Business Plan templates don’t work | Why you shouldn’t use them

What is a business plan?

The most basic definition of a business plan given by Wikipedia is that

It is a formal document containing the goals of a business, the methods for attaining those goals, and the time frame for the achievement of the goals.

The main points we get from the business plan is

• Goals,
• Methods of attaining goals,
• And the timeframe they are to be achieved.

In trying to get followers or website visits may be, many people suggest that you can build your own business plan using a template you get from them or other reputable companies such as HubSpot.

Before I start speaking about why this is very misleading, I will give templates one thing. They are a great way to show someone who hasn’t seen a business plan, how it looks.

When it now comes to actually using the template to build your own, there comes a huge challenge. As I start, let me say that there are two categories of challenges with templates,

1. Difficult to actually build the plan using templates.
2. You cannot fully capture the all required detail when presenting to the investor or submitting the plan to your potential funder.

1 Difficult to build the plan

Let’s start with difficulties relating to drawing up the plan

• People who start businesses are usually those who are good at a particular skill and instead of working for someone, they decide to start their own company. So, you are good at agriculture, woodwork, design, or anything else that’s not marketing, research, or finance. Before we talk about creating a good plan that will help you land funding, these are skills that help you understand the elements of the business plan and you have none.
• Instead of focusing on what you know and what you know best, the person who gave you a template convinced you that you could do it yourself. That is very misleading.
• Talking about the different skills, here at Profound Business Consultancy, we work as a team to help you build a realistic business plan. We have different consultants who, every day, focus on one specific area that they are good at and this ensures that you get quality work.
• Besides the skills, one of the biggest challenges of trying to use templates is that there is no help with access to the right information. We are subscribed to some of the most powerful sources of information that give us the ability to produce a realistic plan that truly speaks to the market you operate in or intend to get into.
• Several other small challenges hinder you from developing your own plan from a business plan template, but these are the main ones

2 Now looking at the investor side,

Let’s now look at difficulties relating to presenting and convincing investors

• As I said earlier, you can get away with the presentation when you use the template. However, the contents of the plan usually don’t capture what is required.
• When I started drawing business plans for our clients, I used to start by investigating the funder to whom the plan will be presented. Is it a government funding agency, is it a bank, is it a VC firm or other funding companies? As a consultant, you start to know the funding behaviors of all these organizations and as another plan comes through, we have a better idea of the points we should focus on based on where the business plan is going.
• One great example is Usually government funding agencies are biased toward youth employment, empowerment, and the like. So as much as you do good in other areas, the number of youths you will employ and the training you will give them play a significant role in your chances of getting funding.
• You cannot get all this from a template.
• Let’s look at building financial models, my most prominent role in the organization is to build financial models. I start with several assumptions that speak to the market you operate in.
• Good luck with capturing all dynamics when using a template; let alone convincing the funders that you understand your market.

The main goal of Consulting, in my view, is to provide peace of mind to our clients. Our own motto says that we exist to ensure our clients with a refreshing research experience.

Get in touch and let us help you with your business plan.