Verl Anders
Center for Industrial Research and Service
vanders@ciras.iastate.edu  

Don Hofstrand
Co-Director, Ag Marketing Resource Center
Iowa State University Extension
dhof@iastate.edu  

Below are key points to remember when writing your business plan:

1. It is critical that you are integrally involved in creating the plan.  You can hire someone (consultant) to help write the plan.  He/she can challenge and question assumptions and conclusions. But you are responsible for the content of the plan.
2. The primary reason for writing the plan is for your own value – to help you think through all aspects of the project and provide a plan for implementing the project.
3. In addition to your own purposes, consider the viewpoint of the primary person you are writing for, a banker, investor or customer, when writing the plan.
4. Be honest. Do not be overly optimistic or try to hide limitations or weaknesses.
5. Write in easy to understand terms. Avoid jargon and terms that are unfamiliar to people outside of your industry.
6. Represent your company’s image and convince the reader you understand all aspects of the business.
7. Evaluate the company's management team. This is a major focus of the plan.
8. Answer the three strategic planning questions:
       • Where are we now? 
       • Where do we want to be? 
       • How do we get there?
9. Quantify your market, sales, production, and cost data. Do not generalize. Be specific. Use data to help tell the story.
10. Begin each major section on a new page with the appropriate title; for example, Marketing Plan.
11. The actual content of the business plan will vary depending on the nature and complexity of the business, the stage of development and the type of financing needed.
12. The business plan may be used as a sales document. The content and quality of the plan should be representative of your company.
13. Be sure to support the goals and the claims you make in the business plan.  Include supporting evidence.  This includes statistics, studies and other research support.
14. Place one person in charge of writing the plan.  You may divide the responsibility of writing various sections of the plan among the founders.  However, one person needs to be responsible for integrating the various sections.
15. Review, revise and rewrite.  It is extremely rare to achieve the finished version of a plan in the first draft.  It may need to be re-written several times.  However, the purpose of rewriting the plan is to fill in gaps, solidify the logic and make the plan easier to understand by the reader.  It is not to add extraneous materials.  So if you find the length of the plan expanding greatly after each rewrite, your efforts are probably counterproductive.  At some point in time you need to declare the plan finished – for now – remembering that the plan will need to be updated as conditions change.