How to Write a Business Plan for Small Businesses Like a Pro

Banks that provide personal loans for businesses in the Philippines require prospective borrowers to submit documents that prove their creditworthiness. Applying for a business loan? A requirement you must pay attention to is the business plan,^[1] a proposal that covers all the nitty-gritty of starting a business in the Philippines. It’s your solid proof of your business’ high-profit potential and your ability to pay off your loan.

Many aspiring Filipino entrepreneurs who don’t have time to prepare a sample business plan for a small business just wing it for the sake of fulfilling the bank’s loan requirements. Don’t make that mistake.

Writing a business plan does take time and effort. If you’re serious about improving your chance of getting approved for a loan for your business, you have to make it as comprehensive and detailed as possible.

Why Do You Need a Business Plan in the Philippines?

A business plan will define your short-term and long-term business objectives and help you focus on specific steps to achieve these business objectives. Moreover, it will also help you come up with effective strategies for your business' growth and attract potential partners or investors, just to name a few.

6 Steps to Writing an Effective Business Plan

It may be a daunting task, but here are six steps to guide you through creating your sample business plan for a small business.

1. Define Your Business Concept

Every local business in the Philippines starts with an idea, and yours has to be developed into a clear business concept. Doing so will keep you on track while drafting your sample business plan for your small business. With that, a business concept should include these details:

Mission and vision - Why you are putting up this business?
Target market - Who will buy your products or services? What problems or pain points of your target customers do you want to address?
Product - What will you offer as a solution to your target market’s problems?
Value proposition - What are your unique selling points? Why should people buy from you instead of the competitor?
Branding - What's the expertise or specialization of your business? How do you want to position it in your industry?.

Read more:

2. Research Your Market and Industry

sample business plan for a small business - research market and industry

Once you’ve defined your business concept, you can start collecting data about your target market and the industry you’ll be in to find out if your idea is feasible. Never skip this step—you have to prove to the bank that everything in your business plan is based on facts.

Make sure your business plan research covers these areas:

Market research through surveys, personal interviews, and focus group discussions that gather insights from target customers, suppliers, and industry experts
Data about your competitors
Industry trends and growth potential based on published studies and research

Analyze your compiled data and see if your business concept needs fine-tuning to make it more viable.

3. Create the Outline of Your Business Plan

After you’ve gathered all the necessary data for your business plan, prepare an outline that will keep your business plan ideas organized.

If you're looking for examples of business plans, a great business plan template to use is the format developed by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).^[2]

It's a simple business plan outline sample with five sections:

Executive Summary
Marketing Plan
Production Plan
Organization and Management Plan
Financial Plan

4. Develop the Main Sections of Your Business Plan

Next, start working on the different sections of your business plan, which are as follows:

Executive Summary

Open your business plan with a brief overview of your business, its nature, and its competitive edge. Include your qualifications and competencies, as well as a short discussion of how the loan will help your business grow.

Marketing Plan

Discuss your product or service offerings, market demographics, competitor analysis, and marketing strategies that you’ll use to achieve your sales targets. The loan provider needs to know how much you’ll need to market and distribute your products.

Production Plan

Convince the bank that you have the operational capacity to meet your sales forecasts by explaining all aspects of your production process, including equipment, raw materials, labor, and overhead expenses.

Organization and Management Plan

Banks that provide personal loans in the Philippines need assurance that you can manage your business well. In this section, present details on how you’ll run the business and back it up with your qualifications and experience as an entrepreneur.

Financial Plan

Make this section as comprehensive as possible, as this will show the potential financial strength of your business. The bank will closely scrutinize your financial strategies and projections to determine if you can repay the loan.

Include these key details to give the bank a realistic view of how your business will perform:

Cash flow statement
Break-even analysis
Return on investment
Sales and profits forecasts in the next 3 years
Loan purpose (e.g., purchase of new assets and equipment, payment for operating expenses, working capital, etc.)
Loan repayment time frame and your plan if you’re unable to pay off the loan

5. Add Supporting Information

Boost your chance of getting approved for a loan by backing up your business plan with as many supplementary documents as possible. You can add an Appendix section with the following information:

Documents that support your financial plan such as contracts, copies of leases, etc.
Market research findings
Bank statements
Licenses
Permits
Receipts
Resumes of key employees

6. Review and Proofread

sample business plan for a small business - review and proofread

Check your final draft thoroughly to ensure that all important details are included and the unnecessary ones are removed. Have a friend, a business partner, or a proofreader review your business plan to check for any typos.

You have just one shot at a business loan—don’t ruin it with a proposal teeming with grammatical errors and misspellings. The bank officer might be distracted with the errors rather than focus on your business plan’s merits and substance.

Sample Business Plan for a Small Business: 4 Examples to Guide You

Still not sure how you'll go about creating your business plan? Need concrete ideas on how to develop the plan for your small business?

We've compiled some good samples that can help you write your business plan like a pro. Check the links at the references below this article.

Sample business plan for a small food business^[3]
Sample business plan for a mini fast food restaurant^[4]
Sample business plan for an online natural supplements store^[5]
Sample business plan for a consulting firm^[6]
Sample business plan for an event management business^[7]
Sample business plan for a clothing retail store^[8]
Sample business plan for a cafe^[9]

Final Thoughts

Personal loans for businesses in the Philippines require a well-written, concise, and complete business plan that covers all relevant information about your business. Now that you know the do's and don'ts of writing a business plan, take the time and effort to convince the bank that you’re worthy of a business loan through your well-thought out and flawlessly written business plan. Get started by checking a sample business plan for a small business provided above.