Write Your Own Business Plan: A Complete Guide
What exactly is a business plan again?
A business plan is a written business concept that serves as a guide and helps you to concretize and achieve your goals. It is also a management tool that allows you to analyze results, make strategic decisions and show how your company will work and grow. Government agencies or banks in particular usually require a business plan before they will grant funding or loans
Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated – it’s just tedious and time-consuming. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you how to write a business plan yourself that will get you the results you want. Don’t worry, you don’t have to have a degree in business administration or accounting to create a good business plan. This guide will show you step-by-step how to create your plan without complexity and frustration.
Have you already started your business plan and are still looking for the right tips to fine-tune it? Then we’ve got something for you: 6 tips for the perfect business plan.

Why should you write a business plan?
“Can’t I just start setting up and running my business?” – we often hear this from our customers. But unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy to set up a successful company. If you start your company without planning, you will miss out on some important benefits that a business plan offers.
A business plan helps you to tackle the following entrepreneurial and strategic tasks in a targeted manner:
To build a company quickly and successfully
Writing a business plan is about creating a foundation for your business. You’re not predicting the future, but working out the core strategy of your business that will help you stay on course for growth. This initial document is not meant to be perfect, but to be reviewed and adjusted to guide you in identifying and achieving your goals.
Without a business plan as a foundation, it is much more difficult to track your progress, make adjustments and have appropriate information to refer back to when making difficult decisions. In addition, creating a business plan ensures that you have something like an entrepreneurial road map that not only shows where you want to go, but also where you’ve already been.
To obtain financing and grants
Investors and lenders need to know that you have a solid vision for the development of your business. You need to prove that there is an achievable and sustainable need for your solution, that you have a strong business strategy and that your company can be financially stable. This means you need to have the right balance sheets, forecasts and a clear explanation of your business model ready for potential investors.
Business plan writing helps you put all these pieces together and make connections between them to tell a cohesive story about your business.
To make safe and strategically correct decisions
The biggest decisions you have to make for your business often come during difficult phases of growth or even in times of crisis that you cannot influence. This requires you to make momentous decisions much faster than you might like. Without up-to-date planning and forecasting information, these decisions may not be as safe or strategic as they need to be.
Having a business plan that you review regularly will help you make informed decisions. You will have all the information you need to know when to hire new employees, launch a new product line, or make a major purchase. At the same time, you can also plan ahead in case a decision does not turn out as expected, thus minimizing your potential risk.
Are you still unsure whether a business plan is worthwhile or not? In addition to this compact guide, we have put together 21 reasons for a business plan that you should know before you write your business plan.
Key contents of a professional business plan
If you want to write your business plan yourself, this requires an intensive examination of all levels of your planned company. However, if they are drawn up correctly, self-written business plans are by no means less promising than plans drawn up by a professional. From marketing and transport logistics to financing, there is a lot to consider. To make sure you don’t forget any details when writing your own business plan, we have compiled a list of all business plan chapters and a subsequent description of the key content of each chapter.

Key contents of a business plan
01
Executive Summary
02
Opportunities
03
Execution
04
Company and management at a glance
05
Financial plan
01
Executive Summary
The executive summary is an overview of your company and your plans. It comes first in your business plan and is one to two pages long. Ideally, the executive summary can act as a standalone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. In fact, it’s very common for investors to only ask for the executive summary when evaluating your company. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they will often request a full plan and more detailed financials.
This executive summary is the first and most important chapter of your business plan. That’s why it’s advisable to write it at the very end. Only when you have defined the details of your company in detail is it worth writing a concise summary. Make absolutely sure that the executive summary is short, concise and appealing to investors. The following aspects must be included in the summary:
Include an overview sentence that essentially describes what your company does. This sentence can also be a value proposition and formulated like a slogan or tagline.
Fasse nun in ein bis zwei Sätzen das Problem zusammen, das du auf dem Markt löst. Jedes Unternehmen löst ein Problem für seine Kunden und erfüllt einen Bedarf auf dem Markt.
How do you address the problem you have identified in the market? Describe how the product or service offered addresses the previously defined deficit.
Who is your target market or your ideal customer? How many people are there who would find your product appealing or use your service? At this point, it’s important to be specific and honest.
When you open a shoe company, you’re not targeting everyone just because everyone has feet. You’re most likely targeting a specific market segment, such as “style-conscious men” or “runners”. This makes it much easier for you to target your marketing and sales efforts and attract the kind of customers who are most likely to buy from you.
Every company faces some form of competition and it is important to provide an overview of your potential competitors in your summary. Are there alternatives or substitutes on the market? How do other companies solve the described market problem and what differentiates your product or service from the rest?
Give a brief overview of your team and a short explanation of why you are exactly the right people to bring your idea to market.
Investors place enormous importance on the team – even more than the idea, because even a great idea needs great execution to become a reality.
The final core element of your executive summary is a description of the progress you have made so far in implementing your idea and the milestones you want to achieve in the future. Make bold but realistic forecasts for the future and demonstrate foresight. What progress will your start-up make in the future, what momentum will it develop? If there are already interested parties for your service or even buyers for your product, you should definitely emphasize this.
Tip: Are you writing an internal business plan that is merely a strategic guide for you and your team? Then you can dispense with details about the management team, financing requirements and growth forecast. Instead, focus on describing the strategic direction of your company.
02
Opportunities
When writing a business plan, this chapter is the real heart of your business plan. It contains information about the problem you want to solve, your proposed solution, who you want to sell to and how your product or service fits into the existing competitive landscape.
In this section of your business plan, you also show how your solution differs from your competitors’ solutions. In other words, you define your unique selling point and describe how you want to enrich the existing market.
The readers of your business plan will already have a rough idea of your business concept because they will have read your executive summary. Nevertheless, this chapter is extremely important as you expand on your initial overview, provide details and anticipate possible questions:
Start the opportunities chapter again with a description of the problem you are solving for your customers. If you can’t pinpoint the problem your potential customers have, then you may not have a viable business concept. So defining the problem is the most critical element of your business plan.
To ensure that you are solving a real problem for your potential customers, you should seek out the actual conversation with potential customers. What is the primary shortcoming for them? Maybe all existing solutions are expensive, cumbersome or far away? If potential customers confirm the deficit you suspect, you can present your potential solution in the next step.
Your solution is the product or service you want to offer your customers. Describe the service you offer and how it addresses the shortcoming.
For some products and services, it makes sense to describe use cases or tell the story of users who already benefit from your solution (and are willing to pay for it).
In this section, you pursue the question: Who to sell to? Depending on the type of business you’re starting and the type of plan you’re writing, you may not need to go into too much detail here. In any case, you need to know who your customers are and make a rough estimate of how many of them there are. If there aren’t enough customers for your product or service, this could be a warning sign.
A comprehensive market analysis requires a lot of research. First, identify market segments and determine how large each segment is. A market segment is a group of people (or other businesses) that you could potentially sell to. Once you’ve defined your target market segments, it’s time to define your ideal customer for each segment. This is best done by creating a fictitious buyer (a so-called avatar, buyer or user persona) to which you assign a name, gender, income level, likes, dislikes, etc. These buyer personas, tailored to the different segments, are a good tool for calculating the marketing and sales tactics you need to use to attract your ideal customers.
In addition to the customer analysis, a comprehensive market analysis also includes an assessment of the competition.
Not every company has direct competitors, i.e. competitors who offer a similar solution to the problem. However, every company is exposed to indirect competition. One of the biggest mistakes in your business plan is therefore to claim that you have no competitors. A company that is trying to solve the same deficit on the market is one of your indirect competitors, even if the solution approach is completely different from yours.
In this part of the business plan, describe who else offers solutions and what your competitive advantages are over the competition. Explain in detail how your solution stands out from other offerings on the market and what advantages it offers. Investors will want to know how you differentiate yourself from the competition.
All entrepreneurs have a vision of where they want to take the company when they are successful. It’s admittedly very tempting to spend a lot of time exploring future possibilities for new products and services. However, you shouldn’t expand on these visions too much in your business plan, as they are just dreams of the future and may not materialize. One or two paragraphs about possible expansion scenarios are enough to show investors where you want to go in the long term. However, your main focus should always be on your initial products and services.
03
Execution
Now that you have completed the chapter on the opportunities for your company, it is time to focus on the concrete execution of your plans when writing your business plan. This section is about the operational business, your marketing and sales plans, how you will measure your success and which milestones you want to achieve.
This paragraph describes how you want to sell to your target markets, how your prices are made up and which advertising measures and partnerships you need to establish your product or service.
Market analysis is essential before the marketing plan. Without having defined potential buyers (buyer personas) and their preferences in advance, a marketing plan will be of little value.
The marketing and sales plan is roughly made up of the following four areas:
Positioning is the way in which you will try to present your company to your customers. Do you offer a low-cost solution, do you shine with sustainability or are you a high-end luxury brand?
Don’t worry too much about your positioning statement having to be very long or in-depth. You just need to explain where your company stands in the competitive landscape and what the core value proposition is that differentiates your company from the alternatives.
Der Preis sendet eine sehr starke Botschaft an die Verbraucher und kann ein wichtiges Instrument sein, um deine strategische Positionierung an die Verbraucher zu kommunizieren. Wenn du ein hochwertiges Produkt anbietest, wird ein gehobener Preis diese Botschaft schnell an Verbraucher vermitteln. Trotzdem musst du deine Preise mit der Nachfrage und den Erwartungen der Verbraucher übereinstimmen. Ein zu hoher Preis schreckt Kunden ab. Ein zu niedriger Preis kann dazu führen, dass Kunden deinAngebot unterbewerten.
Bei der Preisfindung kannst du verschiedene Modelle nutzen:
- Deckung deiner Kosten: In der Regel verlangen Unternehmen von ihren Kunden mehr Geld, als es sie kostet, das Produkt oder die Dienstleistung zu liefern. Bei diesem Modell orientierst du dich also an den Herstellungskosten deines Produktes und addierst einen Aufschlag (Kosten + Aufschlag). Dies kann effektiv sein, wenn die Deckung der Anfangskosten für dein Unternehmen entscheidend ist.
- Wertorientierte Preisgestaltung: Bei einem „Value Pricing“-Modell bestimmst du den Preis auf der Grundlage des Wertes, den du deinen Kunden bietest. Wenn Sie z. B. Rasenpflege an viel beschäftigte Berufstätige vermarktest, sparst du deinen Kunden vielleicht 1 Stunde Zeit pro Woche. Wenn diese Stunde ihrer Zeit mit 50€/Stunde bewertet wird, könnte dein Service 30€/Stunde kosten.
- Marktbasierte Preisgestaltung: Schaue dir die aktuelle Landschaft der Wettbewerber genau an und lege den Preis dann auf der Grundlage dessen fest, was der Markt erwartet.
- Primärer und sekundärer Profit: Dein Anfangspreis muss nicht unbedingt dein primärer Profit sein. Du kannst dein Produkt zum Beispiel zu Produktionskosten oder sogar darunter verkaufen, aber einen viel profitableren Wartungs- oder Supportvertrag verlangen, der mit dem Kauf einhergeht. (Dies ist zum Beispiel die Strategie von Handy-Verträgen mit Neugeräten).
If you offer a physical product, the packaging of this product is crucial. It should be consistent with your positioning strategy and communicate your value proposition. You can also include images of the packaging in your business plan.
Dein Businessplan sollte eine Übersicht über die Arten von Werbung enthalten, für die du Geld ausgeben willst. Wirst du online werben oder nutzt du traditionelle, offline Medien? Denke daran, dass du unbedingt messen solltest, wie viel dich deine Werbeaktionen kosten und wie viele Verkäufe sie bringen. Werbeprogramme, die sich nicht rentieren, sind auf Dauer schwer aufrechtzuerhalten.
Beliebte Werbestrategien, die du an dieser Stelle detailliert beschreiben solltest:
Bei der Preisfindung kannst du verschiedene Modelle nutzen:
- PR: Ein prominenter Bericht über dein Produkt oder deine Dienstleistung kann dir viel Aufmerksamkeit verschaffen.
- Content Marketing: Beim Content Marketing geht es darum, potenzielle Kunden über Themen zu unterrichten und aufzuklären, die sie interessieren. Die kostenlosen Informationen und Ratschläge, die du zur Verfügung stellst sind in erster Linie nützlich; sie sind aber auch indirekt mit deinem Produkt oder deiner Dienstleistung verlinkt.
- Social Media: Präsenz in den sozialen Medien ist für die meisten Unternehmen eine Grundvoraussetzung. Natürlich musst du nicht auf jedem Social-Media-Kanal vertreten sein. Manchmal genügt es auf den Kanälen vertreten zu sein, auf denen sich deine Kunden aufhalten.
Strategische Partnerschaften: Eine Partnerschaft kann deinem Unternehmen Zugang zu einem Zielmarktsegment verschaffen und gleichzeitig deinem Partner ermöglichen, seinen Kunden ein neues Produkt oder eine neue Dienstleistung anzubieten.
In the operative paragraph, you show how your company works. This is about logistics, order processing, technology and other small details. Depending on the type of company you are setting up, this section can also be shorter. Remember to describe only the essentials.
If your company sells products that it buys from other suppliers, state here where the products come from, how they are delivered and processed and how they reach the end customer after processing.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
For product companies, a sales plan is an important part of the overall business plan. Service companies can skip this section in most cases.
If you use a specific technique to produce your product or your service is based on special machines and technology that your competitors may not have, you can explain those aspects here. Special features in logistics and order processing can also be mentioned here if they are particularly innovative or efficient.
Sales is how you will get your products to the customer. Every industry has different sales channels. The easiest way to find out which sales model is right for your company is to ask others in your industry.
Here are a few common sales models you can consider for your company:
Direct sales: Direct sales are the easiest and most profitable option. The savings from direct sales can be passed on to customers or increase your profit margins. Logistics is just how you get your products to the end customer.
Retail distribution: Large retailers prefer to buy through large distribution companies. These consolidate products from many suppliers and then make this inventory available to retailers. Of course, these distributors keep a percentage of the sales that pass through their warehouses.
Sales representatives: In some cases, only sales representatives have access to the desired distributors and retailers. They work to sell your products in the appropriate channel and take a commission.
Most companies use a mix of different sales channels – so you don’t have to limit yourself to just one sales channel either.
Finally, you should list in your business plan the key assumptions you have made to guarantee the success of your business.
A good tactic for forecasting is to think about risks. What risks are you taking with your business? For example, if you have no proven demand for a new product, hypothetically assume that people need your product and determine an estimated percentage of buyers. If you’re relying on online advertising as a key advertising channel, forecast the cost of that advertising and the percentage of ad viewers who will actually make a purchase.
Once you’ve made your assumptions, you can move on to the next step of proving them. The more validly you can test your assumption, the more likely it is that your business will be successful.
04
Company and management at a glance
This chapter discusses the structure of your company and introduces the key team members. These details are particularly important for investors, as they want to know who is behind the company and will help turn the idea into a lucrative business. You should therefore not ignore this information when writing your business plan.
This is where you present the team for the implementation of your idea. Go into the reasons that led you to put this team together and how the different positions work together. This chapter should show that you have thought about the important roles and responsibilities that your company needs to grow and succeed.
Include short biographies that highlight the relevant experience of each key team member. What background do they have? Do they have the right industry experience? Have members of the team had previous entrepreneurial success?
A common mistake that happens when describing the management team is to give each member of the team a C-level title (CEO, CMO, COO, etc.). This is often not realistic. It is better to consider the future growth of titles and leave room for change.
The business overview is the shortest section of your business plan. For a plan that you will only share internally with your business partners and team members, skip this section and move on to the next point.
For a full business plan that you will share with people outside your organisation, this section should include the following points:
Mission statement or value proposition: A sentence or two describing how the business serves its customers, employees, etc.
The location of the company
Brief history of the company (if it is an existing company)
Overview of the company’s legal structure
Overview of the company’s ownership structure
Intellectual property: Especially for technological and scientific companies that work with intellectual property that needs to be protected by patents or similar.
05
Financial plan
Present your financial plan at the end of your business plan. A typical financial plan includes monthly sales and revenue projections for the first 12 months and then annual projections for the remaining three to five years. Annual projections for three years are usually sufficient, but some investors also require a five-year period.
Entrepreneurs sometimes find this part intimidating because it deals with such a sensitive topic as money. But it doesn’t have to be. For most start-ups, financial planning is less complicated than you might think and you don’t need to have a degree in economics to do it.
If you still need help, please get in touch with us. We have the necessary experience to carry out a professional and confidential financial analysis of your company.
Your sales forecast is a prediction of how much you will sell over the next few years. It’s usually split into several lines, with one line for each core product or service you offer. Don’t make the mistake of breaking down your sales forecast down to the smallest detail. At this point, simply focus on higher-level areas.
For example, if you are creating a sales forecast for a restaurant, you can divide your forecast into the following groups: Lunch, dinner and drinks. If you run a product company, you can break down your forecast by target market segment or by product category.
The first line of your sales forecast breaks down the planned sales, the second the number of expected customers. Each sales line also includes a corresponding line in which the direct costs of the goods sold are listed. Direct costs include all costs associated with the production of your product or the provision of your service. For a restaurant, for example, this would be the cost of ingredients (cost of goods sold). For a product company, it would be the cost of raw materials (also cost of goods sold). For a consulting business, it could be the cost of paper and other presentation materials, etc. Regular business costs such as rent, insurance or salaries do not count as direct costs.
Your staffing plan specifies how much you want to pay your employees. For a small company, you can list each position and salary in the staffing plan. For a larger company, the staffing plan is typically broken down into functional groups such as ‘Marketing’, ‘Sales’, ‘IT’, ‘Operations’, ‘Interns’, etc.
In addition, the staffing plan includes what is typically referred to as the ‘employee burden’, i.e. the costs for employees over and above their salary. This includes payroll taxes, insurance and other necessary costs you incur each month when you have employees on your payroll.
In the profit and loss account, you show whether you are making a profit or a loss with your business. To do this, you summarise all the data from your sales forecast and your staffing plan and add current expenses such as rent, electricity and insurance. In the bottom line, you then deduct your expenses from your income to show investors that your company is making a profit every month. Especially in the early days of your business, losses are perfectly realistic. Don’t be afraid to list these and document the gradual growth of your company over the following years.
If you are borrowing money from investors, such as a loan from your bank or are dependent on a start-up grant from the job centre, your company’s liquidity is immensely important.
The cash flow statement is often confused with the income statement, but these sections have very different functions. While the income statement calculates your profits and losses, the cash flow statement tracks how much cash (money in the bank) you have at any given time. The key to understanding this difference is understanding the difference between cash and profits: If you need to send an invoice to your customer and it takes your customer 30 or 60 days to pay that invoice, you won’t have the capital from the sale immediately available. Nevertheless, you will already recognise the sale as a profit in your income statement. In the cash flow statement, you therefore only list actual capital that has already been recognised.
The balance sheet provides an overview of your company’s financial health. It lists the assets in your company, the liabilities and your equity (owners’ equity). If you subtract the company’s liabilities from its assets, you can determine the company’s net worth.
The last point you may want to include in your financial plan when writing your business plan is a section on your exit strategy. If you want to keep your business indefinitely and are not seeking venture funding, you can skip this section.
An exit strategy is your plan for the eventual sale of your business, either to another company or to the public in an IPO. If you have investors, they will want to know your thoughts on this. After all, your investors want a return on their investment, and they’ll only get that if the company is sold to someone else.
Again, you don’t need to go into great detail here, but you should identify some companies that might be interested in buying your business once you’re successful.

Conclusion
A business plan is the perfect tool for validating your ideas, coordinating resources, setting goals and successfully presenting your company to the outside world. Its clear structure and clearly defined chapters make it a manageable and easy to create document. However, its content requires a certain amount of entrepreneurial knowledge, solid planning and realistic future forecasts. To really make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, take a look at our business plan tips for founders.
Probably the most convenient and fastest way to start a business is to have your business plan drawn up – ideally by a professional business consultant. We at Unternehmenswerk are happy to support you on your path to self-employment and help you develop a successful business concept.
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