Many people get discouraged when they consider business planning activities. Doing it right involves work and takes time away from your other tasks. A lot of people can't find the time to do it in one burst of activity. For that reason, we're breaking this business plan tutorial into nine sections so that you can pace yourself and make reasonable progress while still taking care of everything else you do. If you're just getting started, see Part One. The plan itself will cover:

1. Product or Service and Business Description
2. Know Your Customers
3. Market Research
4. Competitive Analysis
5. Financial Projections
6. Management: Acquiring the team you need.
7. Marketing Plan
8. Exit Strategies
9. Executive Summary

Management: Acquiring the team you need

One of the biggest "success factors" in your business plan is your company's management. In most cases, that's going to be you. There are certain critical skills you've got to have or acquire or hire if your company is going to succeed. Even with a larger company, many of the same management needs exist as within a one person shop. They simply become larger and more complicated as your company grows bigger.

Start With Yourself

Write a short biography of yourself specifically tuned to what your experience has taught you with this product or service. No experience? You might be surprised at how much you do know. For example, someone with office experience who has always wanted to open a restaurant has many "people skills" that will apply to making the restaurant work. Often people focus on just part of the business, such as their love for cooking, without assessing the other activities that make the restaurant work.

Let's look at the experiences that Carole Baker has in planning the opening of a new restaurant, "Obsessions." Carole has been working as a software analyst for years and has always wanted to own her own restaurant but so far her experience has been confined to working as a waitress while she was in college and taking a few cooking courses from top restaurant chefs. What can she do that will make her restaurant work?

Work Experience

1984 - 1988 Worked at a variety of restaurants Denny's Nick's Steakhouse (upscale) Le Brasserie ( a moderately priced French restaurant where she learned to bake great desserts as well as waitressing)

1989 - 1999 programmer and software analyst

Carol is able to see that her experience with the restaurants has prepared her for front of house duties, since she waitressed and did some hostess duties. She's not aware of the very valuable experiences that she brings from her software jobs that can be used for direct benefits with any retail business that she could open. But after a short discussion, we elicit that she's supervised work groups of 20 people, has had budget responsibilities and has had to act as liaison on big projects with other areas of the company. So she has management experience, budget experience and networking skills. She's also got the funds to capitalize her restaurant, thanks to stock options that have now vested fully.

Other Skills

Carol has enjoyed entertaining friends for years with her cooking and choices of good wines. Last year, she took a course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She has friends who sell fine wines and she's also been an appreciative customer at local restaurants and food charity benefits. That means that she's had the opportunity to observe front of house staff and to compliment the chefs in her town and even take a few classes from several of them. So she is capable of ranking the restaurants that she's eaten at and picking out some great potential employees including chefs who might be potential partner for her restaurant. She also knows a number of people who enjoy fine dining by name, so she can sit down and draw up a list of specific people to invite to her opening celebration.

Skills You Have, Skills You Need

No business can function without the following sets of skills and experiences. What you don't have, you've got to acquire. You can bring in partners or you can hire someone to work for you with these skills or you can outsource the function.

Leadership. In any business, there has got to be one person who knows where the business is going. Do you have goals for what your business will accomplish today, in a week, in a month, in a year and in two years? Job Title: Chief Executive Officer.

Oversight. Your business needs someone to keep an eye on what’s going on with the business on a daily basis. Job Title: Chief Operating Officer.

Human Resources. Your business must have someone who takes care of hiring, training and retaining your employees. Job Title: HR Manager.

Sales/Marketing. Your business has to sell its goods or services in order to bring in money for operations. Someone must plan and execute the marketing and sales functions. Job Title: Vice President of Sales/Vice President of Marketing.

Money. You've got to know how much money you have, how much money you need, what you're going to spend it on and where you're going to get more to keep your business operating. Job Title: Chief Financial Officer.

In the management part of your business plan, you must assess how each of these jobs is going to get done. You may yourself wear all of the hats in the company and that's fine if you're just starting out. But the job must get done. If you're doing it yourself, you've got to have the skills or acquire them. That could mean taking a few classes or taking a job where you get the experience you need to make it work. You could read a few books or go to some seminars. Or you can just buckle down and do it.

If you're going to hire people to do these jobs, especially if you're using this business plan to pitch investors, you need to have a good reason why each of the people in these positions can do the job. Do they have relevant experience? As in Carol's case, it may not be direct experience in all areas but it if indicates solidly that they can get the job done, write it down.

What if they can't get their job done? Well, you've got some alternatives. First identify what they can do, then identify what they need to learn. You may be able to find someone with experience to mentor you or your partners or employees while you're starting up. That's a good role for members of your advisory board, if you have one. Or you may have to find someone else or bring in a consultant.

A brief description of skills and experience each of your management team members brings to these functions is necessary in your business plan if you're looking for outside money. You should be able to accomplish this with a paragraph each in the plan itself but include each of their resumes, written for this job specifically, in your appendices.

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