How to Write a Winning Business Plan in 9 Steps

There’s a big difference between having a “plan for your business” and a “business plan”. A plan for your business can provide the concept and spark, while a written business plan can get you funded, staffed, and rolling. The tough part can be figuring out what goes into that business plan and how to structure it from top to bottom.

When it comes to creating a documented business plan, you’ll usually be developing around 8-10 steps that cover everything from researching your market, describing your company, and laying out your sales strategy. Without specifying these steps, you may end up making financial commitments and other major decisions based on assumptions that live only in the back of your mind. These assumptions hardly help you or your future investors.

This guide walks through the nine steps of building a business plan and how to arrange it into a document that works both as a roadmap and a pitch deck. One of the most important aspects of creating this plan is estimating your eventual profits, as your margins can determine your business’s potential. Finance platforms like Slash are built to help manage your cash flow and peer into its future.

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What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a formal document that describes what your company does, what you're trying to achieve, and how you plan to get there. A fully-formed one is typically at least 15 pages, covering everything from the opportunity in your market to your team or ownership structure.

While lots of founders have general goals for their business, fewer have detailed plans. The difference between the two is their specificity and accountability. Written business plans provide more detail, helping you spot weaknesses and identify the source of a problem if and when things go wrong.

According to research from the University of Oregon, businesses with a written plan grow 30% more quickly than those without one. It can be a lot easier to drive down the road to success when you have a map that tells you where to turn. These plans also give you something concrete to share with lenders, investors, early employees, and partners who want to know about where your company’s headed before they commit to it.

Step-by-Step: Writing Your Business Plan

While your exact number of sections may vary, you’ll want to cover each of these following subjects in one way or another. Here are the nine important steps you should include in your business plan:

Step 1: Research and Gather Information

Before you write a single section of your plan, you need to know as much as you can about the market you’re entering. Without this step, you might have a strong roadmap that ends up being a total mismatch with your competitors and customer base. To make sure you’re aligned with your audience, you should start by conducting market research.

Market research can teach you who your potential customers are, what they currently buy, what they're dissatisfied with, and how much they'd pay for a better option. First-hand information coming from customer interviews and local surveys can give you data that you won’t find anywhere else. Outside of person-to-person research, you can also explore industry reports and government data that can fill in context about your field.

Competitor analysis is also key, especially if you’re pushing your way into a crowded space. Check other company websites and figure out what features they do and don’t offer, then compare it with what you plan on selling. You can also look for patterns in negative reviews, pricing gaps, and overlooked customer segments that reveal some areas of opportunity.

Step 2: Executive Summary

Even though your executive summary sits near the top of your document, it should actually be the last one you write. After all, it serves as a quick rundown of your company and its goals, so you won’t have it fully ready until you’ve determined the rest of your business plan.

This section should be three to five paragraphs long with an overhead focus on the essentials. Here, you’ll explain:

The problem your business solves
Who it serves
How the business model works
A summary of your target market
What the financial potential looks like
An estimate of future revenue
How much funding you're seeking

While it includes a lot of different points, this section shouldn’t read like a table of contents. Instead, frame it more like a sharp sales pitch, with each paragraph including concise details that can convince the reader of your business’s potential.

Step 3: Company Description

The company description expands on the executive summary by giving a fuller picture of what the business is and why it exists. This is where you can get into the “nitty-gritty” and define the business in more precise terms.

Of course, you’ll cover the basics first, including your legal name and structure, where you're registered, and how your operations will work. After that, you can explain the details of the problem you're solving and why your approach is the right one. This is also where you can include your mission statement, which should be specific and closely connected to what your company does. For example, it’s a lot better to write, “We create software that helps diagnose and fix mechanical problems among trucking fleets,” than, “We help fleets operate better”.

Step 4: Market Analysis

This section is meant to show both that there’s an opportunity in a certain market and that you understand that market better than most. Start with a clear picture of your target audience that defines their demographics, buying behavior, what they currently do instead of using your product, and what would make them switch. You’ll also want to cover your competitive landscape in depth, discussing who your main rivals are and what they specialize in.

It’s best to include as much data in this section as you reasonably can, especially in regards to market size and customer adoption of certain products. Try not to make idealistic assumptions of who may use your product/service, since investors may be able to sniff out overestimates.

Step 5: Organization and Management

Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say. Here, you’ll clearly lay out your organizational structure and discuss who leads which function, what the chain of command is, and whether any key roles are still open. It’s also helpful to provide a short bio for senior members that connect their experience directly to what the company needs. The more experience a leader has in your industry, the better it looks for prospective lenders.

This is also where you can go over your business’s legal structure, whether it’s an LLC, S corp, C corp, or something else. While you’ll usually mention this in Section 2 or 3, this is the spot where you can fit it into the context of your organizational tree and explain why it’s the right fit for your company.

Step 6: Products (or Services)

In your product/services section, you’ll mainly do two things. First, you’ll outline the key features of what you’re selling clearly enough that someone unfamiliar with your industry can understand it. Whether you’re pitching a service, software, or item, the reader should have a full picture of what you offer without leaving them with any questions. This is also where you can discuss your product’s price and why you chose that number.

Afterwards, you’ll illustrate the reasons your consumer base will actually buy it. What does a customer get by using it that they couldn't get before? Why is your product better than your main competitor’s? If you can explain these confidently, you’ve got your unique selling proposition. A couple other elements you might include, depending on your product, include intellectual property (IP) protections and any patents pending.

Step 7: Marketing and Sales Strategy

The first part of any marketing strategy is identifying your product’s identity and what makes it stand out among the rest. Now that you’ve written Sections 3, 4, and 6, you might already have a pretty good idea of how to sell your product without having cracked open a marketing textbook.

That said, you’ll still need a lot of concrete details. Start with your customer acquisition strategy, which covers the channels you’ll use, why those channels fit your target audience, and what the cost of acquiring an average customer might be. B2B businesses often rely on direct outreach and a defined sales cycle, while B2C companies may rely more on digital advertising and word of mouth. Either way, map out the full customer journey to the best of your ability, including what happens at each stage and what could cause a prospect to drop out of a sales cycle. If you've already started running early campaigns, make sure to mention any interest or pre-sales you’ve generated.

Step 8: Financial Projections

Financial projections are especially important to lenders looking to assess whether your business is viable and how realistic your expectations are. Here, you’ll include a cost breakdown that covers everything required to get the business operational, including equipment, technology, initial inventory, staffing, and any working capital meant to cover early operating losses. Then, build out a revenue forecast covering at least three years, with granular detail through the first few months and rougher estimates near the end of the journey.

Ultimately, your projections should tie back to your market analysis. If you're hoping to capture 10% market share in year one, you need to explain where that will come from. Figure out when your revenue may begin covering your operating costs, and include that info in a break-even analysis.

Doing these sorts of calculations can be tough, especially if you don’t have a great understanding of your cash flow. With a platform like Slash, you can get real time visibility into your incoming and outgoing payments, as well as automatically generated audit trails that unlock a quick look at your recent money movement. Twin, Slash’s AI assistant, can take this data and use it to craft cash flow projections that can help you build detailed forecasts complete with cost breakdowns and break-even analyses.

Step 9: Appendix and Supporting Documents

Your final section is where important supporting material lives that may not fit naturally anywhere else. This appendix typically comes with documentation that backs up the claims you made earlier in the document, as well as compliance details that matter within your industry.

Some common items include leader resumes, copies of relevant licenses and permits, letters of intent or early customer contracts, intellectual property documentation, organizational charts, and any market research data or survey results you referenced earlier in the plan. You don’t want to make this a “miscellaneous” bucket, though. Only include details that strengthen your case and further elaborate on any questions the reader may have.

Plan Your Business's Future With Slash

For the most part, your company’s steps towards profit and success will come after you write out your business plan. However, there are still a few things you should have set in stone before you make that plan. One of your earliest moves should be choosing the tools you use to manage your money.

With a business banking platform like Slash, you can have your payment rails, corporate card program, treasury account, and more set up from day one.¹, ⁶ With your financial data at your fingertips, you’ll be able to create more accurate cash flow projections, especially with Twin’s help. Our platform also integrates with accounting programs including QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or Xero, allowing you to sync your data and clean up your end-of-month reporting.

If you’re strapped for cash at the start, Slash can also be where you access flexible financing options.⁵ Slash’s working capital line of credit has repayment terms that align with your cash flow, ranging from 30-, 60-, or 90-days. Slash users can apply for short-term working capital by presenting an estimate of their annual revenue. Eligibility is solely determined by Slope, and may be determined based on factors such as business requirements, revenue thresholds, and credit review.

New business owners can also take advantage of the following features:

Slash Visa® Platinum Card: A corporate charge card with customizable spending controls and unlimited virtual cards for team expenses, vendor payments, subscriptions, and more. Cards can earn up to 2% cash back on eligible purchases
Expense management: Handle team spending in one place. When someone makes a large purchase on their Slash card, they get a text asking for a receipt. Pending payment and disbursement approvals surface in the dashboard's action center for admins to review. Slash integrates with QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage Intacct, and NetSuite to speed up reconciliation and reporting.
High-yield treasury: Earn up to 3.83% annualized yield on idle funds with money market investments from BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, managed directly within your Slash account.
Native cryptocurrency support: Send and receive USD-pegged stablecoins USDC and USDT across eight supported blockchains for faster, lower-cost global payments.⁴
Diverse payment methods: Slash supports inbound and outbound transfer via same-day ACH, international wires to 180+ countries in 135+ currencies via SWIFT, and real-time payments through RTP and FedNow.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long should a business plan be?

Most business plans run between 15 and 20 pages, though this can vary depending on the business and the audience. For instance, a plan being submitted to a bank for a loan application tends to be more detailed than one used internally for team alignment. You can also make a one or two page version called a lean that allows early-stage businesses to get quick feedback before writing the full document.

Should I update my business plan later?

That’s usually a smart idea. A business plan written before launch is largely built on assumptions and estimates. Once the business starts operating, those estimates can be tested against real data. You may want to review your plan at least annually, and immediately after any major market shift or failed strategy.

Do all businesses need a business plan to get funding?

Not always, depending on the type of funding. Bank loans and SBA loans almost always require a formal business plan with financial projections. Venture capital investors typically want to see one, though early-stage investors may sometimes accept a detailed pitch deck in place of a full document. Even if a lender doesn't require a formal plan, working through the planning process is still useful.