Don't bother with copy and paste.

Get this complete sample business plan as a free text document.

Download for free

Accounting icon Automated Accounting Business Plan

Start your plan

Business Cashflow Solutions, Inc.

Market Analysis Summary

Business Cashflow Solutions, Inc. will be focusing on service companies that have regular, ongoing billings. In addition, we will be marketing our complete line of check acceptance products to all retail establishments.

For the purpose of this analysis, we have only included the Richmond-Petersburg MSA potential market. We believe this shows the huge potential market for these services in a quite conservative way, and allows for our success utilizing only this market. However, we will not be limiting our marketing efforts to the Richmond-Petersburg area. Other areas of direct marketing will be all areas of the state of Virginia. In addition, our Internet marketing allows potential customers from any area of the United States.

4.1 Market Segmentation

  1. Retail: our highest revenue producing segment will be large local businesses, such as grocery stores, that use check acceptance services. But all retail segments have a potential need for at least one of our services.
  2. Service: the biggest concentration of business will be service companies, such as pest control, alarm monitoring, lawn care, child care facilities, etc., that can utilize our pre-authorized checking and electronic payments services. All service companies represent potential customers for one or more of our services.
Automated accounting business plan, market analysis summary chart image

Market Analysis
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Potential Customers Growth CAGR
Retail (Richmond-Petersburg MSA) 1% 5,126 5,182 5,239 5,297 5,355 1.10%
Services (Richmond-Petersburg MSA) 3% 10,633 10,963 11,303 11,653 12,014 3.10%
Other 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0.00%
Total 2.46% 15,759 16,145 16,542 16,950 17,369 2.46%

4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

Our target market is comprised of service and retail businesses because of the nature of the services we provide.

We need to focus our marketing efforts at a local level, allowing growth in other areas to be a source of additional revenues that we will not be dependent on for success.

Trends are in our favor. According to an article in Business Week’s June 22, 1998 issue, “there was a 100% increase in the number of checks cut since 1992 due to small-biz growth.”

The service and retail industries have experienced strong growth historically; and consumer spending and confidence are at all-time highs, and are continuing to grow.

The trend to outsource services is established for businesses, and will see increases as finding employees to staff positions continues to become more difficult.

4.2.2 Market Growth

Limiting ourselves to the Richmond-Petersburg MSA, we see more than 400 retail and service businesses per year, according to information gathered from the Greater Richmond Partnership and the U.S. Census Bureau. These numbers allow for new customer acquisition sufficient to sustain Business Cashflow Solution, Inc.’s ongoing operating objectives.

4.2.3 Market Needs

Since our target is the small- and medium-sized business, one of the underlying needs is for increased cash flow. The key points of our services is that they allow for the expedition of receivables, while saving the business money in invoicing expenses.

4.3 Service Business Analysis

The licensee base of ZZZZ consists of over #### nationwide. While a licensee is not assigned a territory and is free to operate his business anywhere, ZZZZ is committed to establishing only a select number of payment processing centers in any geographic area, to reach their goal of 2.5% of the market.

4.3.1 Business Participants

At the highest level are the few well-established names in point-of-sale check authorization. Most of these offer similar but different services, revolving around a high fee to guarantee checks against return.

4.3.2 Competition and Buying Patterns

In many respects, competition is non-existent for our services. Small- and medium-sized businesses generally cannot utilize pre-authorized checks and electronic payments on their own. These options are mostly reserved for large organizations such as insurance companies and banks.

Pricing for these services is well below what most businesses spend to invoice customers, and these services have met with wide approval throughout the United States.

The most important element of general competition is what it takes to retain customers, as these services are highly price competitive. It is worth making great efforts to maintain personal relationships with our customer base so that we are able to make concessions where necessary to retain customers.