Business Franchise Opportunities | Business Plan Overview

Basics of the Business Plan to Help You Succeed With Your Business Franchise Opportunity

If you are just getting started with your first business franchise opportunity or you're a seasoned pro with several franchises under ownership, a solid written business plan can not only help you get started and operate the business, but in many situations it's required.

Help with your business plan is one benefit many franchisors provide to their franchisees. On the other hand, you may be left on your own to develop your own business plan. But you'll still need to approach your franchisor since some parts of the plan will require information that's only available from them.

The business plan is extremely useful as well to you personally as it literally can help you plan to get your franchise business started and help keep you on track as you run the business.

I'm not going to go into great detail here; the purpose of this post is to provide an overview. With that in mind, your franchise oppotunity business plan should have the following key components:

Abstract
This is the prologue to your plan. Here you discuss briefly the scope and purpose of the business plan.

Summary
The business plan summary section includes a description of the company and related information about the business.

Franchise Overview
In this section, the franchise is discussed. You can include an industry analysis here as well, describing how the franchise fits within the overfall industry.

Market Analysis
Here you write about the current market and competition your franchise will be up against.

Marketing Plan
The strategies you plan to use for marketing, advertising, and promotion are covered in this section.

Management
Here you discuss the background and qualifications of you and/or your management staff and other key business operations personnel you plan to have in the business.

Financial
Discuss your financial plan and projects in this section. This includes proposals and forecasts for revenue, profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets going out two to five years.

Exhibits
In this section, include all supporting documents needed for the various sections of your plan.


Starting and running a business franchise is no different from a "traditional" non-franchise business in terms of learning, understanding, and using proper business fundamentals and personal skills.

Business franchise opportunities give you a tremendous head start in terms of starting a business, but you still need a business plan to help you make critical and prudent business decisions before, at, and after the start up phase.