation that clearly shows how your product or service works.
• The pricing model for your product or service.
• Your business’ sales and distribution strategy.
• The ideal customers that want your product or service.
• The benefits of your products and services.
• Reason(s) why your product or service is a better alternative to what your competitors are currently offering in the market.
• Plans for filling the orders you receive
• If you have current or pending patents, copyrights, and trademarks for your product or service, you can also discuss them in this section.

What to Focus On When Describing the Benefits, Lifecycle, and Production Process of Your Products or Services

In the products and services section, you have to distill the benefits, lifecycle, and production process of your products and services.

When describing the benefits of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Unique features
• Translating the unique features into benefits
• The emotional, psychological, and practical payoffs to attract customers
• Intellectual property rights or any patents

When describing the product life cycle of your products or services, here are some key factors to focus on.

• Upsells, cross-sells, and down-sells
• Time between purchases
• Plans for research and development.

When describing the production process for your products or services, you need to think about the following:

• The creation of new or existing products and services.
• The sources for the raw materials or components you need for production.
• Assembling the products
• Maintaining quality control
• Supply-chain logistics (receiving the raw materials and delivering the finished products)
• The day-to-day management of the production processes, bookkeeping, and inventory.

Tips for Writing the Products or Services Section of Your Business Plan

1. Avoid Technical Descriptions and Industry Buzzwords

The products and services section of your business plan should clearly describe the products and services that your company provides. However, it is not a section to include technical jargons that anyone outside your industry will not understand.

A good practice is to remove highly detailed or technical descriptions in favor of simple terms. Industry buzzwords are not necessary, if there are simpler terms you can use, then use them. If you plan to use your business plan to source funds, making the product or service section so technical will do you no favors.

2. Describe How Your Products or Services Differ from Your Competitors

When potential investors look at your business plan, they want to know how the products and services you are offering differ from that of your competition. Differentiating your products or services from your competition in a way that makes your solution more attractive is critical.

If you are going the innovative path and there is no market currently for your product or service, you need to describe in this section why the market needs your product or service.

For example, overnight delivery was a niche business that only a few companies were participating in. Federal Express (FedEx) had to show in its business plan that there was a large opportunity for that service and they justified why the market needed that service.

3. Long or Short Products or Services Section

Should your products or services section be short? Does the long products or services section attract more investors?

There are no straightforward answers to these questions. Whether your products or services section should be long or relatively short depends on the nature of your business.

If your business is product-focused, then automatically you need to use more space to describe the details of your products. However, if the product your business sells is a commodity item that relies on competitive pricing or other pricing strategies, you do not have to use up so much space to provide significant details about the product.

Likewise, if you are selling a commodity that is available in numerous outlets, then you do not have to spend time on writing a long products or services section.

The key to the success of your business is most likely the effectiveness of your marketing strategies compared to your competitors. Use more space to address that section.

If you are creating a new product or service that the market does not know about, your products or services section can be lengthy. The reason why is because you need to explain everything about the product or service such as the nature of the product, its use case, and values.

A short products or services section for an innovative product or service will not give the readers enough information to properly evaluate your business.

4. Describe Your Relationships with Vendors or Suppliers

Your business will rely on vendors or suppliers to supply raw materials or the components needed to make your products. In your products and services section, describe your relationships with your vendors and suppliers fully.

Avoid the mistake of relying on only one supplier or vendor. If that supplier or vendor fails to supply or goes out of business, you can easily face supply problems and struggle to meet your demands. Plan to set up multiple vendor or supplier relationships for better business stability.

5. Your Primary Goal Is to Convince Your Readers

The primary goal of your business plan is to convince your readers that your business is viable and to create a guide for your business to follow. It applies to the products and services section.

When drafting this section, think like the reader. See your reader as someone who has no idea about your products and services. You are using the products and services section to provide the needed information to help your reader understand your products and services. As a result, you have to be clear and to the point.

While you want to educate your readers about your products or services, you also do not want to bore them with lots of technical details. Show your products and services and not your fancy choice of words.

Your products and services section should provide the answer to the “what” question for your business. You and your management team may run the business, but it is your products and services that are the lifeblood of the business.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing your Products and Services Section

Answering these questions can help you write your products and services section quickly and in a way that will appeal to your readers.

• Are your products existing on the market or are they still in the development stage?
• What is your timeline for adding new products and services to the market?
• What are the positives that make your products and services different from your competitors?
• Do your products and services have any competitive advantage that your competitors’ products and services do not currently have?
• Do your products or services have any competitive disadvantages that you need to overcome to compete with your competitors? If your answer is yes, state how you plan to overcome them,
• How much does it cost to produce your products or services? How much do you plan to sell it for?
• What is the price for your products and services compared to your competitors? Is pricing an issue?
• What are your operating costs and will it be low enough for you to compete with your competitors and still take home a reasonable profit margin?
• What is your plan for acquiring your products? Are you involved in the production of your products or services?
• Are you the manufacturer and produce all the components you need to create your products? Do you assemble your products by using components supplied by other manufacturers? Do you purchase your products directly from suppliers or wholesalers?
• Do you have a steady supply of products that you need to start your business? (If your business is yet to kick-off)
• How do you plan to distribute your products or services to the market?

You can also hint at the marketing or promotion plans you have for your products or services such as how you plan to build awareness or retain customers. The next section is where you can go fully into details about your business’s marketing and sales plan.

6. Show and Explain Your Marketing and Sales Plan

Providing great products and services is wonderful, but it means nothing if you do not have a marketing and sales plan to inform your customers about them. Your marketing and sales plan is critical to the success of your business.

The sales and marketing section is where you show and offer a detailed explanation of your marketing and sales plan and how you plan to execute it. It covers your pricing plan, proposed advertising and promotion activities, activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success, and the benefits of your products and services.

There are several ways you can approach your marketing and sales strategy. Ideally, your marketing and sales strategy has to fit the unique needs of your business.

In this section, you describe how the plans your business has for attracting and retaining customers, and the exact process for making a sale happen. It is essential to thoroughly describe your complete marketing and sales plans because you are still going to reference this section when you are making financial projections for your business.

Outline Your Business’ Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The sales and marketing section is where you outline your business’s unique selling proposition (USP). When you are developing your unique selling proposition, think about the strongest reasons why people should buy from you over your competition. That reason(s) is most likely a good fit to serve as your unique selling proposition (USP).

Target Market and Target Audience

Plans on how to get your products or services to your target market and how to get your target audience to buy them go into this section. You also highlight the strengths of your business here, particularly what sets them apart from your competition.

Before you start writing your marketing and sales plan, you need to have properly defined your target audience and fleshed out your buyer persona. If you do not first understand the individual you are marketing to, your marketing and sales plan will lack any substance and easily fall.

Creating a Smart Marketing and Sales Plan

Marketing your products and services is an investment that requires you to spend money. Like any other investment, you have to generate a good return on investment (ROI) to justify using that marketing and sales plan. Good marketing and sales plans bring in high sales and profits to your company.

Avoid spending money on unproductive marketing channels. Do your research and find out the best marketing and sales plan that works best for your company.

Your marketing and sales plan can be broken into different parts: your positioning statement, pricing, promotion, packaging, advertising, public relations, content marketing, social media, and strategic alliances.

Your Positioning Statement

Your positioning statement is the first part of your marketing and sales plan. It refers to the way you present your company to your customers.

Are you the premium solution, the low-price solution, or are you the intermediary between the two extremes in the market? What do you offer that your competitors do not that can give you leverage in the market?

Before you start writing your positioning statement, you need to spend some time evaluating the current market conditions. Here are some questions that can help you to evaluate the market

• What are the unique features or benefits that you offer that your competitors lack?
• What are your customers’ primary needs and wants?
• Why should a customer choose you over your competition? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition?
• How does your company’s solution compare with other solutions in the market?

After answering these questions, then you can start writing your positioning statement. Your positioning statement does not have to be in-depth or too long.

All you need to explain with your positioning statement are two focus areas. The first is the position of your company within the competitive landscape. The other focus area is the core value proposition that sets your company apart from other alternatives that your ideal customer might consider.

Here is a simple template you can use to develop a positioning statement.

For [description of target market] who [need of target market], [product or service] [how it meets the need]. Unlike [top competition], it [most essential distinguishing feature].

For example, let’s create the positioning statement for fictional accounting software and QuickBooks alternative , TBooks.

“For small business owners who need accounting services, TBooks is an accounting software that helps small businesses handle their small business bookkeeping basics quickly and easily. Unlike Wave, TBooks gives small businesses access to live sessions with top accountants.”

You can edit this positioning statement sample and fill it with your business details.

After writing your positioning statement, the next step is the pricing of your offerings. The overall positioning strategy you set in your positioning statement will often determine how you price your products or services.

Pricing is a powerful tool that sends a strong message to your customers. Failure to get your pricing strategy right can make or mar your business. If you are targeting a low-income audience, setting a premium price can result in low sales.

You can use pricing to communicate your positioning to your customers. For example, if you are offering a product at a premium price, you are sending a message to your customers that the product belongs to the premium category.

Basic Rules to Follow When Pricing Your Offering

Setting a price for your offering involves more than just putting a price tag on it. Deciding on the right pricing for your offering requires following some basic rules. They include covering your costs, primary and secondary profit center pricing, and matching the market rate.

• Covering Your Costs: The price you set for your products or service should be more than it costs you to produce and deliver them. Every business has the same goal, to make a profit. Depending on the strategy you want to use, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the vast majority of businesses follow this rule.
• Primary and Secondary Profit Center Pricing: When a company sets its price above the cost of production, it is making that product its primary profit center. A company can also decide not to make its initial price its primary profit center by selling below or at even with its production cost. It rather depends on the support product or even maintenance that is associated with the initial purchase to make its profit. The initial price thus became its secondary profit center.
• Matching the Market Rate: A good rule to follow when pricing your products or services is to match your pricing with consumer demand and expectations. If you price your products or services beyond the price your customer perceives as the ideal price range, you may end up with no customers. Pricing your products too low below what your customer perceives as the ideal price range may lead to them undervaluing your offering.

Pricing Strategy

Your pricing strategy influences the price of your offering. There are several pricing strategies available for you to choose from when examining the right pricing strategy for your business. They include cost-plus pricing, market-based pricing, value pricing, and more.

• Cost-plus Pricing: This strategy is one of the simplest and oldest pricing strategies. Here you consider the cost of producing a unit of your product and then add a profit to it to arrive at your market price. It is an effective pricing strategy for manufacturers because it helps them cover their initial costs. Another name for the cost-plus pricing strategy is the markup pricing strategy.
• Market-based Pricing: This pricing strategy analyses the market including competitors’ pricing and then sets a price based on what the market is expecting. With this pricing strategy, you can either set your price at the low-end or high-end of the market.
• Value Pricing: This pricing strategy involves setting a price based on the value you are providing to your customer. When adopting a value-based pricing strategy, you have to set a price that your customers are willing to pay. Service-based businesses such as small business insurance providers , luxury goods sellers, and the fashion industry use this pricing strategy.

After carefully sorting out your positioning statement and pricing, the next item to look at is your promotional strategy. Your promotional strategy explains how you plan on communicating with your customers and prospects.

As a business, you must measure all your costs, including the cost of your promotions. You also want to measure how much sales your promotions bring for your business to determine its usefulness. Promotional strategies or programs that do not lead to profit need to be removed.

There are different types of promotional strategies you can adopt for your business, they include advertising, public relations, and content marketing.

Advertising

Your business plan should include your advertising plan which can be found in the marketing and sales plan section. You need to include an overview of your advertising plans such as the areas you plan to spend money on to advertise your business and offers.

Ensure that you make it clear in this section if your business will be advertising online or using the more traditional offline media, or the combination of both online and offline media. You can also include the advertising medium you want to use to raise awareness about your business and offers.

Some common online advertising mediums you can use include social media ads, landing pages, sales pages, SEO, Pay-Per-Click, emails, Google Ads, and others. Some common traditional and offline advertising mediums include word of mouth, radios, direct mail, televisions, flyers, billboards, posters, and others.

A key component of your advertising strategy is how you plan to measure the effectiveness and success of your advertising campaign. There is no point in sticking with an advertising plan or medium that does not produce results for your business in the long run.

Public Relations

A great way to reach your customers is to get the media to cover your business or product. Publicity, especially good ones, should be a part of your marketing and sales plan. In this section, show your plans for getting prominent reviews of your product from reputable publications and sources.

Your business needs that exposure to grow. If public relations is a crucial part of your promotional strategy, provide details about your public relations plan here.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a popular promotional strategy used by businesses to inform and attract their customers. It is about teaching and educating your prospects on various topics of interest in your niche, it does not just involve informing them about the benefits and features of the products and services you have,

Businesses publish content usually for free where they provide useful information, tips, and advice so that their target market can be made aware of the importance of their products and services. Content marketing strategies seek to nurture prospects into buyers over time by simply providing value.

Your company can create a blog where it will be publishing content for its target market. You will need to use the best website builder such as Wix and Squarespace and the best web hosting services such as Bluehost, Hostinger, and other Bluehost alternatives to create a functional blog or website.

If content marketing is a crucial part of your promotional strategy (as it should be), detail your plans under promotions.

Including high-quality images of the packaging of your product in your business plan is a lovely idea. You can add the images of the packaging of that product in the marketing and sales plan section. If you are not selling a product, then you do not need to include any worry about the physical packaging of your product.

When organizing the packaging section of your business plan, you can answer the following questions to make maximum use of this section.

• Is your choice of packaging consistent with your positioning strategy?
• What key value proposition does your packaging communicate? (It should reflect the key value proposition of your business)
• How does your packaging compare to that of your competitors?

Social Media

Your 21st-century business needs to have a good social media presence. Not having one is leaving out opportunities for growth and reaching out to your prospect.

You do not have to join the thousands of social media platforms out there. What you need to do is join the ones that your customers are active on and be active there.

Businesses use social media to provide information about their products such as promotions, discounts, the benefits of their products, and content on their blogs.

Social media is also a platform for engaging with your customers and getting feedback about your products or services. Make no mistake, more and more of your prospects are using social media channels to find more information about companies.

You need to consider the social media channels you want to prioritize your business (prioritize the ones your customers are active in) and your branding plans in this section.

Strategic Alliances

If your company plans to work closely with other companies as part of your sales and marketing plan, include it in this section. Prove details about those partnerships in your business plan if you have already established them.

Strategic alliances can be beneficial for all parties involved including your company. Working closely with another company in the form of a partnership can provide access to a different target market segment for your company.

The company you are partnering with may also gain access to your target market or simply offer a new product or service (that of your company) to its customers.

Mutually beneficial partnerships can cover the weaknesses of one company with the strength of another. You should consider strategic alliances with companies that sell complimentary products to yours. For example, if you provide printers, you can partner with a company that produces ink since the customers that buy printers from you will also need inks for printing.

Steps Involved in Creating a Marketing and Sales Plan

1. Focus on Your Target Market

Identify who your customers are, the market you want to target. Then determine the best ways to get your products or services to your potential customers.

2. Evaluate Your Competition

One of the goals of having a marketing plan is to distinguish yourself from your competition. You cannot stand out from them without first knowing them in and out.

You can know your competitors by gathering information about their products, pricing, service, and advertising campaigns.

These questions can help you know your competition.

• What makes your competition successful?
• What are their weaknesses?
• What are customers saying about your competition?

3. Consider Your Brand

Customers' perception of your brand has a strong impact on your sales. Your marketing and sales plan should seek to bolster the image of your brand. Before you start marketing your business, think about the message you want to pass across about your business and your products and services.

4. Focus on Benefits

The majority of your customers do not view your product in terms of features, what they want to know is the benefits and solutions your product offers. Think about the problems your product solves and the benefits it delivers, and use it to create the right sales and marketing message.

Your marketing plan should focus on what you want your customer to get instead of what you provide. Identify those benefits in your marketing and sales plan.

5. Focus on Differentiation

Your marketing and sales plan should look for a unique angle they can take that differentiates your business from the competition, even if the products offered are similar. Some good areas of differentiation you can use are your benefits, pricing, and features.

Key Questions to Answer When Writing Your Marketing and Sales Plan

• What is your company’s budget for sales and marketing campaigns?
• What key metrics will you use to determine if your marketing plans are successful?
• What are your alternatives if your initial marketing efforts do not succeed?
• Who are the sales representatives you need to promote your products or services?
• What are the marketing and sales channels you plan to use? How do you plan to get your products in front of your ideal customers?
• Where will you sell your products?

You may want to include samples of marketing materials you plan to use such as print ads, website descriptions, and social media ads. While it is not compulsory to include these samples, it can help you better communicate your marketing and sales plan and objectives.

The purpose of the marketing and sales section is to answer this question “How will you reach your customers?” If you cannot convincingly provide an answer to this question, you need to rework your marketing and sales section.

7. Clearly Show Your Funding Request

If you are writing your business plan to ask for funding from investors or financial institutions, the funding request section is where you will outline your funding requirements. The funding request section should answer the question ‘How much money will your business need in the near future (3 to 5 years)?’

A good funding request section will clearly outline and explain the amount of funding your business needs over the next five years. You need to know the amount of money your business needs to make an accurate funding request.

Also, when writing your funding request, provide details of how the funds will be used over the period. Specify if you want to use the funds to buy raw materials or machinery, pay salaries, pay for advertisements, and cover specific bills such as rent and electricity.

In addition to explaining what you want to use the funds requested for, you need to clearly state the projected return on investment (ROI) . Investors and creditors want to know if your business can generate profit for them if they put funds into it.

Ensure you do not inflate the figures and stay as realistic as possible. Investors and financial institutions you are seeking funds from will do their research before investing money in your business.

If you are not sure of an exact number to request from, you can use some range of numbers as rough estimates. Add a best-case scenario and a work-case scenario to your funding request. Also, include a description of your strategic future financial plans such as selling your business or paying off debts.

Funding Request: Debt or Equity?

When making your funding request, specify the type of funding you want. Do you want debt or equity? Draw out the terms that will be applicable for the funding, and the length of time the funding request will cover.

Case for Equity

If your new business has not yet started generating profits, you are most likely preparing to sell equity in your business to raise capital at the early stage. Equity here refers to ownership. In this case, you are selling a portion of your company to raise capital.

Although this method of raising capital for your business does not put your business in debt, keep in mind that an equity owner may expect to play a key role in company decisions even if he does not hold a major stake in the company.

Most equity sales for startups are usually private transactions . If you are making a funding request by offering equity in exchange for funding, let the investor know that they will be paid a dividend (a share of the company’s profit). Also, let the investor know the process for selling their equity in your business.

Case for Debt

You may decide not to offer equity in exchange for funds, instead, you make a funding request with the promise to pay back the money borrowed at the agreed time frame.

When making a funding request with an agreement to pay back, note that you will have to repay your creditors both the principal amount borrowed and the interest on it. Financial institutions offer this type of funding for businesses.

Large companies combine both equity and debt in their capital structure. When drafting your business plan, decide if you want to offer both or one over the other.

Before you sell equity in exchange for funding in your business, consider if you are willing to accept not being in total control of your business. Also, before you seek loans in your funding request section, ensure that the terms of repayment are favorable.

You should set a clear timeline in your funding request so that potential investors and creditors can know what you are expecting. Some investors and creditors may agree to your funding request and then delay payment for longer than 30 days, meanwhile, your business needs an immediate cash injection to operate efficiently.

Additional Tips for Writing the Funding Request Section of your Business Plan

The funding request section is not necessary for every business, it is only needed by businesses who plan to use their business plan to secure funding.

If you are adding the funding request section to your business plan, provide an itemized summary of how you plan to use the funds requested. Hiring a lawyer, accountant, or other professionals may be necessary for the proper development of this section.

You should also gather and use financial statements that add credibility and support to your funding requests. Ensure that the financial statements you use should include your projected financial data such as projected cash flows, forecast statements, and expenditure budgets.

If you are an existing business, include all historical financial statements such as cash flow statements, balance sheets and income statements .

Provide monthly and quarterly financial statements for a year. If your business has records that date back beyond the one-year mark, add the yearly statements of those years. These documents are for the appendix section of your business plan.

8. Detail Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projections

If you used the funding request section in your business plan, supplement it with a financial plan, metrics, and projections. This section paints a picture of the past performance of your business and then goes ahead to make an informed projection about its future.

The goal of this section is to convince readers that your business is going to be a financial success. It outlines your business plan to generate enough profit to repay the loan (with interest if applicable) and to generate a decent return on investment for investors.

If you have an existing business already in operation, use this section to demonstrate stability through finance. This section should include your cash flow statements, balance sheets, and income statements covering the last three to five years. If your business has some acceptable collateral that you can use to acquire loans, list it in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

Apart from current financial statements, this section should also contain a prospective financial outlook that spans the next five years. Include forecasted income statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, and capital expenditure budget.

If your business is new and is not yet generating profit, use clear and realistic projections to show the potentials of your business.

When drafting this section, research industry norms and the performance of comparable businesses. Your financial projections should cover at least five years. State the logic behind your financial projections. Remember you can always make adjustments to this section as the variables change.

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section create a baseline which your business can either exceed or fail to reach. If your business fails to reach your projections in this section, you need to understand why it failed.

Investors and loan managers spend a lot of time going through the financial plan, metrics, and projection section compared to other parts of the business plan. Ensure you spend time creating credible financial analyses for your business in this section.

Many entrepreneurs find this section daunting to write. You do not need a business degree to create a solid financial forecast for your business. Business finances, especially for startups, are not as complicated as they seem. There are several online tools and templates that make writing this section so much easier.

Use Graphs and Charts

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section is a great place to use graphs and charts to tell the financial story of your business. Charts and images make it easier to communicate your finances.

Accuracy in this section is key, ensure you carefully analyze your past financial statements properly before making financial projects.

Address the Risk Factors and Show Realistic Financial Projections

Keep your financial plan, metrics, and projection realistic. It is okay to be optimistic in your financial projection, however, you have to justify it.

You should also address the various risk factors associated with your business in this section. Investors want to know the potential risks involved, show them. You should also show your plans for mitigating those risks.

What You Should In The Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection Section of Your Business Plan

The financial plan, metrics, and projection section of your business plan should have monthly sales and revenue forecasts for the first year. It should also include annual projections that cover 3 to 5 years.

A three-year projection is a basic requirement to have in your business plan. However, some investors may request a five-year forecast.

Your business plan should include the following financial statements: sales forecast, personnel plan, income statement, income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, and an exit strategy.

1. Sales Forecast

Sales forecast refers to your projections about the number of sales your business is going to record over the next few years. It is typically broken into several rows, with each row assigned to a core product or service that your business is offering.

One common mistake people make in their business plan is to break down the sales forecast section into long details. A sales forecast should forecast the high-level details.

For example, if you are forecasting sales for a payroll software provider, you could break down your forecast into target market segments or subscription categories.

Your sales forecast section should also have a corresponding row for each sales row to cover the direct cost or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). The objective of these rows is to show the expenses that your business incurs in making and delivering your product or service.

Note that your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) should only cover those direct costs incurred when making your products. Other indirect expenses such as insurance, salaries, payroll tax, and rent should not be included.

For example, the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a restaurant is the cost of ingredients while for a consulting company it will be the cost of paper and other presentation materials.

2. Personnel Plan

The personnel plan section is where you provide details about the payment plan for your employees. For a small business, you can easily list every position in your company and how much you plan to pay in the personnel plan.

However, for larger businesses, you have to break the personnel plan into functional groups such as sales and marketing.

The personnel plan will also include the cost of an employee beyond salary, commonly referred to as the employee burden. These costs include insurance, payroll taxes , and other essential costs incurred monthly as a result of having employees on your payroll.

3. Income Statement

The income statement section shows if your business is making a profit or taking a loss. Another name for the income statement is the profit and loss (P&L). It takes data from your sales forecast and personnel plan and adds other ongoing expenses you incur while running your business.

Every business plan should have an income statement. It subtracts your business expenses from its earnings to show if your business is generating profit or incurring losses.

The income statement has the following items: sales, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), gross margin, operating expenses, total operating expenses, operating income , total expenses, and net profit.

• Sales refer to the revenue your business generates from selling its products or services. Other names for sales are income or revenue.
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) refers to the total cost of selling your products. Other names for COGS are direct costs or cost of sales. Manufacturing businesses use the Costs of Goods Manufactured (COGM) .
• Gross Margin is the figure you get when you subtract your COGS from your sales. In your income statement, you can express it as a percentage of total sales (Gross margin / Sales = Gross Margin Percent).
• Operating Expenses refer to all the expenses you incur from running your business. It exempts the COGS because it stands alone as a core part of your income statement. You also have to exclude taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Your operating expenses include salaries, marketing expenses, research and development (R&D) expenses, and other expenses.
• Total Operating Expenses refers to the sum of all your operating expenses including those exemptions named above under operating expenses.
• Operating Income refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is simply known as the acronym EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). Calculating your operating income is simple, all you need to do is to subtract your COGS and total operating expenses from your sales.
• Total Expenses refer to the sum of your operating expenses and your business’ interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
• Net profit shows whether your business has made a profit or taken a loss during a given timeframe.

4. Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement tracks the money you have in the bank at any given point. It is often confused with the income statement or the profit and loss statement. They are both different types of financial statements. The income statement calculates your profits and losses while the cash flow statement shows you how much you have in the bank.

5. Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is a financial statement that provides an overview of the financial health of your business. It contains information about the assets and liabilities of your company, and owner’s or shareholders’ equity.

You can get the net worth of your company by subtracting your company’s liabilities from its assets.

6. Exit Strategy

The exit strategy refers to a probable plan for selling your business either to the public in an IPO or to another company. It is the last thing you include in the financial plan, metrics, and projection section.

You can choose to omit the exit strategy from your business plan if you plan to maintain full ownership of your business and do not plan on seeking angel investment or virtual capitalist (VC) funding.

Investors may want to know what your exit plan is. They invest in your business to get a good return on investment.

Your exit strategy does not have to include long and boring details. Ensure you identify some interested parties who may be interested in buying the company if it becomes a success.

Key Questions to Answer with Your Financial Plan, Metrics, and Projection

Your financial plan, metrics, and projection section helps investors, creditors, or your internal managers to understand what your expenses are, the amount of cash you need, and what it takes to make your company profitable. It also shows what you will be doing with any funding.

You do not need to show actual financial data if you do not have one. Adding forecasts and projections to your financial statements is added proof that your strategy is feasible and shows investors you have planned properly.

Here are some key questions to answer to help you develop this section.

• What is your sales forecast for the next year?
• When will your company achieve a positive cash flow?
• What are the core expenses you need to operate?
• How much money do you need upfront to operate or grow your company?
• How will you use the loans or investments?

9. Add an Appendix to Your Business Plan

Adding an appendix to your business plan is optional. It is a useful place to put any charts, tables, legal notes, definitions, permits, résumés, and other critical information that do not fit into other sections of your business plan.

The appendix section is where you would want to include details of a patent or patent-pending if you have one. You can always add illustrations or images of your products here. It is the last section of your business plan.

When writing your business plan, there are details you cut short or remove to prevent the entire section from becoming too lengthy. There are also details you want to include in the business plan but are not a good fit for any of the previous sections. You can add that additional information to the appendix section.

Businesses also use the appendix section to include supporting documents or other materials specially requested by investors or lenders.

You can include just about any information that supports the assumptions and statements you made in the business plan under the appendix. It is the one place in the business plan where unrelated data and information can coexist amicably.

If your appendix section is lengthy, try organizing it by adding a table of contents at the beginning of the appendix section. It is also advisable to group similar information to make it easier for the reader to access them.

A well-organized appendix section makes it easier to share your information clearly and concisely. Add footnotes throughout the rest of the business plan or make references in the plan to the documents in the appendix.

The appendix section is usually only necessary if you are seeking funding from investors or lenders, or hoping to attract partners.

People reading business plans do not want to spend time going through a heap of backup information, numbers, and charts. Keep these documents or information in the Appendix section in case the reader wants to dig deeper.

Common Items to Include in the Appendix Section of Your Business Plan

The appendix section includes documents that supplement or support the information or claims given in other sections of the business plans. Common items you can include in the appendix section include:

• Additional data about the process of manufacturing or creation
• Additional description of products or services such as product schematics
• Additional financial documents or projections
• Articles of incorporation and status
• Backup for market research or competitive analysis
• Bank statements
• Business registries
• Client testimonials (if your business is already running)
• Copies of insurances
• Credit histories (personal or/and business)
• Deeds and permits
• Equipment leases
• Examples of marketing and advertising collateral
• Industry associations and memberships
• Images of product
• Intellectual property
• Key customer contracts
• Legal documents and other contracts
• Letters of reference
• Links to references
• Market research data
• Organizational charts
• Photographs of potential facilities
• Professional licenses pertaining to your legal structure or type of business
• Purchase orders
• Resumes of the founder(s) and key managers
• State and federal identification numbers or codes
• Trademarks or patents’ registrations

Avoid using the appendix section as a place to dump any document or information you feel like adding. Only add documents or information that you support or increase the credibility of your business plan.

Tips and Strategies for Writing a Convincing Business Plan

To achieve a perfect business plan, you need to consider some key tips and strategies. These tips will raise the efficiency of your business plan above average.

1. Know Your Audience

When writing a business plan, you need to know your audience . Business owners write business plans for different reasons. Your business plan has to be specific. For example, you can write business plans to potential investors, banks, and even fellow board members of the company.

The audience you are writing to determines the structure of the business plan. As a business owner, you have to know your audience. Not everyone will be your audience. Knowing your audience will help you to narrow the scope of your business plan.

Consider what your audience wants to see in your projects, the likely questions they might ask, and what interests them.

• A business plan used to address a company's board members will center on its employment schemes, internal affairs, projects, stakeholders, etc.
• A business plan for financial institutions will talk about the size of your market and the chances for you to pay back any loans you demand.
• A business plan for investors will show proof that you can return the investment capital within a specific time. In addition, it discusses your financial projections, tractions, and market size.

2. Get Inspiration from People

Writing a business plan from scratch as an entrepreneur can be daunting. That is why you need the right inspiration to push you to write one. You can gain inspiration from the successful business plans of other businesses. Look at their business plans, the style they use, the structure of the project, etc.

To make your business plan easier to create, search companies related to your business to get an exact copy of what you need to create an effective business plan. You can also make references while citing examples in your business plans.

When drafting your business plan, get as much help from others as you possibly can. By getting inspiration from people, you can create something better than what they have.

3. Avoid Being Over Optimistic

Many business owners make use of strong adjectives to qualify their content. One of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make when preparing a business plan is promising too much.

The use of superlatives and over-optimistic claims can prepare the audience for more than you can offer. In the end, you disappoint the confidence they have in you.

In most cases, the best option is to be realistic with your claims and statistics. Most of the investors can sense a bit of incompetency from the overuse of superlatives. As a new entrepreneur, do not be tempted to over-promise to get the interests of investors.

The concept of entrepreneurship centers on risks, nothing is certain when you make future analyses. What separates the best is the ability to do careful research and work towards achieving that, not promising more than you can achieve.

To make an excellent first impression as an entrepreneur, replace superlatives with compelling data-driven content. In this way, you are more specific than someone promising a huge ROI from an investment.

4. Keep it Simple and Short

When writing business plans, ensure you keep them simple throughout. Irrespective of the purpose of the business plan, your goal is to convince the audience.

One way to achieve this goal is to make them understand your proposal. Therefore, it would be best if you avoid the use of complex grammar to express yourself. It would be a huge turn-off if the people you want to convince are not familiar with your use of words.

Another thing to note is the length of your business plan. It would be best if you made it as brief as possible.

You hardly see investors or agencies that read through an extremely long document. In that case, if your first few pages can’t convince them, then you have lost it. The more pages you write, the higher the chances of you derailing from the essential contents.

To ensure your business plan has a high conversion rate, you need to dispose of every unnecessary information. For example, if you have a strategy that you are not sure of, it would be best to leave it out of the plan.

5. Make an Outline and Follow Through

A perfect business plan must have touched every part needed to convince the audience. Business owners get easily tempted to concentrate more on their products than on other sections. Doing this can be detrimental to the efficiency of the business plan.

For example, imagine you talking about a product but omitting or providing very little information about the target audience. You will leave your clients confused.

To ensure that your business plan communicates your full business model to readers, you have to input all the necessary information in it. One of the best ways to achieve this is to design a structure and stick to it.

This structure is what guides you throughout the writing. To make your work easier, you can assign an estimated word count or page limit to every section to avoid making it too bulky for easy reading. As a guide, the necessary things your business plan must contain are:

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Product or service description
• Target audience
• Market size
• Competition analysis
• Financial projections

Some specific businesses can include some other essential sections, but these are the key sections that must be in every business plan.

6. Ask a Professional to Proofread

When writing a business plan, you must tie all loose ends to get a perfect result. When you are done with writing, call a professional to go through the document for you. You are bound to make mistakes, and the way to correct them is to get external help.

You should get a professional in your field who can relate to every section of your business plan. It would be easier for the professional to notice the inner flaws in the document than an editor with no knowledge of your business.

In addition to getting a professional to proofread, get an editor to proofread and edit your document. The editor will help you identify grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and inappropriate writing styles.

Writing a business plan can be daunting, but you can surmount that obstacle and get the best out of it with these tips.

Business Plan Examples and Templates That’ll Save You Tons of Time

1. hubspot's one-page business plan.

The one-page business plan template by HubSpot is the perfect guide for businesses of any size, irrespective of their business strategy. Although the template is condensed into a page, your final business plan should not be a page long! The template is designed to ask helpful questions that can help you develop your business plan.

Hubspot’s one-page business plan template is divided into nine fields:

• Business opportunity
• Company description
• Industry analysis
• Target market
• Implementation timeline
• Marketing plan
• Financial summary
• Funding required

2. Bplan’s Free Business Plan Template

Bplans' free business plan template is investor-approved. It is a rich template used by prestigious educational institutions such as Babson College and Princeton University to teach entrepreneurs how to create a business plan.

The template has six sections: the executive summary, opportunity, execution, company, financial plan, and appendix. There is a step-by-step guide for writing every little detail in the business plan. Follow the instructions each step of the way and you will create a business plan that impresses investors or lenders easily.

3. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

HubSpot’s downloadable business plan template is a more comprehensive option compared to the one-page business template by HubSpot. This free and downloadable business plan template is designed for entrepreneurs.

The template is a comprehensive guide and checklist for business owners just starting their businesses. It tells you everything you need to fill in each section of the business plan and how to do it.

There are nine sections in this business plan template: an executive summary, company and business description, product and services line, market analysis, marketing plan, sales plan, legal notes, financial considerations, and appendix.

4. Business Plan by My Own Business Institute

My Own Business Institute (MOBI) which is a part of Santa Clara University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers a free business plan template. You can either copy the free business template from the link provided above or download it as a Word document.

The comprehensive template consists of a whopping 15 sections.

• The Business Profile
• The Vision and the People
• Home-Based Business and Freelance Business Opportunities
• Organization
• Licenses and Permits
• Business Insurance
• Communication Tools
• Acquisitions
• Location and Leasing
• Accounting and Cash Flow
• Opening and Marketing
• Managing Employees
• Expanding and Handling Problems

There are lots of helpful tips on how to fill each section in the free business plan template by MOBI.

5. Score's Business Plan Template for Startups

Score is an American nonprofit organization that helps entrepreneurs build successful companies. This business plan template for startups by Score is available for free download. The business plan template asks a whooping 150 generic questions that help entrepreneurs from different fields to set up the perfect business plan.

The business plan template for startups contains clear instructions and worksheets, all you have to do is answer the questions and fill the worksheets.

There are nine sections in the business plan template: executive summary, company description, products and services, marketing plan, operational plan, management and organization, startup expenses and capitalization, financial plan, and appendices.

The ‘refining the plan’ resource contains instructions that help you modify your business plan to suit your specific needs, industry, and target audience. After you have completed Score’s business plan template, you can work with a SCORE mentor for expert advice in business planning.

6. Minimalist Architecture Business Plan Template by Venngage

The minimalist architecture business plan template is a simple template by Venngage that you can customize to suit your business needs .

There are five sections in the template: an executive summary, statement of problem, approach and methodology, qualifications, and schedule and benchmark. The business plan template has instructions that guide users on what to fill in each section.

7. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers two free business plan templates, filled with practical real-life examples that you can model to create your business plan. Both free business plan templates are written by fictional business owners: Rebecca who owns a consulting firm, and Andrew who owns a toy company.

There are five sections in the two SBA’s free business plan templates.

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Service Line
• Marketing and Sales

8. The $100 Startup's One-Page Business Plan

The one-page business plan by the $100 startup is a simple business plan template for entrepreneurs who do not want to create a long and complicated plan . You can include more details in the appendices for funders who want more information beyond what you can put in the one-page business plan.

There are five sections in the one-page business plan such as overview, ka-ching, hustling, success, and obstacles or challenges or open questions. You can answer all the questions using one or two sentences.

9. PandaDoc’s Free Business Plan Template

The free business plan template by PandaDoc is a comprehensive 15-page document that describes the information you should include in every section.

There are 11 sections in PandaDoc’s free business plan template.

• Executive summary
• Business description
• Products and services
• Operations plan
• Management organization
• Financial plan
• Conclusion / Call to action
• Confidentiality statement

You have to sign up for its 14-day free trial to access the template. You will find different business plan templates on PandaDoc once you sign up (including templates for general businesses and specific businesses such as bakeries, startups, restaurants, salons, hotels, and coffee shops)

PandaDoc allows you to customize its business plan templates to fit the needs of your business. After editing the template, you can send it to interested parties and track opens and views through PandaDoc.

10. Invoiceberry Templates for Word, Open Office, Excel, or PPT

InvoiceBerry is a U.K based online invoicing and tracking platform that offers free business plan templates in .docx, .odt, .xlsx, and .pptx formats for freelancers and small businesses.

Before you can download the free business plan template, it will ask you to give it your email address. After you complete the little task, it will send the download link to your inbox for you to download. It also provides a business plan checklist in .xlsx file format that ensures you add the right information to the business plan.

Alternatives to the Traditional Business Plan

A business plan is very important in mapping out how one expects their business to grow over a set number of years, particularly when they need external investment in their business. However, many investors do not have the time to watch you present your business plan. It is a long and boring read.

Luckily, there are three alternatives to the traditional business plan (the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck). These alternatives are less laborious and easier and quicker to present to investors.

Business Model Canvas (BMC)

The business model canvas is a business tool used to present all the important components of setting up a business, such as customers, route to market, value proposition, and finance in a single sheet. It provides a very focused blueprint that defines your business initially which you can later expand on if needed.

The sheet is divided mainly into company, industry, and consumer models that are interconnected in how they find problems and proffer solutions.

Segments of the Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas was developed by founder Alexander Osterwalder to answer important business questions. It contains nine segments.

• Key Partners: Who will be occupying important executive positions in your business? What do they bring to the table? Will there be a third party involved with the company?
• Key Activities: What important activities will production entail? What activities will be carried out to ensure the smooth running of the company?
• The Product’s Value Propositions: What does your product do? How will it be different from other products?
• Customer Segments: What demography of consumers are you targeting? What are the habits of these consumers? Who are the MVPs of your target consumers?
• Customer Relationships: How will the team support and work with its customer base? How do you intend to build and maintain trust with the customer?
• Key Resources: What type of personnel and tools will be needed? What size of the budget will they need access to?
• Channels: How do you plan to create awareness of your products? How do you intend to transport your product to the customer?
• Cost Structure: What is the estimated cost of production? How much will distribution cost?
• Revenue Streams: For what value are customers willing to pay? How do they prefer to pay for the product? Are there any external revenues attached apart from the main source? How do the revenue streams contribute to the overall revenue?

Lean Canvas

The lean canvas is a problem-oriented alternative to the standard business model canvas. It was proposed by Ash Maurya, creator of Lean Stack as a development of the business model generation. It uses a more problem-focused approach and it majorly targets entrepreneurs and startup businesses.

Lean Canvas uses the same 9 blocks concept as the business model canvas, however, they have been modified slightly to suit the needs and purpose of a small startup. The key partners, key activities, customer relationships, and key resources are replaced by new segments which are:

• Problem: Simple and straightforward number of problems you have identified, ideally three.
• Solution: The solutions to each problem.
• Unfair Advantage: Something you possess that can't be easily bought or replicated.
• Key Metrics: Important numbers that will tell how your business is doing.

Startup Pitch Deck

While the business model canvas compresses into a factual sheet, startup pitch decks expand flamboyantly.

Pitch decks, through slides, convey your business plan, often through graphs and images used to emphasize estimations and observations in your presentation. Entrepreneurs often use pitch decks to fully convince their target audience of their plans before discussing funding arrangements.

Considering the likelihood of it being used in a small time frame, a good startup pitch deck should ideally contain 20 slides or less to have enough time to answer questions from the audience.

Unlike the standard and lean business model canvases, a pitch deck doesn't have a set template on how to present your business plan but there are still important components to it. These components often mirror those of the business model canvas except that they are in slide form and contain more details.

Using Airbnb (one of the most successful start-ups in recent history) for reference, the important components of a good slide are listed below.

• Cover/Introduction Slide: Here, you should include your company's name and mission statement. Your mission statement should be a very catchy tagline. Also, include personal information and contact details to provide an easy link for potential investors.
• Problem Slide: This slide requires you to create a connection with the audience or the investor that you are pitching. For example in their pitch, Airbnb summarized the most important problems it would solve in three brief points – pricing of hotels, disconnection from city culture, and connection problems for local bookings.
• Solution Slide: This slide includes your core value proposition. List simple and direct solutions to the problems you have mentioned
• Customer Analysis: Here you will provide information on the customers you will be offering your service to. The identity of your customers plays an important part in fundraising as well as the long-run viability of the business.
• Market Validation: Use competitive analysis to show numbers that prove the presence of a market for your product, industry behavior in the present and the long run, as well as the percentage of the market you aim to attract. It shows that you understand your competitors and customers and convinces investors of the opportunities presented in the market.
• Business Model: Your business model is the hook of your presentation. It may vary in complexity but it should generally include a pricing system informed by your market analysis. The goal of the slide is to confirm your business model is easy to implement.
• Marketing Strategy: This slide should summarize a few customer acquisition methods that you plan to use to grow the business.
• Competitive Advantage: What this slide will do is provide information on what will set you apart and make you a more attractive option to customers. It could be the possession of technology that is not widely known in the market.
• Team Slide: Here you will give a brief description of your team. Include your key management personnel here and their specific roles in the company. Include their educational background, job history, and skillsets. Also, talk about their accomplishments in their careers so far to build investors' confidence in members of your team.
• Traction Slide: This validates the company’s business model by showing growth through early sales and support. The slide aims to reduce any lingering fears in potential investors by showing realistic periodic milestones and profit margins. It can include current sales, growth, valuable customers, pre-orders, or data from surveys outlining current consumer interest.
• Funding Slide: This slide is popularly referred to as ‘the ask'. Here you will include important details like how much is needed to get your business off the ground and how the funding will be spent to help the company reach its goals.
• Appendix Slides: Your pitch deck appendix should always be included alongside a standard pitch presentation. It consists of additional slides you could not show in the pitch deck but you need to complement your presentation.

It is important to support your calculations with pictorial renditions. Infographics, such as pie charts or bar graphs, will be more effective in presenting the information than just listing numbers. For example, a six-month graph that shows rising profit margins will easily look more impressive than merely writing it.

Lastly, since a pitch deck is primarily used to secure meetings and you may be sharing your pitch with several investors, it is advisable to keep a separate public version that doesn't include financials. Only disclose the one with projections once you have secured a link with an investor.

Advantages of the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, and Startup Pitch Deck over the Traditional Business Plan

• Time-Saving: Writing a detailed traditional business plan could take weeks or months. On the other hand, all three alternatives can be done in a few days or even one night of brainstorming if you have a comprehensive understanding of your business.
• Easier to Understand: Since the information presented is almost entirely factual, it puts focus on what is most important in running the business. They cut away the excess pages of fillers in a traditional business plan and allow investors to see what is driving the business and what is getting in the way.
• Easy to Update: Businesses typically present their business plans to many potential investors before they secure funding. What this means is that you may regularly have to amend your presentation to update statistics or adjust to audience-specific needs. For a traditional business plan, this could mean rewriting a whole section of your plan. For the three alternatives, updating is much easier because they are not voluminous.
• Guide for a More In-depth Business Plan: All three alternatives have the added benefit of being able to double as a sketch of your business plan if the need to create one arises in the future.

Business Plan FAQ

Business plans are important for any entrepreneur who is looking for a framework to run their company over some time or seeking external support. Although they are essential for new businesses, every company should ideally have a business plan to track their growth from time to time.  They can be used by startups seeking investments or loans to convey their business ideas or an employee to convince his boss of the feasibility of starting a new project. They can also be used by companies seeking to recruit high-profile employee targets into key positions or trying to secure partnerships with other firms.

Business plans often vary depending on your target audience, the scope, and the goals for the plan. Startup plans are the most common among the different types of business plans.  A start-up plan is used by a new business to present all the necessary information to help get the business up and running. They are usually used by entrepreneurs who are seeking funding from investors or bank loans. The established company alternative to a start-up plan is a feasibility plan. A feasibility plan is often used by an established company looking for new business opportunities. They are used to show the upsides of creating a new product for a consumer base. Because the audience is usually company people, it requires less company analysis. The third type of business plan is the lean business plan. A lean business plan is a brief, straight-to-the-point breakdown of your ideas and analysis for your business. It does not contain details of your proposal and can be written on one page. Finally, you have the what-if plan. As it implies, a what-if plan is a preparation for the worst-case scenario. You must always be prepared for the possibility of your original plan being rejected. A good what-if plan will serve as a good plan B to the original.

A good business plan has 10 key components. They include an executive plan, product analysis, desired customer base, company analysis, industry analysis, marketing strategy, sales strategy, financial projection, funding, and appendix. Executive Plan Your business should begin with your executive plan. An executive plan will provide early insight into what you are planning to achieve with your business. It should include your mission statement and highlight some of the important points which you will explain later. Product Analysis The next component of your business plan is your product analysis. A key part of this section is explaining the type of item or service you are going to offer as well as the market problems your product will solve. Desired Consumer Base Your product analysis should be supplemented with a detailed breakdown of your desired consumer base. Investors are always interested in knowing the economic power of your market as well as potential MVP customers. Company Analysis The next component of your business plan is your company analysis. Here, you explain how you want to run your business. It will include your operational strategy, an insight into the workforce needed to keep the company running, and important executive positions. It will also provide a calculation of expected operational costs.  Industry Analysis A good business plan should also contain well laid out industry analysis. It is important to convince potential investors you know the companies you will be competing with, as well as your plans to gain an edge on the competition. Marketing Strategy Your business plan should also include your marketing strategy. This is how you intend to spread awareness of your product. It should include a detailed explanation of the company brand as well as your advertising methods. Sales Strategy Your sales strategy comes after the market strategy. Here you give an overview of your company's pricing strategy and how you aim to maximize profits. You can also explain how your prices will adapt to market behaviors. Financial Projection The financial projection is the next component of your business plan. It explains your company's expected running cost and revenue earned during the tenure of the business plan. Financial projection gives a clear idea of how your company will develop in the future. Funding The next component of your business plan is funding. You have to detail how much external investment you need to get your business idea off the ground here. Appendix The last component of your plan is the appendix. This is where you put licenses, graphs, or key information that does not fit in any of the other components.

The business model canvas is a business management tool used to quickly define your business idea and model. It is often used when investors need you to pitch your business idea during a brief window.

A pitch deck is similar to a business model canvas except that it makes use of slides in its presentation. A pitch is not primarily used to secure funding, rather its main purpose is to entice potential investors by selling a very optimistic outlook on the business.

Business plan competitions help you evaluate the strength of your business plan. By participating in business plan competitions, you are improving your experience. The experience provides you with a degree of validation while practicing important skills. The main motivation for entering into the competitions is often to secure funding by finishing in podium positions. There is also the chance that you may catch the eye of a casual observer outside of the competition. These competitions also provide good networking opportunities. You could meet mentors who will take a keen interest in guiding you in your business journey. You also have the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs whose ideas can complement yours.

Exlore Further

• 12 Key Elements of a Business Plan (Top Components Explained)
• 13 Sources of Business Finance For Companies & Sole Traders
• 5 Common Types of Business Structures (+ Pros & Cons)
• How to Buy a Business in 8 Steps (+ Due Diligence Checklist)

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Martin luenendonk.

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

• Resources for Entrepreneurs > Opening a Business > How Do I Start a Business

Starting a Personal Secretarial Services Business

How Do I Start a Business

Launching a personal secretarial services business is your ticket to owning a good, stable business but it's important to plan out the business in detail before you start. We offer tips and advice that demystifies what it takes to be successful.

Thinking about opening a personal secretarial services business? We tell you what you need to know to get started.

Creating Business Plans for a Personal Secretarial Services Business

Does your personal secretarial services business have a business plan? If not, your company is lacking a critical business tool. If you have invested time and effort in its creation, a business plan can help your startup secure financing, attract investors and execute a strategy for growth.

To assist your efforts, you may want to consider enlisting the aid of a professional business plan writer .

Professional business plans can often be more effective than plans that are created in-house. However, outsourcing doesn't completely eliminate your responsibilities in the writing process.

Startup entrepreneurs are well advised to materially participate in the writing process, even after they have engaged a proven professional.

Assess the Competition

Long before you open a personal secretarial services business in your area, it's worthwhile to see what the competition looks like. We've provided the link below to help you find competitors near you. Simply enter your city, state and zip code to get a list of personal secretarial services businesses in your town.

• Find Competing Personal Secretarial Services Businesses

How are you going to successfully complete with existing firms? It's important that you never underestimate the competition.

Find Good Remote Business Advice

Once you've finished assessing the competion, it's a smart move to talk to somebody who is already in the business. If you think your local competitors will give you advice, you're being overoptimistic. What's in it for them?

On the other hand, an individual who has a personal secretarial services business outside of your community can be a great learning resource for you, once they realize that you are not going to directly compete with them in their community. In fact, they are often very willing to share startup advice with you. In my experience, you may have to call ten business owners in order to find one who is willing to share his wisdom with you.

Where does one find a personal secretarial services business manager that lives outside of your area?

Here's how we would do it. Try the useful link below and key in a random city/state or zipcode.

• Search for Personal Secretarial Services Business Owners

Is It Easier to Buy an Existing Personal Secretarial Services Business?

As an aspiring business owner, the decisions you make now will have huge implications later, including the decision to either start a business from scratch or buy an existing personal secretarial services business .

In general, purchased personal secretarial services businesses fare better than startups, at least during the initial few years. When you buy an established personal secretarial services business, you gain access to a functional business operation with a customer base and a steady revenue stream.

Entrepreneurs who are committed to a highly unique value proposition may need to pursue a startup approach. But for the sake of minimizing risk and maintaining your sanity, a business purchase is often the right move for emerging personal secretarial services business entrepreneurs.

Don't Forget About Franchising As an Option

If this is your first venture, it might be wise to contemplate becoming a franchisee.

If you planning on starting a personal secretarial services business, you would be wise to check out whether buying a franchise could make it easy to get started.

The link below gives you access to our franchise directory so you can see if there's a franchise opportunity for you. You might even find something that points you in a completely different direction.

• Learn About Franchises

More Startup Articles

These additional resources regarding starting a business may be of interest to you.

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• March 18, 2024
• by [email protected]
• Capium , Cloud , Company Secretarial , CoSec , Uncategorized

How to build your company secretarial practice

As an accountant, offering company secretarial services to your clients when you’re already an expert in handling tricky regulations on their behalf makes sense. You’re well-equipped to make sure they stay within company regulations, which saves them time and stress on complicated administrative tasks. 

At the same time, expanding your company secretarial service can be a great way to grow your firm. Here’s how to start building your company secretarial practice.

Work out how you’ll do it

First things first, we know that company secretarial services are about more than just submitting confirmation statements – and play a vital role in your clients’ corporate governance and statutory compliance. 

The first step to building out your company secretarial service is looking at the skills and resources within your firm to work out how you’ll deliver the work. Do you have the right people in place? Is there enough time to add more work in, or do you need to consider capacity? What tools might you need to help make things quick, efficient, and profitable? 

Tackle the top-level logistics first, and then get into the details. 

Invest in the right software

Once you know you’ve got the right people, it’s time to look at making the work scalable. For that, you need repeatable processes that you can apply to each and every client. And that’s where software comes in. 

By using cloud company secretarial software, you’ll be able to save time and work smarter – managing every step from company formation through to accounts production. By making use of automations and features designed to reduce manual input, you’ll also keep a tight handle on your new service’s profitability.

Features to look out for include: 

• Integration with Companies House 
• Filing confirmation statements
• Updating, editing or adding people with significant control (PSCs)
• Dormant accounts production and filing
• Automated emails and checklists (like CS01).

Work out your pricing structure

Next, as with any new service, you need to work out how to charge for your company secretarial services in a way that adds value to your clients but builds profit for your firm.

We’ve outlined how much company secretarial services should cost in a recent article for AccountingWeb, but, in a nutshell, consider the following factors:

• Time – how much time will it take you to set up and then offer the service, end-to-end?
• Risk – offering company secretarial services comes with responsibility, and potential professional damage to your firm if something goes wrong. Factor this into the cost
• Expertise – you’re able to offer this service because you’re an expert in your field, and your pricing should reflect the skills you apply
• Value – what ultimate value are you bringing for your client? What’s the benefit of them using your services, rather than trying to tackle it themselves? 

Once you’ve considered all of the above, you’ll need to decide on the best way to package your service. You might perform isolated tasks (like registering a new company or making changes with Companies House) on an ad-hoc basis, and charge a fee each time, or carry out the full service using a subscription pricing model. 

Start communicating with clients

The final stage of building your company secretarial practice comes down to communication. There are two ways to approach this.

First, remember that your existing client base likely presents an excellent opportunity for you to cross-sell into. Tell them directly, explain what the new service means, and don’t be afraid to offer to wrap it up into their existing pricing, if that seems like an option. 

Then, make sure you’re telling new or prospective clients about your company secretarial services, too. You’ll need to detail it on the website – including the specific ways you can support clients – and make sure it’s featured prominently in your conversations or marketing materials. 

By following the above steps, you’ll be well geared up to create a strong foundation for your growing company secretarial practice. As with all new services, it’s worth setting yourself some goals and targets (like a certain number of new clients a month) to keep you on track, and checking against them periodically to reposition things if you need to. 

Our powerful company secretarial software helps accountants build their practice. If you’d like to try a demo , we’d love to hear from you.

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KLDiscovery Inc. Completes Acquisition of Cenza Technologies Private Limited. Read more

Why you should outsource secretarial services and how to find the right partner

In the past couple of decades, the legal industry has witnessed consolidation in the global legal market, coupled with technological advancements. Industry leaders have a recurring item on the agenda: How to grow revenues over containing costs.

To unlock this much sought-after profitability, firms are now looking at outsourcing secretarial services. After all, the current attorney to secretary ratio has changed from 4:1 to 5:1 . Once firms complete their cutbacks due to the current pandemic, this ratio is likely to level off at 8:1 .

In the post-COVID legal world, smart law firms will have to embrace process efficiencies, combining all these three elements—distributed workforce, technology, and expertise. In this article, we share a few reasons why outsourcing secretarial work can help you tap into profitability without staffing disruptions. Bonus: You also get pointers on how you can choose the right partner to do your legal admin work.

Top Three Reasons to Outsource Secretarial Services

1. business requirements.

Business demands have grown exponentially during the pandemic since most lawyers are working remotely and juggling work and private lives at the same time. A standard 8-hour workday doesn’t translate into eight hours of output for most attorneys. This means they put in the extra hours to meet deadlines. Consequently, secretarial support also needs to be flexible to meet these ebbs and flows in business demands, without one eye on the clock.

2.Time and cost

Finding the right secretary or office manager that meets all your requirements is a time-consuming exercise. On top of that, you need to factor in salary costs, IT support, and the need for ramp-up time for this new resource. For most understaffed law firms, these are luxuries you simply cannot afford. Finding a secretary or PA that ticks all your boxes takes time and involves salary costs. Besides, these resources need training and managing, which begs the question—do you have the time? If you need someone to come on board and hit the ground running from day 1, outsourcing is the way to go.

3.Efficiency

An understaffed secretarial services team will impact the support you provide attorneys and directors. As a result, work will be backlogged and the overall quality you deliver will suffer. You need a partner who is consistently on the top of their game, making sure your attorneys have all the support they need to create quality work.

What you should look in a partner when outsourcing secretarial services

1.scalability:.

Round-the-clock support is critical while choosing a partner. You want to team up with a vendor that has the in-house expertise to support your busier days without a hiccup.

2.Specialized skills:

Every law firm has its set of unique requirements, and your vendor should be able to offer customized secretarial services to meet these demands. Outsourcing specialists are well-equipped to address the needs of law firms and clients. They also have in-house experts who can support law firms’ word processing capabilities, legal document formatting and fixing, MS word styling and macros, creative design, document proofreading and editing, template creation, converting handwritten text to an editable format.

3.Account management:

Your ideal outsourcing company will offer highly experienced and reliable account managers who uphold high service delivery standards to thrive in a competitive space. There should be clear-cut service level agreements (SLAs) to measure performance and ensure that their teams are reliable and committed to their clients i.e. you.

4.Security-conscious:

Since your outsourcing partner will be dealing with highly confidential information, choose a vendor with domain expertise and demonstrable experience in working with high data security measures in place.

Cenza’s word processing services directly address the specialized needs of law firms and their clients by providing superior service, from proofreading to indexing and building tables of authorities and contents for pleadings and briefs. We create a customized and centralized word processing solution to fit each firm’s unique culture. ISO certified for security and passed Am Law 50 in-depth security, data protection, and infrastructure audit

If you’re looking to outsource legal admin work, get in touch by filling out this form .

About the Author: Raja

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Online Secretarial Service

Startup Costs: $2,000 - $10,000 Home Based: Can be operated from home. Part Time: Can be operated part-time. Franchises Available? No Online Operation? Yes

More people are working from home or operating a business from home than ever before. This fact creates an outstanding opportunity to capitalize on the ever-increasing demand for secretarial services by starting a secretarial service that specializes in assisting clients online. An online secretarial service provides the same services that a regular secretarial service provides with one main difference: the services are provided online. Clients seeking typing, editing or electronic filing services would simply e-mail the work or the outline of the work required. Once the work has been completed, it would be e-mailed back to the client. The business will take some time to establish in terms of securing regular clients and building templates and an operating format. However, for anyone with secretarial experience, starting this business is a great way to work from home, benefit from your skills, and earn an income of $25 per hour or more.

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Turn Services and Marine Fueling Service Announce Turn’s Plan to Acquire MFS

Turn Services is proud to announce its plans to acquire Marine Fueling Service, Inc. (MFS), a distinguished company with 65 years of service in the Golden Triangle area and the Intracoastal Waterway (ICWW) in Texas. Owned by the Bean family for over six decades, the company’s commitment to its people, safety, excellence and customer satisfaction aligns perfectly with Turn Services' core values.

MFS has built a strong reputation providing fleeting, shifting, towing, boat charter, fuel, and lube services, both dockside and midstream. Strategically located at the intersection of the ICWW, Neches, and Sabine Rivers, this expansion strengthens Turn Services’ operational capabilities and service offerings. The location can accommodate 140 barges, including dry, liquid, pressure, CDC, deck, and oversize barges. The acquisition includes eight motor vessels with 1000 to 2000 horsepower.

Christopher L. Bean, President of MFS, expressed his sentiments on the acquisition: "For over 65 years, our family has dedicated itself to building Marine Fueling Service into a trusted and reliable provider in the marine industry. This journey would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our exceptional employees and numerous others. We are happy that Turn Services wants to continue our dedication to our employees and commitment to quality of service.”

Mario Muñoz, President of Turn Services, added, "The acquisition of Marine Fueling Service marks a significant milestone for Turn Services. We are excited to expand our capabilities and continue delivering top-notch services to our clients in the Golden Triangle area and beyond. The acquisition of MFS is the latest step in our strategy to expand our footprint along the Gulf Coast shipping corridor. Like Turn Services, MFS has a long and storied history of providing safe and efficient marine transportation services to barge line customers. Therefore, the acquisition is a perfect fit as we continue focusing on our core business services. I'd like to thank the Bean family for entrusting us to carry forward the business they built spanning several generations."

The acquisition is expected to close by mid-August 2024.

Turn Services , founded in 1990 and headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, is one of the largest independent fleeting and shifting companies in the United States. We offer a broad range of barge related resources including cleaning, repair and vessel services along the Lower Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to the mouth of the river. We also offer towing services on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway from Texas to Florida.

Marine Fueling Service, Inc . provides marine support services. The company offers fleeting, shifting, towing, boat charter, fuel and lubricant supplies, dry cargo barge cleaning, potable water delivery by barge and, and crane services. Marine Fueling Service serves customers in the State of Texas.

Dawn Lopez Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations Turn Services [email protected]

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240729927111/en/

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Post Office scandal: Former business secretary Sir Vince Cable accepts 'share' of responsibility

The former secretary of state accepts that oversight of the Post Office could have been better but, like other former ministers of the day, says he was guided not to interfere in operational matters outside his remit.

Business reporter @SkyNewsBiz

Thursday 25 July 2024 12:56, UK

Sir Vince Cable has told the Post Office inquiry he accepts a "share" of responsibility for failures that enabled the wrongful convictions of sub-postmasters to continue unchecked.

The former Liberal Democrat leader, who had the role of business secretary for five years from 2010 to 2015, said there was "clearly a policy failure" under his watch relating to the oversight of Post Office .

That was despite Sir Vince admitting he had been previously aware of "arrogant" management due to past dealings with the company over branch closures in his capacity as an MP.

He agreed with a description of executives, put forward by Horizon IT scandal campaigner Sir Alan Bates, that likened them to "thugs in suits".

But under questioning from counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC, he joined other ministers of the era in their respective evidence by insisting he was guided by departmental officials not to interfere in operational matters at the Post Office.

Sir Vince told the probe he "hadn't the faintest idea" the Post Office was privately prosecuting sub-postmasters during his time as secretary of state and declared that problems with Horizon "barely came across my desk".

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"When they did", he added, "it was usually in a very uncontroversial way."

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More than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of charges including theft and false accounting between 1999 and 2015 relating to their use of Horizon accounting systems, provided by Fujitsu, within their branches.

While all have been cleared, many are still awaiting compensation.

The inquiry is examining many facets of behaviour over the course of the Horizon life cycle to date.

A central theme is one of cover-ups, not least at the Post Office itself.

In his witness statement to the inquiry, Sir Vince said: "These abuses occurred under a large number of ministers in Labour, coalition and Conservative governments and we all share some responsibility for the fact that this happened on our watch.

"I accept my share of that responsibility and apologise to the victims for the fact that they were so grievously let down.

"I should add that while the focus of the inquiry is quite properly on the sub-postmasters and injury that they have suffered, the dishonesty of Post Office officials has also done harm to trust in official advice without which government cannot properly function."

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Read more: About 100 sub-postmaster convictions may be 'tainted' Review ordered into another Post Office IT system

In his evidence on Thursday, he added: "To be frank, I found it very difficult to pinpoint particular events or decisions that I could have done differently - but simply, as a matter of formal responsibility, this was a state enterprise that came within the remit of my department and I accept the fact that it happened on our watch.

"I know that's a cliche, but it's something that ministers have to recognise."

Mr Beer asked: "When you say that you accept your share of responsibility, what are you accepting responsibility for?"

Sir Vince replied: "General oversight of the department and this was an area of the department where, clearly, there was a policy failure."

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Appeal a Biodiversity gain plan (s78) decision

How to appeal to the Secretary of State if the Local Planning Authority refuse or fail to determine the biodiversity gain plan.

Applies to England

Subject to a number of exemptions, the biodiversity gain condition applies to all planning permissions granted in England.

The biodiversity gain condition stipulates that development may not commence until a biodiversity gain plan has been approved by the Local Planning Authority.

If the Local Planning Authority refuse or fail to determine the biodiversity gain plan, the developer may, under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act, appeal to the Secretary of State.

The Planning Inspectorate, on behalf of the Secretary of State, will determine these appeals.

For further information on the biodiversity net gain, please see the planning practice guidance .

Who can appeal

Only the person who submitted the biodiversity gain plan to the Local Planning Authority may appeal.

How long you have to appeal

For an appeal against the Local Planning Authority’s decision to refuse the Biodiversity Gain Plan, we must receive the appeal within 6 months of the date on the Local Planning Authority’s refusal notice. 

For an appeal against the Local Planning Authority’s failure to determine the Biodiversity Gain Plan, we must receive the appeal within 6 months of the date the Local Planning Authority should have determined the plan (i.e., unless a time extension was agreed in writing, 8 weeks beginning from the day after the date you submitted the plan).  

Making an appeal

You must make your appeal on the Appeals Casework Portal .

It is essential that you refer to the guidance on completing your appeal form when making your appeal. This guidance explains what supporting documents are required with your appeal and what actions you need to take when appealing (for example, notifying other owners and tenants of the land).

Contact the Planning Inspectorate’s customer support team if you need help completing your appeal. Use the Customer Form: Customer Services and general enquiries .

After you appeal

The Planning Inspectorate will check your appeal to make sure it’s valid. They’ll tell you what happens next and how long your appeal may take.

You can complain about how the Planning Inspectorate handled your appeal . There’s no time limit for complaints.

If you think the appeal decision is legally incorrect

You can challenge the decision in the High Court under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 if you think the Planning Inspectorate made a legal mistake.

You have 6 weeks from the date of the decision to do this.

Find a lawyer to advise you if you’re unsure about this.

Further information about applications under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 can be found in the Administrative Court Judicial Review Guide 2023 .

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Virtual Secretarial Services: Where & How to Hire

Hiring a Virtual Secretary and How It Can Help Your Business

For a lot of businesses, hiring a secretary or a full-time personal assistant is a major milestone. It’s a sign that the business is growing. So much so, in fact, that administrative support is no longer a nice option. It’s a necessity.

But how do you know when it’s time to hire a full-time secretary?

You may never have to do it at all. Here’s why.

In this article:

Do you really need a full-time secretary.

There are millions of secretaries (over 3.7 million, in fact). That’s in the United States alone. These secretaries fulfill obligations like scheduling management, data entry, administrative tasks, phone calls, and even bookkeeping. That shows that there’s substantial demand for in-person services that help manage the everyday life of an office.

A full-time secretary averages well over $35,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On top of that, any business that hires a secretary full-time will be expected to pay other expenses, such as benefits. Vacation time is also a must. Add it all up and the overall cost to your business is much higher than you might imagine. It’s certainly higher than what the salary says.

Working with independent contractors in the forms of virtual secretaries is an easy solution. It means you can hire someone on a part-time basis, pay them with a straightforward by-the-hour arrangement, and still enjoy a high quality of work, skills, and experience.

Do you really need a full-time secretary? Even if you do, hiring a part-time virtual secretary can be a great introduction into what it’s like to delegate. 

What a Virtual Secretary Can Do For You

Maybe you have a vague sense of what a secretary can do, but you’re not quite sold on the idea of hiring one just yet. How do you know if you should hire one?

Let’s take a look at many of the basic tasks that a virtual secretary can handle remotely:

• Bookkeeping. Sick of tracking expenses or logging in receipts? Plug a virtual secretary into your bookkeeping software and you’ll be amazed not only at how easy the process is, but how quickly it can go. 
• Phone calls. Not only can a virtual secretary handle your phone calls remotely—answering on your behalf—but they can even place phone calls for you. This is great for all sorts of needs, from making travel arrangements to scheduling meetings and appointments.
• Managing social media. Don’t always have time to update Upwork or reach out to potential clients? Let a virtual secretary handle it for you.
• Email management. According to the American Psychological Association , “multitasking” is a bit of a myth. There is a certain psychological inefficiency to managing emails throughout the day, for example, which means that every time you check email, you’re losing more than just the time you used to check it. You’re losing focus. Outsource your email management to a virtual secretary so you can focus on your work.
• Proofreading. Any business will go through a lot of documentation—contracts, proposals, follow-ups, and the like. You’re not always going to have time to read it all. So instead of sleeping on it and forgetting to proofread before it’s time to send out your documentation, it’s a good idea to simply hand it off to a qualified virtual secretary.
• Real estate administrative tasks. Do you work in real estate? You may find it hard to always follow up with people, especially since real estate can be such an “off-hours” job. Having a virtual secretary ready to pick up phone calls will give you the appearance of running a much larger, professional business—even if it’s just you in the office.

An administrative assistant who works on-site can handle all of these tasks easily. But hiring a virtual secretary is a great starting off point. It will help you to learn how to better handle the responsibilities of leading a business, especially if you’ve never been in the position of “boss” before.

What are the Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Secretary?

In addition to completing the tasks above, we have to ask a very simple question: what are the benefits of hiring a virtual secretary? Other than outsourcing your tasks, why hire a virtual secretary specifically? Why not any virtual assistant?

For starters, it’s true: any virtual assistant can save as much as 78% on operating costs every year . That’s a drastic reduction. Too often, business owners and managers make the mistake of looking at the upfront hourly rate of a virtual assistant or virtual secretary. They then compare this with the ostensible hourly rate of a full-time, on-site hire.

But for the reasons listed above, including expensive employee benefits, hiring a virtual secretary can be drastically more cost-efficient.

Let’s go beyond cost. Why hire a virtual secretary if you need a secretary to help grow your business?

• Efficiency. A virtual secretary with experience in handling the tasks like those listed above will be more efficient at them. They may arrive to their first day of remote work with the knowledge and tools to proofread more efficiently, for example. Or they might have a better system for bookkeeping. This makes them worth the cost because they aren’t only taking these tasks off your hands, but performing them more efficiently than you would have.
• Flexibility. If you hire a remote worker who’s done remote work before, you may find that the process is far more streamlined than you expected. After all, a remote worker has done many of these tasks before. They may need an adjustment period while they onboard to your system (more on that in a minute), but overall, their flexibility and adaptability will only benefit your business.
• Minimal investment. In addition to the cost considerations listed above, remember that a virtual secretary can be hired on a part-time basis. That means that you don’t have to make a full commitment before you start outsourcing your tasks. You can learn what it’s like to manage a secretary, how to onboard a new “employee” (or, in this case, an independent contractor), and smooth out the overall flow of your business. You can do it all for minimal investment, only paying the hourly rate for a part-time remote worker.

Of course, those benefits are just a few of the general benefits of hiring a virtual secretary. Hire the right one, and you may find that not all virtual assistant jobs are made the same. 

How to Get Set up On Delegated and Hire Your First Virtual Secretary

By now you may be sold on the idea of creating new virtual assistant jobs at your business, but are unsure about the actual process of hiring a virtual secretary. That’s why we’ve decided to break it down into a few key steps:

• Sign up with Delegated. The easiest step of all! All you have to do is sign up with an account at Delegated and you’ll have access to the rest of the steps mentioned here. You’ll also be able to review the available options and start looking around for a virtual secretary who’s right for your business.
• Work with a customer success manager. We know that the hiring process can be intimidating at first, especially if you’re working with a new site. It’s a new platform. That’s why we assign a customer success manager to help guide you through the steps. Just let them know what they can do for you, what your goals are, and what you need to know before you get started. They’ll guide you the rest of the way.
• Select and hire your virtual secretary. Sounds like a major step, right? Work with your customer success manager and you can quickly parse through the various options. Look at who has executive assistant experience, for example, and browse the kinds of skills that the available candidates have. You should try to match up your job requirements with the experience and background of the potential virtual secretaries on your list.
• Onboard. Onboarding is one of the most underrated aspects of a new hire. If you want someone to fully integrate with your business, you can’t just expect them to sit down and get to work. You have to familiarize them with your business needs, your current systems, and more. Create an onboarding document, or even have your virtual secretary help out by recording everything they do to onboard. This can help in the future, in case you ever need to make full-time hires or hire new virtual assistants.

Sound complicated? It’s not. It’s just a few short steps between you and a hire that can change your business forever.

Start growing your business and reducing overhead with Delegated

1. meet your assistant
, 2. create a workflow
, 3. start delegating
, faqs about virtual secretaries.

Still stuck? Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and their answers:

Why shouldn’t I hire a full-time secretary?

There’s no reason you can’t. But you may be surprised to find out everything that a virtual secretary can do remotely. We live in the digital age, after all. Fully remote secretaries can handle everything from phones to email management even if they’re not physically present in the office with you.

How do I know if it’s time to hire a virtual secretary?

The great thing about hiring a virtual secretary is that it’s a very low-commitment way to start hiring help. So there’s flexibility in that you don’t necessarily have to know when it’s time to hire a virtual secretary. You can do it quickly and easily right now, try it out, and see if you get your money’s worth. But you should also recognize that hiring a virtual secretary means that you’ll actually have work for them to do. As long as you have a list of tasks that you no longer want to handle yourself, you can hand these tasks off to a virtual secretary.

What if I want someone who’s in my office?

If you have a physical office and you need someone there, a virtual secretary obviously can’t be there. However, you should be aware of everything that a virtual secretary can do remotely. They can answer phone calls, handle project management, and do just about anything that you would do when you work from home. All that’s required is that you set them up with the appropriate accounts—Slack, cloud storage, etc. 

What do I do next if I do want to hire a virtual secretary?

Easy—sign up with Delegated! Break it down step-by-step as we outline above. This is a straightforward process, but if you feel any part of it to be overwhelming, one of our customer success managers will help you get to the next step with ease.

What can’t a virtual secretary do?

A virtual secretary will have all of the same limits of any employee, but with the obvious caveat that if they can’t do the job in person, they can’t do it. But given the state of today’s technology, that’s an increasingly small amount of work that can’t be done. Empower your virtual secretary and they may surprise you with how much they can contribute. 

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Office Services

Meet with clients or hold meetings at your Carson City office! If you work out of your home, but need a business address, consider our Senior Executive or Junior Executive services. With your package, you have the following:

• A place to meet your clients.
• A conference room to use on a first-come, first-serve basis (or by appointment).
• The answering of your company’s phone in the name of your business.

Fax Services

• Incoming and outgoing mail services.
• E-mail services upon request.

Secretarial Services

• Access to the equipment and service of a friendly staff.

If you are out-of-state, you need a Nevada presence to prove that you are a legitimate Nevada business. We can provide that for you with our Senior Executive or Junior Executive Service plans for a low, basic price. Call our office and let us customize your office package to fit your personal needs and budget.

Billing and Invoice Services

Billing is one of the most time-consuming administrative tasks. Most small business people are just too busy to stay on top of their billing needs, and yet, what is more important?

With our cutting edge computer technology, we can send out your invoices on a daily or weekly basis. We can pick up the information from your office, or you can fax it to us. We can give you collection reports, aging reports, and even call to help you collect. We will help you make sure nothing “falls through the cracks”.

In addition to the services listed above, we also offer the following services:

• Bookkeeping, to most business people, is just a necessary headache and is put off and not kept current. Silver Shield Services, Inc. can take care of that headache for you.
• We can write checks and keep track of accounts payable and accounts receivable, prepare any needed federal and state tax reports for review of the accountant, and set up books and accounting systems for the business.
• Quarterly, we can review cash flow projections and revise as needed. We can also prepare the books and general ledger, and prepare management internal financial statements.

A Business Plan is the road map to where a business is heading. It defines the business purpose, targeted market, and estimates and does projections of expenses and revenues. Most banks will require a business plan before approving a business loan. Silver Shield Services, Inc. can help you write and keep your business plan current.

We also perform Secretarial Services. Not enough need for a full-time, or even part-time, secretary? Our staff can help you with all of your secretarial needs. With our up-to-date word processing programs and laser printers, we can give you professional correspondence with top efficiency. Whether one letter or a total mail merge marketing program, we can provide the office support you need.

We also offer our Telephone Answering Service. Let us answer your telephone for you! We can assign you a business telephone number that you can list in the Yellow PagesT, or you can forward your calls to our office when you are away from yours. We are here from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (Pacific Time) daily to answer your phone.

The bottom line is very simple: Silver Shield Services, Inc. is here to serve you. We work harder than anyone else in providing you with the type of service you need and demand. We are here to help you solve business problems you face now, and some you may have to face in the future. We have the experience and expertise to help you plan ahead. We are here to counsel with you and bounce ideas off of, while providing you with continuing professional service.

Inquire for the price of Supporting Office Services.

• Our Company
• Meet the Team
• Our Vision & Values
• Case Studies
• Sector Specifics
• Accountability & Openness
• Board Functions
• Internal Controls
• Regulatory Compliance
• Performance Management
• Risk Management
• Strategy & Business Planning
• Statutory Compliance
• Subsidiary Management
• Interim Support
• Blogs, News & Awards

• Data Protection Services
• Anti bribery compliance
• Trademark registration services
• Complying with your Governing Documents

Strategy and Business Planning

• Annual General Meeting
• Stakeholder Management Services
• Board and committee meeting management
• Board development
• Fraud prevention services

The board is responsible for defining the organisation’s vision and values, setting out its strategy and developing business plans to achieve its goals.

What does a strategy document include?

The strategy document will include the organisation’s:.

• Core business – its primary purpose
• Long-term goals – where it wants to be in five or ten years’ time
• Vision and values – the vision is the very reason for the organisation’s existence while the values set out the standards of behaviour expected and would invariably define the culture for the organisation.

What is a business plan?

The business plan is a route map to achieving the organisation’s objectives, detailing how its goals will be achieved.

It should include:

• Risks that could impede progress

What are the differences between a strategic and business plan?

While a strategic plan is a type of business plan, there are several important distinctions between the two types of plans that should be noted.

A strategic plan is primarily used for implementing and managing the strategic direction of an existing organisation, whereas a business plan can be used initially to start a business, obtain funding, or direct operations. The two types of plans typically cover different timeframes as well. A business plan normally covers a period of no more than one year, while a strategic plan takes a longer term view, generally covering a period of 3 to 5 (or more) years.

A strategic plan is used to provide focus, direction and action in order to move the organisation from where they are now to where they want to go. Such a plan is critical to prioritising resources (time, money and people) to grow revenues and increase the return on investment (ROI).

A strategic plan focuses on building a sustainable competitive advantage and by its very nature is forward-looking. In contrast, a business plan is typically used to assess the viability of a business and is more tactical in nature.

Well governed organisations

As part of a good governance framework, it is important that well governed organisations have both a strategic and business plan.

Bridgehouse Company Secretaries can help by supplying experienced business coaches to work with the board in developing the vision and values statement and formulating the strategic plan.

Call us today on  0845 055 8260  or email  [email protected].

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Privacy Overview

Efficient, stable, compliant entities and structures are the foundations of all business success

TMF Group’s comprehensive international corporate secretarial services – delivered flexibly and consistently worldwide – transform the confusion into simple, transparent, controlled compliance across any number of jurisdictions.

Why does my business need corporate secretarial support services?

When it comes to keeping entities in good standing year-round – a struggle for even the largest international company, especially in the remote corners of your operations – we can do it all, everywhere: 

• Filing annual accounts and tax returns with local authorities
• Completing standard legal procedures for directorships, shareholders, entity names and registered addresses
• Drafting customary legal documents
• Managing communications with investors and employees
• Maintenance of books and records
• Constant tracking of entity registrations and compliance deadlines
• Alerts for local regulatory and legal changes.

However great or small the corporate secretarial challenge in any one jurisdiction we meet the need flexibly and cost-effectively, scaling up or down smoothly, from the part-time support of a single individual to the services of a whole team.

Company formation services

Forming a company in a foreign jurisdiction is never a simple matter. Obligations, procedures, timelines, languages and costs all vary widely from country to country, and sometimes between cities and provinces.

TMF Group is the world’s leading expert in cross-border company formations, offering services to help with company formation globally. Our comprehensive services are delivered by experienced teams of local experts, giving you an insider’s understanding of more than 86 jurisdictions worldwide.

International entity health check

International companies need to review their foreign structures and processes periodically to make sure they remain compliant.

TMF Group’s international entity health checks are fast, efficient and scalable to local needs and risks.

International document retrieval services

When landmark corporate events demand a formal documentary due diligence process it can be complicated, time-consuming and disruptive. TMF Group’s document retrieval and delivery service is fast, thorough and consistent, covering the public registries in more than 80 jurisdictions.

How can document retrieval help my business?

In many jurisdictions a major corporate event – a merger or acquisition, a new business relationship, changes to funding arrangements – will trigger a formal due diligence process. The company must confirm its eligibility to conduct business locally by submitting certain official documents such as:

• Certificates of good standing, incumbency, compliance and disclosure
• Articles of association
• Information from local registers
• Proof of formation
• Compliance status checks on the entities involved

Legal document retrieval and company document retrieval services from TMF Group

TMF Group are document retrieval specialists and our international document delivery service is thorough, reliable and fast, particularly across multiple jurisdictions. Our global network of local experts make light work of all the document identification, acquisition, verification and collation that non-specialists find laborious and confusing.

Registered and process agent

TMF Group’s standardised, global registered and process agent services enable an international company without a local registered address to enter into legal agreements and then administer their affairs efficiently in accordance with local law.

Does my business need an agent for service of process?

International companies often enter into legal agreements governed by foreign laws without first creating the necessary registered address through which to accept ‘service of process’.

Our standardised global service provides fully-referenced registered and process agents anywhere in the world, ensuring you have the right registered agent for service of process for your business. They can be empowered to receive on your behalf any legal documents required by contracts, transactions, International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) agreements and structured finance arrangements.

Our appointment as process agent includes acting as:

• process agent for contracts, transaction documentation, ISDA agreements and structured finance documentation;
• the recipient for the service of legal documents relating to actions begun in the local courts and/or arbitration proceedings;
• the recipient for notices under contracts where an independent party is needed, in some cases on behalf of more than one party; and
• the recipient for notices on behalf of overseas companies with or without a local branch.

A centralised administration system includes robust risk management controls to govern agent appointments as well as a highly efficient documents forwarding process.

Find out how your business can benefit from our registered and process agent services.

Registered office service and mail handling

TMF Group can help you locate premises and establish a registered office almost anywhere in the world with our registered office service. What’s more, if all you need is a mailing address, we can receive communications and process mail on your behalf.  

If you need physical premises for an incorporated company, association or other legal entity we can help you become well-established in your area, wherever you are in the world. Our global office brokerage service can even find suitable premises to situate your registered office.

For businesses with no need for a dedicated location, our own offices will act as your efficient local communications hub, processing physical mail and forwarding communications.

Registered office address requirements and substance compliance

In order to operate in some countries, your business will have to pass certain substance compliance requirements. This can include the setting up of a registered office address, as well as local reporting and infrastructure. Our registered office service and mail handling play a role in passing these checks.

Find out how your business can benefit from our registered office and mail handling services.

Incorporation and start up

Compliance health checks

Ongoing entity management

Year-round regulatory compliance

One-off major projects and events, from M&A to closures

Other business expansion opportunities

• Corporate secretarial services
• International regulatory compliance services
• Fiduciary services
• Special purpose vehicles management

TMF Group is a leading provider of critical administrative services, helping clients invest and operate safely around the world. with over 11,000 colleagues in more than 125 offices across 87 jurisdictions provide local expertise. Our locations cover 92% of world GDP and 95% of FDI inflow.

Get in touch to find out how we can help your organisation grow in a complex world.