Detailed Business Plans Reviews: Where to Look

By: Eric Powers Click author's name for more of his/her articles

An entrepreneur’s business plan is generally created to be reviewed by external funders. However, this should not be the first time that the plan is given a detailed review by a professional. Consultants and specialists are widely available and can offer valuable feedback which can save you from making embarrassing mistakes in full view of funders.

Specialists

Lawyers, accountants, and financial advisors can offer specific feedback on your business plan, as it pertains to their area of expertise. Make sure you seek specialists with experience working with startup businesses if you take this route. The upside of working with specialists to review the legal, financial, and tax aspects of your business plan is that they should have deep expertise on their topic. The downside is that you will need to speak to multiple specialists to cover all the bases and you will not have the benefit of one consultant who can give you an overall review of the strength of your current plan.

SCORE and SBDCs

SCORE (the Service Corps of Retired Executives) and SBDCs (Small Business Development Centers) are non-profit coaching and consultation services offering free services to entrepreneurs and small business owners. Both can give some initial advice and mentorship, but will not be able to devote a great deal of time to your plan as their mission is to offer basic consultations to many separate clients.

Business Plan Consultants

A business plan consultant can offer that overall review. This type of consultant specializes in creating business plans and helping entrepreneurs to develop their own. They have a very good idea of what funders want to see, and a general sense of the legal, tax, and financial issues that lawyers and accountants look at. A business plan consultant can offer an initial review and then refer you to a specialist with specific questions that are beyond their expertise. This can get you the best of both worlds in a sense - general advice on your strategy as well as deep expertise when you need it.

How to Convince Investors

An investor will naturally need to be convinced to give money to any business. Of the dozens of deals that come across their desk, they can choose only a few to fund, if that. This makes investors skeptical of plans that promise easy money and exorbitant returns.

A well-written and convincing plan, however, will have investors changing their tune. Instead of asking “why fund this?”, the investor will start to ask “why not fund this?” That is the one question you should make sure your plan provides no answer for.

Getting Investors to Ask “Why Not?”

Getting investors to think in this way means all of the pieces of the plan have fallen together neatly. The market need stands on its own as an insightful and impressive opportunity for a business. The strategy you present fits well with the specifics of the market and the product or service you offer. The qualifications of you and your team to lead the business are clear and convincing. The financial returns of the business are appropriate for the risk taken on by investors. When all of this is the case, and the plan itself is impeccably professional and free of errors, the reader will begin to feel some of the excitement you felt when you thought of the idea in the first place.

Due Diligence

However, because it is their job to be skeptical, savvy investors will work extra hard at this point to seek out any reason they can find to disprove that the business makes sense to fund,
rather than merely jumping at the opportunity to hand over cash. They will do their own due diligence, checking the research you have done, checking references for your qualifications, and looking more deeply at your financial assumptions. Though all of this double-checking may sound intimidating, it is all a good thing. This is the process any entrepreneur must go through with an investor to build trust in their relationship and move it to the point where a deal is struck. Assuming you prepared your business plan carefully and ethically, there is nothing they will find which will answer “why not?”

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About The Author: Eric Powers is associated with Growthink, a business plan consulting firm. Since 1999, Growthink has developed more than 2,000 professional business plans for entrepreneurs and business owners. Call 800-506-5728 today for a free consultation with a Growthink business plan consultant. Growthink also offers a proven business plan template.