Smart entrepreneurs and established businesses typically use a great business plan as a well-proven tool aimed at accomplishing one or two key objectives:
  1. acquire funding from investors, loans from bankers or the SBA, etc. and/or
  2. as a team-unifying playbook to maximize the productivity and creativity of your employees

Prospective investors need to be shown a dazzling plan that will stand out from the crowd of other "this will be the next Google" business plans that are being pitched to them every day. Your/Our task is to craft a "wow" plan that does not look like it was created with cheap business planning software templates (investors see through those before they even get into your plan). You might think about this kind of plan like an elaborate marketing piece, as it's fundamental job is to give prospective investors confidence they can get a pretty meaty return on their investment... quickly... and with minimal risk. Investors want to be confident about their investments, so you grow that confidence by showing that you've invested in your plan (and your business), engaged quality talent like the Big Innovations (BI) team to help develop key portions of it, and not scrimped on a document that is basically asking strangers to give you huge sums of cash for only the potential of some future reward. A plan developed on the cheap- like any marketing developed on the cheap- tends to fail at moving its audience to take the desired action.

A company that wants (or needs) to empower its people but also wants to maintain a greater sense of control will create a plan that does both. That plan can establish the boundaries in line with the owner's vision of the company, while granting creative detail flexibility so that all levels of employees can significantly contribute in very rewarding, win:win ways. A good plan is THE BEST WAY to maximize the ROI potential of your own human resources.

The BI business plan creation approach is grounded in the foundation of our collective brilliance model. The most effective plans always start at thoroughly understanding customer needs and the competitive landscape. By using cutting-edge research to get closer to your buyers, you are much more likely to deliver the products & services they will want to buy. By using shrewd competitor analysis solutions, you can effectively tap into the brilliance of your competitors and incorporate their innovations into your own offerings. Blended together, this research offers a solid foundation on which to craft a potent business plan.

Based upon many years of developing plans with many companies, the optimal plan will include approximately 11 sections. These are briefly conveyed by clicking the right arrow to step through the following presentation...

As expressed in the presentation, we believe that tapping into external resources like BI also plays an important role in producing an optimal plan. Outside talent is not biased, nor locked into the company way of thinking about your markets, products, competitors, the landscape, etc. Good consultants can bring pure objectivity that is otherwise impossible to find with only internal resources. BI professionals have deep experience in how to execute the planning process so that you end up with a very smart plan. For tactical elements of the plan, BI can help you tap into our deep and diverse subcontractor network, yielding better quality and/or money-saving solutions that might otherwise be unknown to your team. And BI can also be the horses who do a lot of the work- as much as you desire- which can prove especially useful when your managers are already loaded with (too) many operational responsibilities on their plates.

If you are seeking some help creating a smart, winning business plan, a visually-stunning Power Point for the "road show," an online, narrated presentation (in any language) for virtual road shows, an elevator video, investor deck, CD-ROM, DVD, help sourcing quality investors and/or pitching your plan to them, etc, take advantage of our FREE consultation. We offer our most experienced, applicable talent to work with you toward creating a plan and related deliverables that intelligently balances your profit and growth objectives with the collective capabilities of your team and their resources. Our well-designed, thoroughly-proven model will help you get it right the first time.

If you are running a business without a plan, you are flying by the seat of your pants; even if that approach has seemed to work to date, it is tremendously limiting to the ultimate potential of your company, (hard) capped by just how much your “central dispatcher” (often the founder/owner/senior leader) can personally manage at any given time. If you have a plan but aren’t following it, you don’t really have a good plan. If you are wanting to start a business from scratch, nearly every resource that you might consult will advise you to put together an intelligent, written business plan right up front. Whatever your situation, the Big Innovations team would love to help you create a plan that clearly navigates the road to lucrative success. Contact us today for a FREE consultation...