Definitive Business Plan, Second Edition, The

Writing it up

The complexity of acquiring your product dictates the amount of detail required in your business plan. Obviously, there is less descriptive work to do if your sale is a haircut or if you buy widgets and re-sell them. A giant aircraft manufacturing company has a bigger task when calculating cost of sales.

The box below takes you through the ten steps to writing up your sales forecast. The final step, reviewing risks, is covered in Chapter 11 . Figure 8.8 is a simple ex ample from a business plan. This is continued in Chapter 9 , where we do a little more work to get to net profit.

Note

Ten steps to writing a successful sales forecast

1.	Describe the logic underlying your forecast.
2.	Show any historical proofs for your methods ...