Many businesses before writing a business plan focus on speed. By rushing to complete their plans, businesses often fail to gather important information to support their plans. Investors never read business plans that lack adequate proof or consider the claims in them worthless.
Gather the necessary proof to build your case, support your claims, and persuade investors. When writing a business plan, use these 10 critical pieces of evidence to win the trust of potential investors and their backing quickly:
1. Articles about your industry, competitors, products, trends, and so on. Unsolicited, articles about your company or products will help you to build credibility, provide independent viewpoints, and often include third-party research.
2. Market studies. Use market studies to support market trends, size, and growth rates. Prepared by an independent party, these studies add credible evidence to market related claims.
3. Product or business literature. In-house product or business literature shows that you are in the game. Moreover, it can help investors better understand your product or service and the key point of differentiation you are competing on.
4. Customer interviews, surveys, testimonials. All these are effective forms of third-party endorsements in which someone offers independent testimony, comments, or opinions about you, your product, or your service. For these to be persuasive, include with them the person’s full name and an identifier, like a city or organization.
5. Contracts for leases, royalties, commissions, supply agreements, subcontractor agreements and the like. It is desirable to attach these arrangements to contracts and agreements to prove that they really exist. An important arrangement with a specific provider supported by a contract or agreement gives it real value to an investor.
6. Product cost and upholding details. Claims like low cost producer are meaningless without facts and figures. Support all your claims. No matter what you claim, there is almost always someone who has tracked or analyzed the important statistic that backs it up.
7. Important technical drawings, patents, trademarks, franchises, copyrights, licenses, and so on. If you say that you have these, you should support your words. Don’t say you hold a patent if it is Patent Pending. Give them the patent number and type if you really hold a patent. Prove its existence.
8. Financial statements, financial projections, tax returns, and similar financial reports. Show investors what you did financially. Where you spent and produced your money and where you plan to make it. When you are supporting the value of your business, this information is indispensable.
9. Corporate books and records, information about your officers or directors. These can include charters, bylaw, minutes of meetings, shareholder list and other supply records, qualifications and registrations. If you claim share ownership, dividends and incorporation, these items will support you perfectly.
10. Details of outstanding debt, equity securities, and so forth. Investors will want to know about the dividend rates, par values, principal amounts, interest rates, terms, and collateral about your outstanding or proposed debentures or equity securities.
Whether you want to draw in new business investors or excite current ones, write a business plan with compelling pieces of evidence that are persuasive and support your case.
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