The content is different for every plan, but the process is about the same. The success of any business plan is within the quality of the information provided. The plan itself is to represent the operation on paper as if it already exists. How much revenue is expected, from where, the marketing plan that prompts the sales, the infrastructure needed to meet the needs of doing business as well as other related actions and costs.
Take your time and talk to as many people as possible for information. Keep in mind doing your homework up front is like taking on an insurance policy. It increases your chances of succeeding by eliminating the unknowns.
You don’t have to follow a stringent outline or template, although these can help provide a guideline of what should be included in a plan. Just start anywhere and get going.
See if you have a local Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Business Resource Center or SCORE office to get advice on where to begin. You can check the list on Bplans.com (http://www.bplans.com/business_planning_resources/sbdc/ or http://www.bplans.com/business_planning_resources/score/). Your local Chamber of Commerce office should be able to provide some resources as well. On Bplans.com there are over 500 sample business plans that you can learn from (http://www.bplans.com/sample_business_plans.php).
You will also find a number of articles about writing a business plan here: http://articles.bplans.com/writing-a-business-plan
if you're looking for more help and want a software program to help take you through the steps of writing your plan, both LivePlan (http://www.liveplan.com/) and Business Plan Pro (http://www.paloalto.com/business_plan_software) are great tools.
Best of luck!
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