Keep your audience in your head

Throughout the writing of your business plan you want to keep in mind who your intended audience is going to be and why you are writing the plan in the first place.For example if you are trying to attract equity investors you are going to want to emphasize the big upside of your business’ profit potential.

While doing this, you will also need to be particularly careful to make sure that you choose to adequately disclose the risks and uncertainties that are involved in your business, because investors will often look for someone to blame if their investment disappears.

If you are trying to get debt financing for your business then you are going to want to emphasize not the huge upside profit potential but rather the certainty that the debt can be repaid.In fact when you talk of big profits you may just scare away debt financiers because high profit potential usually means high risks as well.

If you are writing a business plan that is meant to help you run the business better you may want to skip or write very simple sections with all of the general background information on the company and the industry, and instead focus most of your plan on the areas of your plan that are currently most important to you.