So, you are a student of business and management studies? Then you certainly have a bright career ahead, provided you do well in your studies! But, business studies require a number of skills and expertise, so that a business indeed runs well. Do you have them?
Well, the good news is, skills can be developed. You only need to know how to sharpen them.
Students often face trouble in making the business plans. However, it is the most important document in a business development. As students, you will have to do many homework and projects or assignments on making business plans as a part of your course. There are a number of mistakes that as a student you might make. Here are a few common mistakes that students must avoid, while making business plans.
- Poor writing style:
You don’t have to complete an English Major course for writing a business plan. But with spelling errors, grammar errors and punctuation errors, the investors might think there is a lot of problem going on in the business plan and the business itself.
In the beginning of my career, I wrote a business plan for an unconventional business concept. The investor was a conservative one and still chose to invest on the business because the plan was influential enough, crisp, confident and authoritative throughout. The clean and formal language that I used, worked really well and since then, I realized how it should be like.
- Incomplete business plan:
Before you delve deep into this factor, it is a must that you understand the aim behind writing a business plan.
They are meant to give a clear concept about your business mission, vision and goal and also the strategies that you are going to take in order to achieve your goals. Depending on these factors, the trustworthiness of the investors will grow. If the investors find that the plan sounds and clearly shows promising outcomes, they would proceed to invest upon your business. If they don’t, they won’t invest.
What a business plan must have?
Hence, your plan should clearly talk about all the necessary aspects of your business pursuit. These include –
- Products and services
- Customers
- Sales and marketing
- Management team
- Operations
- Competitors
- Financial investments and plans
Based on different business markets, the growths and shrinks must also be charted in the plan. In case of financial matters, cash flow, balance sheet and income statements of at least 3 years, must be mentioned.
- Poor presentation:
In the last 7 years of my career in the field of writing business plans for many clients, I have seen trainees and interns making too many mistakes. They indeed work hard in collecting data, making charts and in jotting down everything together to give it a complete meaning.
But, to my utmost wonder, I find them making poor mistakes such as –
- Making tables without headings
- Putting incorrect units in charts
- Missing out tables and charts
- Missing page numbers
- Typing pages without margins
These have a very poor impact on the investors. Students should be very careful about these and that too right from the beginning of their career.
- Too many details spoil the mood:
This is very important. Always follow this religiously –
Your business plan should be easy enough to understand even for a high school educated, reasonably intelligent investor!
If it is too detailed, with too many technical terms, you might have to rewrite it.
There should be a clear division of the plan –
- An executive summary – 2 to 3 pages long
- The plan – 10 to 20 pages long
- Appendix – As long as you wish.
The Summary part should give an overall idea or brief of the plan, but there should not be used too many proprietary information in case you do not want to disclose them. The Plan itself should be detailed, but not have too many technical terms that might make it difficult for the investors to understand or break the flow of the idea. The Appendix part can have all the necessary technical terms and details as you wish to add, to show that you know what you are talking about.
- Claiming that you have no competition:
This is quite incredible that you think or believe that you have no competition in the market. Well, the truth is, though I might sound rude, you do have competitors – either direct or indirect!
Writing in the plan – “We have no competitions!†is a very overrated statement.
Even if you think so, you need to mention in the business plan, how you intend to tackle your rivals and competitors, when you become successful.
Learning to write a business plan:
Writing a business plan can be a daunting task, I would not disagree with it. And for beginners or students, who are just learning about these, it can be quite problematic. In that case, having a guide or some experts to guide you about this is indeed quite helpful. There are online academic help services that help students from different business, management or other streams in learning well and doing their projects or tasks for them.
You can hire them to write down a business plan for your project or homework assignment and they will help you to know how it works. With their support and guidance, you will be able to understand how a plan for a business can be written. What makes them really helpful are –
- They maintain the desired tone for different businesses and different plans.
- They help students to understand how to do research work for getting data for charts and tables.
- They help in understanding the flow and language.
As an adjoining subject, you can also get help regarding economics from Get effective tips from your teachers to do Economics homework easily.
For students, this can be really helpful. During the final years of my college, I hired a few of these academic help services. I would not lie, I have learned a lot from them and the skill that I have developed now, owes much to them. I often recommend students to seek help from them so that they never make these mistakes. Why not learn well from the beginning?