We don’t know from your question whether or not you already own Business Plan Pro. If you do, then it’s fairly easy. All of the 500+ plans included with Business Plan Pro are available through the Sample Plan Browser inside Business Plan Pro. Make sure your Internet connection is open. Click the browser form in the column headings and you’ll see that you can sort the plans different ways to make selection more convenient.

If you don’t own Business Plan Pro, you can still read and access more than 100 business plans that are complete with full text, tables, and charts, for free, on the sample plan site at www.bplans.com. We’re not sure whether we have what you want or not, but we hope we’ve made it easy enough for you to go see for yourself. To see what we have, please go to www.bplans.com and click the link for Sample Plans, then click the links into whichever type of sample plan you want. There is also a keyword search for sample plans, on the very front page, so you can explore them more easily.

That same area also lists the 400+ additional plans that aren’t available for free on the web but are included with the purchase of Business Plan Pro, for about $100.

Just FYI, because some people ask, We don’t sell business plans. We have more than 100 you can read for free on the web, and more than 500 you can use as a starting point with Business Plan Pro, but what we sell is Business Plan Pro, an excellent tool for developing a business plan, with or without sample plans. We sell it for less than $100. It had the same price back in 1994 when it was version 1 with 2 sample business plans, and also when it had 10 samples with version 2, 20 with version 3, and 30 with version 4, and now 500 with Version 11. The software is worth every penny, but the sample business plans, without the software, have no value. They are just examples.

The idea of having so many plans available isn’t that a business plan should necessarily start with a sample plan, or that business plans apply to only these types of business. There are more than 9,000 types of business included in the Standard Industry Classification (SIC) system, and we have just a fraction. What we expect to happen is that seeing a sample plan gives you a good idea of what’s included in a plan, and makes it easier for you to develop your own plan because you’ve seen what somebody else has done with theirs. Also, we want you to be able to view a plan for a similar business, and get something out of it. So for example if you have a retail jewelry shop you can get the idea of how your plan would look by viewing one for a retail shoe store. If you have an electrical contractor business you can get a lot out of a plan for a concrete forms contractor.

After all, obviously, the only plan that will really work for you will be one that you develop yourself. Even if we have a very similar business (and we sometimes do), you would still have a different summary, a different company description, a different list of products, different strategy, different management team, and different financials. A sample plan is useful as an example, not for the information it contains.

If you accept that idea, then you’ll find that we have a lot that might apply. You will probably find some close to yours, and even if the products sold aren’t the same, we’ll give you examples of how to find a market analysis that matches, product or service descriptions that match, and financial structure that matches. You can gain a lot of ground like that, even though the business plan isn’t an exact match.

Frankly, one of the things we intended when we decided to have them posted was to show you that you can do a business plan, it isn’t that hard a task. Some of those plans are not all that impressive. They are there because they were successful, not necessarily because they are great plans.

Sample plan or not, Business Plan Pro starts a new plan by asking you 17 questions about your business and customizes your plan to match. It customizes outline topics, tables, and charts, depending on whether you are retail, service, manufacturer, etc., and whether you are a home office, an on-going or a start-up company, etc. We haven’t yet heard of a business that couldn’t do a business plan with Business Plan Pro.

You can find more information about Business Plan Pro at www.businessplanpro.com or you can just call tollfree at 1 (800) 229-7526.

We have a marketing plan resource site for you at www.mplans.com, offering a complete book on how to develop a marketing plan that is free for reading at that site (although we sell the physical book for $19.95, we put the whole thing on the web for free), plus more than 30 complete sample marketing plans as well. As with the book, you can read them on the site, complete with all text and tables, for free.

“On Target: The book on marketing plans” is available here:
http://www.mplans.com/ot/

There is also a question and answer section there, dedicated to marketing plans, and everything in that site is free.

The site also refers to our books and software, which aren’t free. Our software product for developing a marketing plan is Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing. Information about that product is at www.marketingplanpro.com.

Our 500+ sample business plans are presented as examples only. They are to give you an idea of what a business plan covers. They include more than 100 plans that are available free online with complete text, tables, and charts, at www.bplans.com.

Most of these plans are for real companies that were funded or financed. They were written by real people as real business plans, reflecting actual situations and specific details, for funding. They include a wide range of quality and depth, some of them quite short and superficial, some very lengthy.

You can search those plans by keyword search at www.bplans.com, using the keyword search in the middle of the page. For example, type “restaurant” and click the button and you’ll get several dozen possibilities. The search list includes both free online plans and the additional plans, more than 500 of them, that are available only as part of Business Plan Pro.

The idea of having so many plans available isn’t that a business plan should necessarily start with a sample plan, or that business plans apply to only these types of business. There are more than 9,000 types of business included in the Standard Industry Classification (SIC) system, and we have just a fraction. What we expect to happen is that seeing a sample plan gives you a good idea of what’s included in a plan, and makes it easier for you to develop your own plan because you’ve seen what somebody else has done with theirs. Also, we want you to be able to view a plan for a similar business, and get something out of it. So for example if you have a retail jewelry shop you can get the idea of how your plan would look by viewing one for a retail shoe store. If you have an electrical contractor business you can get a lot out of a plan for a concrete forms contractor.

Our business plan collection includes so many business plans that no one person knows all of them well enough. We have a team of editors involved. We rely on the keyword search on the site so you can search the sample plans for type of business, using search terms.

If you own Business Plan Pro, the latest version, all of those plans are already available to you in your Sample Plan Browser within the application.

Just FYI, because some people ask, we don’t sell business plans. We have more than 100 you can read for free on the web, and more than 500 you can use as a starting point with Business Plan Pro, but what we sell is Business Plan Pro, an excellent tool for developing a business plan, with or without sample plans. We sell it for less than $100. It had the same price back in 1994 when it was version 1 with 2 sample business plans, and also when it had 10 samples with version 2, 20 with version 3, and 30 with version 4, and now 500 with Version 11. The software is worth every penny, but the sample business plans, without the software, have no value. They are just examples.

Frankly, one of the things we intended when we decided to have them posted was to show you that you can do a business plan, it isn’t that hard a task. Some of those plans are not all that impressive. They are there because they were successful, not necessarily because they are great plans.

Sample plan or not, Business Plan Pro starts a new plan by asking you 17 questions about your business and customizes your plan to match. It customizes outline topics, tables, and charts, depending on whether you are retail, service, manufacturer, etc., and whether you are a home office, an on-going or a start-up company, etc. We haven’t yet heard of a business that couldn’t do a business plan with Business Plan Pro.

You can find more information about Business Plan Pro at www.businessplanpro.com or you can just call tollfree at 1 (800) 229-7526

First thing, I hope it’s obvious, we aren’t experts in a lot of different specific businesses. We can help you with general techniques on finding information, not in the specifics for your type of business. However, we do have some resources, including several free resources, that can help you.

We’ve posted two web books, free if you read them online, that include chapters on how to find this kind of information. They both have links that can help you find statistics, industry associations, and other leads. Both of those are at www.bplans.com, and you can read them there free. Look for the Hurdle book on business planning, and the On Target book on marketing plans. They are on the front page at www.bplans.com. They sell for about $20 at www.paloalto.com and are included with planning software that costs about $100, but as long as you read them online they are also completely free.

There is also some market information built into Business Plan Pro, including several thousand industry profiles that include standard ratios, 5-year sales growth, etc. organized by type of industry. You can get more information on that at www.businessplanpro.com.

Additional market research information is available at www.bplans.com/r/.

In general, though, the problem of information is not where to find it but how to wade through all that’s available and find the right stuff. You must, simply must, be able to search the Internet. If you are reading this, then presumably you can already do that, so you are ahead of the game. If you are on the net but don’t know the search engines, learn to use Yahoo! and Google at least.
There’s no substitute for what’s now available through the web.

There is an amazing wealth of information available about publicly traded companies. Such companies have to publish detailed financials every quarter, every six months, every year. If you are looking for information about any publicly traded companies, or if there are publicly traded companies in the general area you are exploring, then you can get huge detailed reports just by looking through what’s available at stock market oriented sites. If you are not familiar with any of these, I’d suggest you go first to Yahoo! Finance. There are dozens of sites that specialize in the financial information related to stock market companies.

For more formal research, look for a trade association that focuses in your business area. There are lots of them. Yahoo! has a listing of trade associations at:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Organizations/Trade_Associations/

A good reference library can get you a reference book that lists trade associations. Once you find an association, then contact them to see whether they publish a directory or (better yet) a statistical review.

Next, look for magazines. In most businesses, there are magazines that focus on your type of business, so they can sell ads to the businesses that want to sell to your type of business. Subscribe or buy the magazine, get some back issues, and look for industry reviews. If you don’t already have more than you can handle, then get back to a reference library and look for indexes of published articles, and find some articles related to your business.

Most important, as far as I am concerned, is what I call “shoe leather” research. Find some similar businesses and find out as much as you can about them. Whatever kind of business you’re planning, look at your yellow pages and see how many are listed. Call them, find out about prices and things. If they have a location, park by it. Count their customers. Then, get a phone book for a town a few hundred miles away, call some of this same type of business, and find an owner who will talk to you about it. After all, you’re not a competitor, and people like to talk to people about their business. Ask them as much as you can, until they can’t stand answering questions anymore.

If you can find somebody selling this kind of business, contact them. Consider buying theirs. At the very least, you’ll get access to their past financial data, which will give you an idea of how the industry works.

I live in India where I have my own computer training and consulting business. I want to tie up with some of my friends in the US to set up the same business there. Neither my friends nor me know what are the legal issues, or how a foriegner can set up business in the US. can you help. thanks!

Answer

We have some good information about starting your business for free for you, on our website. First, you can go to www.bplans.com and click the “Start a Business” link on the front page. That leads you into a wealth of additional information. It gives you excerpts from the book on business planning online, expert questions answered, etc.

Next, go to the ask the experts section at that same website and browse through the topics “Starting a business” and “Start-up Financing” under “Entrepreneuring” and “Start-ups” under “Business Plans.” Those are detailed questions and answers that will be the same the same questions you’re asking.

We also have several other free resources for you. First, go to the starting costs tool, which will help you calculate initial starting costs.

And we have more than 100 sample business plans on that site, all of which are there for reading and free, none of them exactly about your business but so what, every business is unique, so use them as examples and apply the structure to your business’ unique content.

Aside from our sites, if you live in the United States, one of the best places to look for business help is the nearest Small Business Development Center (SBDC). There are more than a thousand SBDCs across the United States, sponsored by government and education funds, generally quite capable of helping local businesses at very reasonable fees. You can find a nearby SBDC by going to our website at www.bplans.com/sbdc and then click on your state. You should also look for the SBA Business Information Centers (BIC) and the SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) training programs, which are generally excellent and economic sources of business expertise. And if you don’t live in the U.S. look into resources your own governmental developmental agencies may have to offer. Small business is important in society, and most governments have facilities to help foster small business.

Beyond that, consider your local university or community college, think about what help your vendors can offer, and ask your bank, attorney, and accountant for recommendations.

Also, our product Business Plan Pro is intended to guide you through the process of starting a business. You can find out more about that at our website at www.paloalto.com. It is the best rated and best selling business plan software on the market, and it comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

We have several free resources for you, all intended to guide you through the process of developing your business plan and getting it financed. This is aside from the Business Plan Pro software, which we recommend, but isn’t free.

First, the book Hurdle: the Book on Business Planning is now posted on the Web for free at www.bplans.com, in a Web format that you can read for free by clicking through it using your Web browser on the Internet. That’s the complete book, word for word and all the illustrations that you get when you buy the book for about $20 at amazon.com or at www.paloalto.com. That same book is also included with the purchase of Business Plan Pro, but you can read it free on the web.

Second, the website at www.bplans.com has a series of articles — several dozen — on details of writing a business plan, and another set on starting a business, and others on related topics, like start-up financing. The articles are available from the front page, just click the links for lists of articles.

Third, that website also has more than 100 sample business plans.

In addition, also on that same website and free, there’s a starting costs feature to estimate your starting costs. It also has an ask-the-expert feature with more than 1,000 pages of questions and answers.

One of the most important elements there are the more than 100 sample plans, so you can see some samples of what a finished business plan would look like. All of the plans on that site are available on the Web for free, and they all were approved for money in one way or another, so they’re worth looking at.

Don’t look for a sample plan you can just pick up and call your own, because every business is unique and every business plan is unique. Look instead for a good example of what’s included, and what’s involved in doing the plan.

Business Plan Pro is a software tool for developing a business plan, available for about $100, at www.paloalto.com and in stores. It includes more than 500 sample plans, including the 100+ at www.bplans.com, all of which can be edited as your own. You can get a list of those plans at www.bplans.com/sample_business_plans.cfm.

Where do you enter the loan to buy the business, that gets immediately paid to the old owner. I am trying to show the principle repayment and interest costs in my plan.

Putting it in the long term loan, it shows as being in the company and the interst was not enough for the first year by 100k. Thanks for your help.

George

Answer

Yes, this comes up on occasion.

If the borrower is the business, then that loan belongs in the business plan and there is a Help topic titled “Handling of loans, interest, and repayment” that answers this question. You can find that topic using the search command on the Help menu inside your Business Plan Pro and searching for “interest.” Several topics will show up.

If, on the other hand, that loan is a loan to you, the owner of the business, in your name and not in the business’ name, then it doesn’t belong inside the business financials. The business plan is about the company financial situation, not the financial situation of its owners. In that case, the only table that would show it would be the personal financial statement that is optional, for use with personal finances and for loan applications, and not part of the formal plan. There is a table for personal financial statements included with Business Plan Pro.

How do I create a chart in Excel that I can then import into Business Plan Pro?

Answer

Thanks for asking a question whose answer will be useful to others as well.

Business Plan Pro can import graphic files using the text editor and either the Import menu on the top menu line or the graphic icon in the text editor toolbar. Business Plan Pro isn’t a graphic editor, so although it can import graphics, it doesn’t edit them. They need to be cut and sized appropriately before they are imported.

Unfortunately, Excel doesn’t create graphics files. It should but it doesn’t. So if Excel doesn’t create them, Business Plan Pro has nothing to import.

Happily, if you have both Excel and PowerPoint — which most people do, because it’s Microsoft Office, there is a fairly easy shortcut that I use that works well enough:

1. In Excel, while looking at the chart you want to transfer, hold down your Shift key and access the Edit menu. The “Copy” command changes to “Copy Picture.” Excecute the Copy Picture command.
2. Switch to PowerPoint and use the Paste command to paste the image onto a Powerpoint slide.
3. Use the “Save As” command in Powerpoint to save that single slide, with your graphic, as a Windows bitmap (*.bmp) file.
4. Now you have a graphic file, which you can import into Business Plan Pro as explained in your Business Plan Pro Help. It isn’t hard, just use the “Insert” command in the text mode and you’ll see the “Image” command there.

Thanks for asking.

Tim

Should I pay a fee to apply for grants given by the government? And/or is it free to apply for grants, minority/women grants in particular.

Answer

Some grants require some administrative fees, but these are usually relatively small fees. The government isn’t just one single entity, it is lots of different federal, state, and local agencies, so it is hard to generalize. Expect to pay at most a few hundred dollars.

There are experts who charge thousands of dollars to create grant proposals. This is for the consulting expertise and knowledge of the field, not a fee to apply. In this case, be careful because some are very good and very professional, and some aren’t. Make sure you talk to past clients and check references very well.

Tim

I recently bought a dump truck to haul rock and sand. How do I figure out how much to charge for this? I have been told to charge customers by the ton per mile. How do you figure that, or is there a better way to charge them?

Answer

We don’t know this because we don’t run dump trucks, but you can find out by calling people who do. Go to your yellow pages and find people offering this service, call them, and ask them. The worst they can do is not answer, so you lose nothing.

Tim Berry, President

Palo Alto Software, Inc.