A business plan for a foreigner is supposed to prepare you for opening and running a business and give you a basis for subsequent business decisions. A business plan, especially in the early days, is a map of your company's needs. For a young entrepreneur, it's also a direction blinker - defining the goals and actions to be taken helps you stick to the path once taken.
A business plan for a foreigner will show you:
- what your expectations are for your business
- what goals you want to achieve and what kind of business you want to build
- your specific business actions as a future entrepreneur.
Working on a business plan is a process of systematic analysis that will help you refine your idea and give it a better chance of success. In this process you will determine :
- why your venture is likely to succeed
- what makes your business idea different from all others
- what is the vision for the development of your business
- what will set your product or service apart from the competition
- what are the main expectations of your future customers
- what kind of competition you will have and what you can learn from them
- how to promote yourself effectively
- whether your qualifications are sufficient to realize your idea
- what business partners you need
- whether your venture has weaknesses
- what capital you need and what profit you can count on
- how much time you need to open your business.
You prepare a business plan for yourself and your business. The most important thing is that it should include information and data that will allow you to assess the potential of your business idea.
The business plan for a foreigner must be readable and understandable - especially since you will be returning to it after some time. It should contain all the information you will need to evaluate your business idea and the chances of its realization.
A business plan may be required by an external institution from which you want to receive money for financing and business development. For example, you must prepare such a document if you are applying for funds to open a business from the labor office. If you prepare a business plan for such an institution, check whether it has its own template (a set of questions and information in a specific layout). If so, you should use it.
A business plan must be well thought out, reliably developed, and above all, it should match your business idea. A copied plan from someone else will not prepare you to run your own business. Just because someone is providing the same service does not mean they are performing it in the same market realities.
Thinking solidly about what you want to do, how you want to do it and the environment in which you will develop your business is the first step that will prepare you to create a business plan for a foreigner.
To begin with, you need a well-defined framework of operations - at this stage you create an overall picture of your business.
To begin, answer the questions:
- What kind of work will you enjoy and what do you really want to do?
- What do you know how to do best?
- What will your company do? Do you want to produce something, sell something or provide a service? In what sector?
- In what area will your company operate? Is it to be a local business, or will the scope of your business be wider? For example, are you opening a hairdressing establishment in a residential area where do you live and operate for customers in the local area, or do you plan to sell online items nationwide or abroad?
- What kind of benefits do you want, primarily how much do you want to earn in the first months of your business, and how much in the following months?
- Are there any non-standard services or benefits you can offer customers? For example:
- if you open a hair salon, you will organize a children's play area so that parents can come with their children; you will know the latest trends in cutting and coloring and offer a wide range of services
- if you will rent equipment or machines, customers will be able to take advantage of ordering or booking online 24/7.
- What are your goals and how do you plan to achieve them? These goals should be measurable, for example, "I plan to serve 50 customers per month"; "I will acquire a minimum of 5 new customers every month."
It is often said of business goals that they should be SMART. This is an acronym derived from the English words:
S - Specific, which means concrete, detailed
M - Measurable, or measurable
A - Achievable, or attainable
R - Relevant, or important
T - Time-based, or time-bound.
Plan and define:
- What will be the source of your income?
- What kind of services or products are you going to sell and are they likely to be of interest to customers in the current market realities?
- What will be your competitive advantage and can differentiate you in the market, what unique features will your offerings have (for example: kids' corner, additional promotions, flexible customer service hours, fast turnaround times, price)?
- Why wnie your service should be used by customers (for example: high quality at an attractive price, fast delivery to any location, free transportation, other customer amenities)?
- What might be the demand for the product or service you offer (how many customers per day/week/month should be interested in buying from you and how many products/services will they want to buy)?
- How do you want to reach the audience of your service? How should they find out about it (for example: will you prepare an advertising banner and hang it in a prominent place, prepare brochures and spread them in various places, advertise in the local press, post information on the Internet, social media)? How often will you undertake such activities?
- Should it be an individual? If so, try to determine its most important characteristics, for example, age, earnings, occupation, place of residence.
- Is it to be a company? If yes, specify its size (small, medium, large). Of what business profile? Think about who in this company you need to reach (for example: production, purchasing, sales, marketing). Identify your potential customers - determine who would be interested in your service or product.
If the specifics of your planned business require it, you can divide your customers into segments, i.e. groups who share similar characteristics and who may use your product or service differently because of those characteristics.
For example, if you plan to sell diet products, determine what proportion of your customers may be women in a certain age range: under 30, in the 30-50 range and over 50. Consider whether and what are the specifics of nutrition in these groups? Is it worth preparing a separate offer for them or communicating this offer differently? Does it matter that a woman works in an office, at home, or studies? Where does she most often buy food?
Plan how many and to whom you want to sell your products (services) and at what price for the first 3 months, in 6 months, for 9 months, for one year and in two years.
In this step, use the information from step one - product or service description and step two - customer description. This is because you already know what products or services you intend to provide, and whether your customers are a rather similar group, or whether you should divide them into subgroups and prepare a slightly different sales plan for each.
Research your company's surroundings and see how your future competitors operate. Remember that your competitor will not only be companies that offer exactly the same thing, but also those that provide different services, but meet a similar customer need. For example, competitors for a boxed diet company include other catering companies, as well as local restaurants or convenience stores that offer prepared food.
You should gain as much knowledge as possible about the market and the environment in which you want to operate. This will allow you to assess whether you have a chance to enter the market and develop your business. Therefore:
- check on the Internet how companies similar to yours are doing:
- type a keyword into a search engine, i.e. the name of your product/service/industry
- go to industry forums, where people already running a particular business exchange information
- read customer reviews about these companies
- find the addresses of operating companies and visit them to see how they operate
- consider what the trends are in the market where you want to operate - in particular, whether there are any risks that may affect your business (for example: whether the prices of semi-finished products are stable)
- look for information on the Internet, whether there have been companies with a similar profile in your area that have had to close down their operations and what were the reasons for this
- find out who your biggest competitor is, what kind of offerings they have and what kind of reputation they have among customers.
Consider who will be your most important business partner, i.e. your key supplier or contractor.
Contractors and suppliers are an important link, because the quality of the products or raw materials they supply and the timeliness of their services will translate into your offerings. The financial health, the quality of the work provided and the degree of commitment of the supplier and contractor will determine the success of your business. Many companies, for example, cooperate with sales platforms (OLX, Allegro), courier companies, parcel machine operators. They tie their business and its growth to a particular distributor or intermediary.
hink about how much money you need to start the business and how much it will cost you every month to run it. Costs depend on the specifics of the business. Most often, in connection with the launch of the business, entrepreneurs pay for: hardware, software and its implementation, merchandise, rental of premises or warehouse, deposit for renting premises/office/warehouse, adaptation of premises (renovation and equipment), permits or licenses, building a website, advertising activities such as business cards or flyers.
The most common fixed costs incurred each month are:
- Social Security contributions
- office/location/other fees
- bookkeeping costs
- costs of purchasing goods/services/materials for production, etc.
- fuel costs
- insurance costs
- telephone, internet costs
- tax costs
- IT service costs
- costs of advertising, promotion
- in the case of hiring an employee - the cost of his salary and employee contributions.
The most common variable costs, appearing from time to time, occurring depending on the type of business, are:
- postage/courier costs
- vehicle/equipment repair costs
- costs of purchasing parts (in case of emergency breakdown)
- costs related to the need for additional services
- costs of legal services
- cost of acquiring additional qualifications, certificate, certification, etc.
Once you know how much money you need for your startup, determine the sources from which you will get it. These can be: own funds, a loan, a loan, a grant from the labor office, other grants.
Regardless of the source you choose, check the financing terms in detail and plan the costs associated with raising capital and repayment. It is advisable to carefully determine your needs in order to:
- do not take on too heavy a financial burden that you will not be able to repay
- avoid a situation in which you will have too few funds to develop and operate your business.
The eighth step - do you have enough knowledge
Analyze your competencies. Find out which, if any, you lack and whether you are able to acquire them. If so, determine:
- how much time you will need for this
- where you can acquire them
- what costs it will entail
- whether you need to do it before you start your business, or whether you can get them during your business.
Include in your business plan for a foreigner any costs associated with acquiring the qualification. Depending on what stage you do this at, it will be a one-time cost associated with starting the business or a variable cost.
The data you collect while creating your business plan for a foreigner can help you detect the most important risks to the success of your business.
If you find that you may have a problem implementing your idea in its original form, don't give up. Try to make modifications that will increase the chances of success. Think about what needs to be changed to improve the plan. Rethink all the important elements: target group, marketing activities, channels to reach customers, cost level.
With a set of information, prepare a schedule of activities.
Scheduling activities over time is key to achieving your goals. It organizes tasks and supports control of plan execution. A properly constructed schedule of activities is also a method of verifying your business idea and recognizing risks you didn't notice before.
The schedule must be simple and clear, and show logical relationships between activities.
In particular, the schedule should:
- indicate the date of starting the business
- identify the most important tasks in the order of their execution
- indicate the person responsible for the task - this will allow you to divide the work and assign people with the appropriate competence to individual tasks (if the tasks will be performed only by you, plan them reasonably, so that you can actually perform them in the time allowed)
- specify the start and end date of the task
- indicate milestones or checkpoints - moments when you check that you are acting according to plan. For example: you decide that you will find a premises for your business in 1.5 months. You assume that in the first 7 days you will review listings on three online portals and meet with one real estate agency. After 3 days, check how much you have done (checkpoint). After verification, you will know if you have a chance to realize what you have planned. If you see that you have done too little in those 3 days, you need to make up for it. Then you will benefit from the time buffer you have written into the schedule in case of delays. Missing a property on the scheduled date will delay your launch and diminish your potential earnings.