No business plan yet? But hurry up now!

No matter how good the idea, if you don't think about the profitability of your business right from the start, you risk failure early on. A few tips for a solid business plan.

Creating a detailed business plan may be a chore - but it can help a lot. Experts such as Michael Weißleder from the business start-up team at the Stuttgart Region Chamber of Industry and Commerce recommend drawing up the plan even before the start-up in order to increase the chances of success. The good news for prospective founders and those who have so far had little desire to prepare a comprehensive plan: There are plenty of free templates available on the Internet. The bad news: not all items are equally important. An overview of the essential components.

Why you need a business plan

"Anyone who wants to set up their own business should write a business plan - whether for a small or a large one," says Weißleder from the Stuttgart Chamber of Industry and Commerce. In the first step, this serves to gather important figures as well as information and to get an overview for yourself. "On the basis of a good business plan, you can see whether your idea has a chance at all," says the expert.

Even if there are several founders, a business plan is important, according to Weißleder, especially to get clarity among themselves. "This allows you to ensure right at the beginning that everyone has the same expectations of their business idea," he explains. The business plan should therefore also be in place before it comes to the actual formation of the company.

In the long term, however, a business plan is also important for obtaining outside capital. "For example, if you want to get money from a bank for your idea, you can't get around a business plan," says Weißleder. And even those who want to receive public funding usually have to submit a business plan.

How to build a business plan

A business plan should consist of a text part for the description of the project as well as for the estimation of the market situation and a number part for the analysis of the in- and expenditures, and for the question, from when it needs capital from the outside. For starters, it is usually enough to look three to five years into the future for this purpose.

In the text part belongs, in addition to a summary, also called executive summary, an introduction of the founders and an assessment of the risks and opportunities. "The self-introduction should also build confidence with investors," says Weissleder. At this point, for example, founders can work out whether they already have expertise in the relevant market. This also makes their subsequent assessments more credible. Because an initial classification of the market environment and potential customers is also part of the process. "Many founders say that anyone could be their customer, but of course that's nonsense," Weißleder warns. The following applies here: the more precisely the target group is defined, the more resilient the planning then is. To gain an overview of the market, founders could look at competitors' products, for example.

The figures section should first of all include a sales plan and thus the question of how much money will come in year after year. Based on that, founders need to think about costs. Then they can work out how much capital they will probably need in the next few years. That leads to the question of liquidity. "How important liquidity is, has become particularly clear again in times of Corona", says Weißleder from the IHK Stuttgart. Because many companies are currently lacking in quickly available financial resources. Finally, a profitability forecast can be created from all these points. According to Weißleder, this is the key piece - and also one of the most important points for investors.

Founders can get help for all these points at the Gründungswerkstatt Deutschland, among other places. There they will find experts from the Chambers of Industry and Commerce and the Chambers of Trade and from regional business development agencies. The Federal Ministry of Economics also provides detailed information online about the structure of a business plan.