The question of how to make a business plan look sexy is an important one because the way your business plan document looks has an immediate effect on the way your readers (partner, investor, banker) see you.
Black text on white paper will get your document down the pile. Something too long will get people discouraged and will make you irrelevant. Not enough empty space on the page? Reading nightmare guaranteed!
The point is not just relevant. It’s super, duper, important.
Why? Because professional business plan readers see dozens of business plans every week and have to be very selective to make their time profitable. They have expectations from a content perspective, but they also know what they don’t want to see – because poor design is often a sign of poor preparation. And you want to avoid that, don’t you?
Hmmm. That’s what we’re here for, and in this article, we’ll give you a few actionable tips you’ll be able to use right now to make your business plan memorable. Yup!
Now. Before we dive into the topic, let us add that this article is part of a series published on the Impactified Accelerated MBA blog to show business owners how to write a business plan without sweating. At Impactified, we give away 80% of our resources for free – including a free business plan template and a free business plan mini-course, just in case that’s relevant – so if you are interested in the topic, give them a look!
Not enough? We also produced a Business Plan Builder module that includes two templates and a work frame you’ll be able to use and personalize, and two hours of tutorial videos to explain the logic. So, if you’re wondering how to make your business plan ready, easy as 1, 2, 3 you have no excuse!
Back to our topic, however! In this article, we’ll first come back to a few basics. We’ll then explore three key topics: how to make a business plan look professional, or dull, or sexy and memorable?
Sounds good?
Awesome. Keep reading.
Reminder: 3 Business plan basics
Before we get into the “how-to” part of the article, there are three essential basics we need to mention because they are a typical source of mistakes and cost small businesses and their owners a fortune.
Long story short? Your business plan should be a storytelling tool. It should give you the best opportunity to think about strategic business planning. And nobody cares about ‘just’ a business plan. Period!
Business plans should be a matter of storytelling, not money.
First – what we’re about to say will probably sound counter-intuitive. Still, it’s fundamental: working on a business plan should not be a matter of money. Instead, it should be a matter of storytelling.
Yes, you are probably looking for money, and your reader is likely to be an investor or a banker – fair enough.
Still, these guys don’t want you to ask for money. Instead, they want you to make them a business proposal they won’t be able to ignore. And that’s typically a matter of building a pitch that sells a story instead of asking for money.
We explored the issue of what’s a business plan and what it should be for in another article. Make sure to read it if you are unclear about the distinction between ‘just money’ and storytelling.
Nobody cares about ‘just’ a business plan.
Second, you shouldn’t be working on a business plan ‘just’ because you’ve been asked to. Nobody gives a damn about ‘just’ a business plan!
No! You should be working on a business plan because that’s the best opportunity for an entrepreneur or a business owner to do business planning and think strategically.
Strategic thinking is crucial because it gives you two things to think about (again, beyond money).
One, what are you trying to achieve.
And two, how are you going to make that happen?
The money and fundraising part is only a consequence of point two, really: you are going to achieve X by doing A and B and C, hence you need money. But things don’t work the other way around at all.
Said differently, writing your business plan is important for your business because it makes you think big. Even better, it’s the best way to demonstrate that beyond just a document, you have a real business with a real plan to get it to a convincing next step.
Business plan vs strategic plan: that’s the real deal!
Make your business plan yourself.
Third basic point: you don’t need a business plan consultant – write it yourself!
As business coaches, we receive many emails from people asking if we can write a business plan for their small businesses. But our answer is always the same: nope!
Why? Because, as we just said, nobody gives a damn about just a business plan (again); hence having someone write the thing for you makes no sense.
The point is to build strategic thinking, strategic planning, and storytelling, so paying someone to think for you is a loss of money.
Yes, writing a business plan can take a bit of time, but having someone write a business for you can cost thousands of dollars and means you won’t be able to explain your strategic choices.
We’re not even talking about the difficulty of explaining the financial part of your business plan if you haven’t done it yourself, by the way.
So? Please put your hands into it and leverage the power of the exercise. With a little bit of method and the right tools, the exercise is actually fun!
How to make a business plan people will read and remember?
- Make it a matter of storytelling, not just money!
- Take the opportunity to think strategically!
- Do it yourself!
Wondering how to make a business plan look sexy? Focus on the ‘why’ first.
Right! So we’ve clarified the basics. Now let us get to the core of the topic: your business plan needs to feel sexy to your reader because there is a lot of competition. And you’ll stand a chance only if your business plan stands out from the crowd.
Obviously, your content must make sense for a financier from a substance perspective. But if your reader gets bored with your pitch before they’ve even started to read it, you’re a dead story – so it must also be visually appealing right from the start.
Walk a mile in their shoes and think of it as a book-buying exercise at the bookshop.
For instance, say you’re looking for a book to read on the beach. How do you make a choice?
Option one, the book is recommended by someone, so you won’t even look at the other millions of books on the shelves. They don’t stand a chance.
Option two, you decide to explore. First, you’ll likely look at the cover and pick one because the design is sexy. Then you’ll read… No. Strike that. Then you’ll skim through the pitch, and you’ll decide to either buy in or pass.
Said differently? Your gut feeling will make you decide to give the book a chance or not because of design and pitch reasons. And the same thing happens when someone has your business plan in their inbox. The content only matters if the packaging is eye-catching.
So, how to make your business plan stand out from the crowd then?
One, make it look professional, but not ‘just’ professional.
Two, don’t make it look dull.
Three, make it look memorable!
Stake #1: How to make a business plan look professional?
To begin with, how to make a business plan look professional?
The best way to do that is to realize that traditional business plans writing is a very standardized and codified exercise. Professional business plan readers expect your business plan to contain very specific elements organized section by section, which means that you should always follow a specific business plan outline.
Summary page, problem statement, target market with competitive analysis, management team description, so forth and so on – you can’t afford to skip the outline part of the work.
Doing this shows your reader that you have done your homework and understand the game’s rules. On the contrary, ignoring the expected outline will be seen as incompetence, if not disrespect.
Following the expected format also means you won’t miss any important detail. And it means that your story will flow very logically and be easily understandable by whoever is reading you.
Another tip is to realize that different readers have different expectations when reading your document. For instance, an investor wants your business plan to show a profit potential (and strong trust indicators). In contrast, a banker wants to see a beyond-reliable re-payment capacity.
To be seen as professional, that is to say, you’ll want to make sure that your business plan follows the accepted standards and is adapted to your audience. That’s the best way to make your storytelling exercise efficient!
Stake #2: How to make a business plan look dull? (#sarcasm #avoidthat)
Now that you’ve followed the expected flow and your content is complete and logical, you want to make sure that your final document is eye-catching. The question is, how?
We’ll explain in a minute, but before we do that, let’s look at the one thing you really (really) don’t want to do: make your business plan look dull!
So, how to make a business plan look dull then?
Sarcastic questions call for sarcastic answers: you do pretty much what everybody else does! Black text on a white page (or slide), with about a ton of text, and you make sure that people get bored quickly!
Okay. More seriously.
If your business plan is in a slide format, you want to avoid putting too much text on a slide! A slide should only serve as visual support, so the least it contains, the better! Bullet points, big numbers, illustrations, that’s it!
When you put more than a couple of lines of text, the reader focuses on reading the text, and they can’t listen to what you have to say, so everybody is losing their time. So the stake is to give them keywords and key numbers they can remember easily and know your topic enough to pitch it with as little text as possible.
Alternatively, suppose you provide them with a more comprehensive format with more text because you want the reader to have some background to chew on. In that case, you want to avoid big blocks that are difficult to chew (unless you want people to skip blocks entirely, of course).
You also want to avoid black on white and designs with no design because that’s the worst thing to read.
And you want to go straight to the point. Like it or not, a business plan should be short, with seven to ten pages tops.
To wrap up: how to make a business plan that doesn’t look dull? Turn it into a teaser suggesting to the reader that there’s a deal to make, and use it to obtain the next meeting with your interlocutor. But… never (ever) turn it into a thesis on why your business needs money. Dull!
Stake #3: next step, how to make a business plan memorable? (#dothat)
So your business proposal looks professional because you’ve followed the proper structure. And it doesn’t look dull anymore because you’ve decided not to make the mistake everybody does. Right?
You’re awesome.
Now, there’s still a million-dollar question to answer! How to make a business plan memorable for your reader? Memorable means two things here: how to make sure they remember it and increase the chances of taking action?
Be clear about your business model.
Your business model is a significant element, and you have to be sharp about it. Have you used a lean business plan canva to structure your thinking? Can you explain how you create value and come up with a recurring payment system that builds a regular cash flow? Can you elaborate on your client acquisition strategy and costs?
Polish up your finances.
First, how do you make sure they’ll remember what you have to say and offer? There are some low-hanging fruits there.
For instance, your business plan must show them that your business proposal is worth looking into from a financial perspective. Bankers want to see you can repay. Investors want to see a reliable opportunity to make a profit, so you have to polish your numbers.
On the one hand, that includes building some thinking about the money you already make and the money you plan on making. It’s also a matter of explaining what strategy you have in mind to make that happen. What’s the operational plan in your business plan looking like? What marketing plan do you have in mind? What recruitment plans do you need to fund?
On the other hand, you’ll want to make some numbers stick in your readers’ minds. So the point is not to send them heavy financial statements immediately. Instead, it is to write a financial business plan built around reasonable financial projections that gives you robust insights and then pick critical points you’ll present visually.
No need to stress here. We know that business owners often say that just the thought of writing a financial business plan is a nightmare. But it doesn’t have to be complicated.
Again, the exercise is vital in terms of strategic planning, so you could brainstorm and consider your options with a business coach – they clearly have all the tools and insights you need to move on. If you prefer working on your financials (i.e., your income statement and cash flow statement, P&L, balance sheet, etc) on your own, the Business Plan Builder will give you automated tables and some tutorial videos – easy as 1, 2, 3!
Polish up the exec summary too!
Another easy step to take is to polish up your executive summary, i.e., the first page your reader will bump into.
That page should be specific and engaging at the same time! It has to send a compelling message to push the reader to turn the page and read the plan. And it has to start the storytelling work right now!
Start with the vision behind your business idea: how is your company going to answer a demand? Is there any chance that customers will make a sales-boosting buzz around your innovative products or services? Use your mission statement as well: what drives you and motivates you to get the business on and on?
We wrote an article on how to write an executive summary for a business plan, please have a look. Shameless plug again – that’s also a topic we discuss in the module videos.
Speaking of putting a polished story on a single page, entrepreneurs also tend to find the idea of one page business plans sexy, but the topic is tricky.
A common misconception is that one page is easy to write compared to traditional business plan writing. Still, the only way to have a compelling pitch on one page is to have a very clear big picture of what you want to achieve – which you only have if you go through the whole exercise. So, be careful!
Polish your design.
Last but not least, you’ll really want to polish the design of your overall presentation – whether that’s a business plan pdf or slides in a ppt format.
As explained earlier, you don’t want to provide your potential partner with a bland document they’ll bin without second thoughts. You want to finetune the packaging to make sure it catches their eye.
That implies limiting the number of pages in your document, but you also want to illustrate it with pictures that refer to your solution, or at least to your industry.
You also want to use graphs (financial but not only) and key performance indicators instead of big blocks of texts. And you want to make sure that some key points are identified and impossible to miss on the document.
Again, we have dedicated an article to the topic of business plan presentation tips; please have a look.
Three tips on how to make a business plan look sexy?
- Don’t… make it look ‘just’ professional!.
- Don’t… make it look dull!
- Do! Make it look memorable!
Meet The Business Plan Builder: 2 hours of tutorial videos and the tools you need to get started
Now – we showed you how to make a business plan investor-friendly and just gave you tons of actionable tips. Still, if you are looking for a push to get started with everything we’ve talked about in this article, the Impactified Business Plan package was created for you! It’s built around over 2 hours of explanatory videos and comes with everything you’ll need to:
- Figure out what you need to figure out – powerful, uh?
- Understand the business plan code!
- Write your business plan – with just the right amount of words and pages!
- Build your financial estimates – with automated tables!
- Create a visually appealing document and deck people will want to read thanks to our designer-made templates!
If you want to stop wasting your time, this is THE most simple and best business plan tool, and you can’t afford to miss it!
Last step: make sure they take action
So now that you understand how to make a business plan professional, sexy and memorable, the last step is to push your interlocutor to take action. Which gets us to what to do after creating a business plan!
Test.
First, take your final document and rethink your business plan step by step. Have you followed the expected outline? Do you tick all the boxes? Do you send the right message?
If you haven’t done that already, our free business plan course will give you a final checklist you’ll definitely want to have a look at!
Test again.
Next, give it to read to someone who doesn’t have any stake in the game, and ask them what they understand and remember. How do they perceive your pitch? How do they understand what you do? Do they see the wow factor you wanted to put forward? Also, did they catch any of the key performance indicators you distilled throughout the document?
Spot.
Identify who you want to pitch your business proposal to and make a list of whom you’ll reach out to in the first place. Business proposals should not be sent randomly to everyone because nobody will invest in something everybody can have access to. So, you want to be selective and allow them to put money into something that hasn’t been pitched yet!
Prepare.
Prepare, prepare, prepare. There is nothing worse for a banker or a reader than meeting someone who can’t pitch their story correctly because they aren’t prepared enough. It’s a loss of time, it’s disrespectful, and it will make you look like an absolute idiot, so don’t do it.
Instead, you’ll want to prepare and be ready to pitch AND explain everything. We said earlier that your business plan is supposed to be a teaser, remember? So, your job is to be able to deliver after teasing.
Think about the tricky questions they’ll ask. Know your financial plans. Be ready to be thought-provoking.
Pitch, pitch, pitch.
Last but not least, the question of how to make a business plan appealing is only worth asking if you can pitch your story efficiently. So, pitch as much as needed. Getting a ‘no’ is usual, so keep going and make the most of the experience. Refine your story pitch after pitch, and see where that gets you!
A final note on startups, small businesses and larger businesses.
Final note: we are often asked how to make a business plan for a startup, and there the issue is usually to figure out whether there’s a difference between a startup business plan and a small business plan.
Yes and no.
No, because startups are usually small businesses until they become scale-ups. And yes, because small businesses tend to rely on loans and entrepreneur funding rather than VC funding – which is more typical for startups and scale-ups.
In both cases, the stake is to realize that a business plan is an opportunity for planning a business and telling a sexy story about it – which brings us back to square one: storytelling!
