SIXT Corporate Academy: How to Write a Business Plan
EVERY SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS STARTS WITH A STRATEGY: HOW TO WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN
A business plan is a strategic document that describes how you will structure, manage, and grow your business through various phases of development. If you are interested in starting a new business venture, it is essential that you start creating an operational strategy for achieving your goals. Knowing how to write a business plan is a valuable skill that paves your way to success by encouraging you to think pragmatically about how to get your ideas off the ground. SIXT Corporate is your trusted mobility services partner that takes your business to new heights.
Table of Contents
Understanding Your Market and the Competitive Landscape
Operationalizing Your Success with a Strategy
Funding Your Business Venture
Capitalizing on the Spirit of the Moment
Understanding Your Market and the Competitive Landscape
Market research is a combination of qualitative demographic and psychographic insights about customer behavior combined with quantitative economic data that describes the trends related to a specific area of business or a market. Conducting research is one of the best ways to begin formulating a business strategy because it goes behind simply having a good idea or a gut feeling and instead begins to evaluate the potential of your idea to actually succeed in the current competitive landscape.
Effective market research allows you to minimize risk by exploring the key conditions impacting success in your unique area of business. If you are wondering how to write a business plan, you should know that conducting thorough research lays the perfect foundation for your future success by giving you a means to answer key questions and concerns about your business idea without having to actually waste your time and money to learn the hard way.
Market research is an important starting point because it helps you understand:
- Demand: Are there customers out there interested in the products or services you would like to provide?
- Market Size: How many potential customers are out there interested in similar products or services?
- Economic Indicators: How successful are the market leaders already engaged with this market?
- Location: Where are your potential customers located geographically?
- Market Saturation: How can you deliver a unique product or service that separates your idea from a competitive field?
- Pricing: What unique value will your business offer to interested customers?
Understanding your market and the unique competitive landscape your business will face are essential starting points to designing an effective business plan that can act as a strategic roadmap for your new venture. If you are unsure how to write a business plan, a great starting point is to think about how your idea will fit into existing markets and competitive environments.
Operationalizing Your Success with a Strategy
It’s important to know that there are different strategies for writing a business plan depending on what type of format you would like to use. A traditional business plan is exact and detailed. Traditional investors such as financial institutions typically require a traditional business plan to evaluate your ideas’ risks and opportunities.
Today though, many business plans are written using a more agile and lean business plan format. The key advantage to an agile and lean startup plan is that it is a work in progress that provides a snapshot of your ideas without belaboring complex questions that could be very challenging to answer without making significant investments of time and money.
Whether you choose to design a traditional business plan or a lean startup plan, the following details should be covered in your strategic document:
- Executive Summary: Your summary is a snapshot of your business idea, team, financial situation, and plans for expanding your ideas
- Company Description: This section will highlight how you plan to brand your company and what specific market dynamics you hope to capitalize on
- Market Analysis: In this area, all the demographic, psychographic, and economic insights you’ve uncovered about your market and customer trends will be discussed
- Organization and Management: This section will address how your organization will be arranged for tax purposes as well as how it will be managed
- Service or Product Line: In this area, you will discuss the products and services you would like to offer, their pricing, how they are sourced and marketed
- Funding Requests: This area will outline how you plan to invest financial resources to expand your business
- Financial Projections: To strengthen your funding requests, it is useful to include additional information about how you expect to scale your business over time.
Funding Your Business Venture
Starting a business can be a costly endeavor. One of the most important things to do when considering how to write a business plan is to think about the unique startup costs your venture will require. Of course, every business idea will face different circumstances and thus will have different areas of expenditure to consider but, generally, the following areas are worth considering when it comes to funding your business idea:
- Understanding your break-even point
- Estimating potential profits in the first month, six months, year, etc.
- Securing loans and investment support
- Evaluating rental and licensing costs
- Considering the expense of human capital
- Reducing costs through tax deductions and other government programs
By thinking through the complexity of funding issues, your final business plan will be as thorough as it can be. Though it might seem like a lot of work, it is important to remember that a business plan is a living document that you can refer to time and time again as you better refine your operation. Going through learning how to write a business plan is a skill that can help you improve your business intelligence and make it much easier to succeed.
Capitalizing on the Spirit of the Moment
SIXT Corporate is one of the world’s largest and most trusted mobility services providers. We provide flexible and customizable on-demand mobility solutions that allow you to go where you need to go without having to worry about additional logistic challenges and costs. 
Capitalize on the spirit of the moment by discovering the new world of possibility thanks to the digitalization of mobility services.
Download the SIXT app today and gain access to a whole new world of business opportunities. Go where you need to go with a sense of freedom to deliver mobility without limitations. SIXT is your go-to source for global mobility solutions that are perfectly suited for all types of business travel. Move seamlessly from location to location with a natural sense of discovery fueled by mobility services technology that scales with your business ambitions.
SIXT Corporate empowers your business to go further and achieve more:
- SIXT provides worldwide mobility solutions, such as short term company car rental, long term company car rental or car subscription
- SIXT allows corporate customers to book car rentals, taxi/chauffeur services, and car-sharing and pooling right from the ease of a single platform
- SIXT offers award-winning English-speaking customer service agents that are available 7 days a week, 365 days a year
- SIXT delivers incredible flexibility, utility, and value well-suited for business travelers and companies of all shapes and sizes
- SIXT empowers corporate customers to go wherever their business takes them
