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Competition
Name and describe all the direct and indirect competitors of your product. The competitors are not just the people producing the same kind of product but anyone with product or service that may make your customers decide not to buy what you offer. Then identify the competitive advantages your product has over these other products.
Market analysis
Identify the customers you are targeting. This is necessary because it will enable you to know the price that you can offer the product. If you are targeting people in the high income bracket and you offer something too cheap, you will not get your target. On the other hand, if it is people in the lower income bracket, then the cost must not be too high. You also must have checked with the consultant the estimated market size. What is the rough estimate of people that use such product? What has been the trend in the industry? You know tastes of people change from time to time, so be sure it is a product that is not seasonal. If so, you should plan creative things that would .
Marketing plan
How are you going to ensure that the products get to the target? The marketing plan will include publicity, advertisement, promotion etc that would be done to get consumers aware of the product. For instance, if you have a product for market women and artisans, advertising on the internet or newspapers is not a good way to get your message across. It will also state clearly the sales or distribution channels. What are the bottlenecks or challenges and how would they be overcome?
Financial Plan
You have done the financial plan with the consultant, so include the financial projections, break-even point, estimates of the earnings including assumptions and probabilities and capital requirements of the business. You may not be a mathematician, but ensure you have a good idea of how they arrived at these figures.
Stages
Most of what you have been doing is projections into the future. So return to the present and highlight how you are going to start. Then break your future projections into time specific plans.
If you start this year, what are the things you have to start with?
What stage do you expect the business to be by next year, two years, three, years, four, five etc. Which employees are needed to start with on full-time? Which ones should be employed on part time and the business would still be able to run well.
Current assets
Write all the things you have currently to start with…money, building, vehicles, people etc.
Operating plan
Identify the day-to-day operations for the success of the business. If you are going to be rendering this service or producing this quantity of goods, what are the activities that would be performed?
Based on the people you are starting with, who should do what? This will enable you to know the jobs that must be performed. So in employing people, you will be able to tell them precisely what their job specifications are. At this stage, you should be cutting costs as much as possible, so you would not employ someone full time and then find out the work to be done is not something that should take the entire day.
Many small business owners get angry when employees are idle or do not have any work to do for the company a greater part of the day. The employee may find it disheartening if you try to get them to do tasks that were not originally specified in the job description or unrelated to what they were employed to do.
Commit it to God
It is just a plan. So many unforeseen things may happen along the line. You do not know the future, so commit your plans into God’s hands.
Tony nods. “The idea is becoming clearer.”

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