Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Simple Business Plan

By Joe Weller | October 11, 2021

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A business plan is the cornerstone of any successful company, regardless of size or industry. This step-by-step guide provides information on writing a business plan for organizations at any stage, complete with free templates and expert advice. 

Included on this page, you’ll find a step-by-step guide to writing a business plan and a chart to identify which type of business plan you should write . Plus, find information on how a business plan can help grow a business and expert tips on writing one .

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a document that communicates a company’s goals and ambitions, along with the timeline, finances, and methods needed to achieve them. Additionally, it may include a mission statement and details about the specific products or services offered.

A business plan can highlight varying time periods, depending on the stage of your company and its goals. That said, a typical business plan will include the following benchmarks:

  • Product goals and deadlines for each month
  • Monthly financials for the first two years
  • Profit and loss statements for the first three to five years
  • Balance sheet projections for the first three to five years

Startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses all create business plans to use as a guide as their new company progresses. Larger organizations may also create (and update) a business plan to keep high-level goals, financials, and timelines in check.

While you certainly need to have a formalized outline of your business’s goals and finances, creating a business plan can also help you determine a company’s viability, its profitability (including when it will first turn a profit), and how much money you will need from investors. In turn, a business plan has functional value as well: Not only does outlining goals help keep you accountable on a timeline, it can also attract investors in and of itself and, therefore, act as an effective strategy for growth.

For more information, visit our comprehensive guide to writing a strategic plan or download free strategic plan templates . This page focuses on for-profit business plans, but you can read our article with nonprofit business plan templates .

Business Plan Steps

The specific information in your business plan will vary, depending on the needs and goals of your venture, but a typical plan includes the following ordered elements:

  • Executive summary
  • Description of business
  • Market analysis
  • Competitive analysis
  • Description of organizational management
  • Description of product or services
  • Marketing plan
  • Sales strategy
  • Funding details (or request for funding)
  • Financial projections

If your plan is particularly long or complicated, consider adding a table of contents or an appendix for reference. For an in-depth description of each step listed above, read “ How to Write a Business Plan Step by Step ” below.

Broadly speaking, your audience includes anyone with a vested interest in your organization. They can include potential and existing investors, as well as customers, internal team members, suppliers, and vendors.

Do I Need a Simple or Detailed Plan?

Your business’s stage and intended audience dictates the level of detail your plan needs. Corporations require a thorough business plan — up to 100 pages. Small businesses or startups should have a concise plan focusing on financials and strategy.

How to Choose the Right Plan for Your Business

In order to identify which type of business plan you need to create, ask: “What do we want the plan to do?” Identify function first, and form will follow.

Use the chart below as a guide for what type of business plan to create:

Is the Order of Your Business Plan Important?

There is no set order for a business plan, with the exception of the executive summary, which should always come first. Beyond that, simply ensure that you organize the plan in a way that makes sense and flows naturally.

The Difference Between Traditional and Lean Business Plans

A traditional business plan follows the standard structure — because these plans encourage detail, they tend to require more work upfront and can run dozens of pages. A Lean business plan is less common and focuses on summarizing critical points for each section. These plans take much less work and typically run one page in length.

In general, you should use a traditional model for a legacy company, a large company, or any business that does not adhere to Lean (or another Agile method ). Use Lean if you expect the company to pivot quickly or if you already employ a Lean strategy with other business operations. Additionally, a Lean business plan can suffice if the document is for internal use only. Stick to a traditional version for investors, as they may be more sensitive to sudden changes or a high degree of built-in flexibility in the plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step by Step

Writing a strong business plan requires research and attention to detail for each section. Below, you’ll find a 10-step guide to researching and defining each element in the plan.

Step 1: Executive Summary

The executive summary will always be the first section of your business plan. The goal is to answer the following questions:

  • What is the vision and mission of the company?
  • What are the company’s short- and long-term goals?

See our  roundup of executive summary examples and templates for samples. Read our executive summary guide to learn more about writing one.

Step 2: Description of Business

The goal of this section is to define the realm, scope, and intent of your venture. To do so, answer the following questions as clearly and concisely as possible:

  • What business are we in?
  • What does our business do?

Step 3: Market Analysis

In this section, provide evidence that you have surveyed and understand the current marketplace, and that your product or service satisfies a niche in the market. To do so, answer these questions:

  • Who is our customer? 
  • What does that customer value?

Step 4: Competitive Analysis

In many cases, a business plan proposes not a brand-new (or even market-disrupting) venture, but a more competitive version — whether via features, pricing, integrations, etc. — than what is currently available. In this section, answer the following questions to show that your product or service stands to outpace competitors:

  • Who is the competition? 
  • What do they do best? 
  • What is our unique value proposition?

Step 5: Description of Organizational Management

In this section, write an overview of the team members and other key personnel who are integral to success. List roles and responsibilities, and if possible, note the hierarchy or team structure.

Step 6: Description of Products or Services

In this section, clearly define your product or service, as well as all the effort and resources that go into producing it. The strength of your product largely defines the success of your business, so it’s imperative that you take time to test and refine the product before launching into marketing, sales, or funding details.

Questions to answer in this section are as follows:

  • What is the product or service?
  • How do we produce it, and what resources are necessary for production?

Step 7: Marketing Plan

In this section, define the marketing strategy for your product or service. This doesn’t need to be as fleshed out as a full marketing plan , but it should answer basic questions, such as the following:

  • Who is the target market (if different from existing customer base)?
  • What channels will you use to reach your target market?
  • What resources does your marketing strategy require, and do you have access to them?
  • If possible, do you have a rough estimate of timeline and budget?
  • How will you measure success?

Step 8: Sales Plan

Write an overview of the sales strategy, including the priorities of each cycle, steps to achieve these goals, and metrics for success. For the purposes of a business plan, this section does not need to be a comprehensive, in-depth sales plan , but can simply outline the high-level objectives and strategies of your sales efforts. 

Start by answering the following questions:

  • What is the sales strategy?
  • What are the tools and tactics you will use to achieve your goals?
  • What are the potential obstacles, and how will you overcome them?
  • What is the timeline for sales and turning a profit?
  • What are the metrics of success?

Step 9: Funding Details (or Request for Funding)

This section is one of the most critical parts of your business plan, particularly if you are sharing it with investors. You do not need to provide a full financial plan, but you should be able to answer the following questions:

  • How much capital do you currently have? How much capital do you need?
  • How will you grow the team (onboarding, team structure, training and development)?
  • What are your physical needs and constraints (space, equipment, etc.)?

Step 10: Financial Projections

Apart from the fundraising analysis, investors like to see thought-out financial projections for the future. As discussed earlier, depending on the scope and stage of your business, this could be anywhere from one to five years. 

While these projections won’t be exact — and will need to be somewhat flexible — you should be able to gauge the following:

  • How and when will the company first generate a profit?
  • How will the company maintain profit thereafter?

Business Plan Template

Business Plan Template

Download Business Plan Template

Microsoft Excel | Smartsheet

This basic business plan template has space for all the traditional elements: an executive summary, product or service details, target audience, marketing and sales strategies, etc. In the finances sections, input your baseline numbers, and the template will automatically calculate projections for sales forecasting, financial statements, and more.

For templates tailored to more specific needs, visit this business plan template roundup or download a fill-in-the-blank business plan template to make things easy. 

If you are looking for a particular template by file type, visit our pages dedicated exclusively to Microsoft Excel , Microsoft Word , and Adobe PDF business plan templates.

How to Write a Simple Business Plan

A simple business plan is a streamlined, lightweight version of the large, traditional model. As opposed to a one-page business plan , which communicates high-level information for quick overviews (such as a stakeholder presentation), a simple business plan can exceed one page.

Below are the steps for creating a generic simple business plan, which are reflected in the template below .

  • Write the Executive Summary This section is the same as in the traditional business plan — simply offer an overview of what’s in the business plan, the prospect or core offering, and the short- and long-term goals of the company. 
  • Add a Company Overview Document the larger company mission and vision. 
  • Provide the Problem and Solution In straightforward terms, define the problem you are attempting to solve with your product or service and how your company will attempt to do it. Think of this section as the gap in the market you are attempting to close.
  • Identify the Target Market Who is your company (and its products or services) attempting to reach? If possible, briefly define your buyer personas .
  • Write About the Competition In this section, demonstrate your knowledge of the market by listing the current competitors and outlining your competitive advantage.
  • Describe Your Product or Service Offerings Get down to brass tacks and define your product or service. What exactly are you selling?
  • Outline Your Marketing Tactics Without getting into too much detail, describe your planned marketing initiatives.
  • Add a Timeline and the Metrics You Will Use to Measure Success Offer a rough timeline, including milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will use to measure your progress.
  • Include Your Financial Forecasts Write an overview of your financial plan that demonstrates you have done your research and adequate modeling. You can also list key assumptions that go into this forecasting. 
  • Identify Your Financing Needs This section is where you will make your funding request. Based on everything in the business plan, list your proposed sources of funding, as well as how you will use it.

Simple Business Plan Template

Simple Business Plan Template

Download Simple Business Plan Template

Microsoft Excel |  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF  | Smartsheet

Use this simple business plan template to outline each aspect of your organization, including information about financing and opportunities to seek out further funding. This template is completely customizable to fit the needs of any business, whether it’s a startup or large company.

Read our article offering free simple business plan templates or free 30-60-90-day business plan templates to find more tailored options. You can also explore our collection of one page business templates . 

How to Write a Business Plan for a Lean Startup

A Lean startup business plan is a more Agile approach to a traditional version. The plan focuses more on activities, processes, and relationships (and maintains flexibility in all aspects), rather than on concrete deliverables and timelines.

While there is some overlap between a traditional and a Lean business plan, you can write a Lean plan by following the steps below:

  • Add Your Value Proposition Take a streamlined approach to describing your product or service. What is the unique value your startup aims to deliver to customers? Make sure the team is aligned on the core offering and that you can state it in clear, simple language.
  • List Your Key Partners List any other businesses you will work with to realize your vision, including external vendors, suppliers, and partners. This section demonstrates that you have thoughtfully considered the resources you can provide internally, identified areas for external assistance, and conducted research to find alternatives.
  • Note the Key Activities Describe the key activities of your business, including sourcing, production, marketing, distribution channels, and customer relationships.
  • Include Your Key Resources List the critical resources — including personnel, equipment, space, and intellectual property — that will enable you to deliver your unique value.
  • Identify Your Customer Relationships and Channels In this section, document how you will reach and build relationships with customers. Provide a high-level map of the customer experience from start to finish, including the spaces in which you will interact with the customer (online, retail, etc.). 
  • Detail Your Marketing Channels Describe the marketing methods and communication platforms you will use to identify and nurture your relationships with customers. These could be email, advertising, social media, etc.
  • Explain the Cost Structure This section is especially necessary in the early stages of a business. Will you prioritize maximizing value or keeping costs low? List the foundational startup costs and how you will move toward profit over time.
  • Share Your Revenue Streams Over time, how will the company make money? Include both the direct product or service purchase, as well as secondary sources of revenue, such as subscriptions, selling advertising space, fundraising, etc.

Lean Business Plan Template for Startups

Lean Business Plan Templates for Startups

Download Lean Business Plan Template for Startups

Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

Startup leaders can use this Lean business plan template to relay the most critical information from a traditional plan. You’ll find all the sections listed above, including spaces for industry and product overviews, cost structure and sources of revenue, and key metrics, and a timeline. The template is completely customizable, so you can edit it to suit the objectives of your Lean startups.

See our wide variety of  startup business plan templates for more options.

How to Write a Business Plan for a Loan

A business plan for a loan, often called a loan proposal , includes many of the same aspects of a traditional business plan, as well as additional financial documents, such as a credit history, a loan request, and a loan repayment plan.

In addition, you may be asked to include personal and business financial statements, a form of collateral, and equity investment information.

Download free financial templates to support your business plan.

Tips for Writing a Business Plan

Outside of including all the key details in your business plan, you have several options to elevate the document for the highest chance of winning funding and other resources. Follow these tips from experts:.

  • Keep It Simple: Avner Brodsky , the Co-Founder and CEO of Lezgo Limited, an online marketing company, uses the acronym KISS (keep it short and simple) as a variation on this idea. “The business plan is not a college thesis,” he says. “Just focus on providing the essential information.”
  • Do Adequate Research: Michael Dean, the Co-Founder of Pool Research , encourages business leaders to “invest time in research, both internal and external (market, finance, legal etc.). Avoid being overly ambitious or presumptive. Instead, keep everything objective, balanced, and accurate.” Your plan needs to stand on its own, and you must have the data to back up any claims or forecasting you make. As Brodsky explains, “Your business needs to be grounded on the realities of the market in your chosen location. Get the most recent data from authoritative sources so that the figures are vetted by experts and are reliable.”
  • Set Clear Goals: Make sure your plan includes clear, time-based goals. “Short-term goals are key to momentum growth and are especially important to identify for new businesses,” advises Dean.
  • Know (and Address) Your Weaknesses: “This awareness sets you up to overcome your weak points much quicker than waiting for them to arise,” shares Dean. Brodsky recommends performing a full SWOT analysis to identify your weaknesses, too. “Your business will fare better with self-knowledge, which will help you better define the mission of your business, as well as the strategies you will choose to achieve your objectives,” he adds.
  • Seek Peer or Mentor Review: “Ask for feedback on your drafts and for areas to improve,” advises Brodsky. “When your mind is filled with dreams for your business, sometimes it is an outsider who can tell you what you’re missing and will save your business from being a product of whimsy.”

Outside of these more practical tips, the language you use is also important and may make or break your business plan.

Shaun Heng, VP of Operations at Coin Market Cap , gives the following advice on the writing, “Your business plan is your sales pitch to an investor. And as with any sales pitch, you need to strike the right tone and hit a few emotional chords. This is a little tricky in a business plan, because you also need to be formal and matter-of-fact. But you can still impress by weaving in descriptive language and saying things in a more elegant way.

“A great way to do this is by expanding your vocabulary, avoiding word repetition, and using business language. Instead of saying that something ‘will bring in as many customers as possible,’ try saying ‘will garner the largest possible market segment.’ Elevate your writing with precise descriptive words and you'll impress even the busiest investor.”

Additionally, Dean recommends that you “stay consistent and concise by keeping your tone and style steady throughout, and your language clear and precise. Include only what is 100 percent necessary.”

Resources for Writing a Business Plan

While a template provides a great outline of what to include in a business plan, a live document or more robust program can provide additional functionality, visibility, and real-time updates. The U.S. Small Business Association also curates resources for writing a business plan.

Additionally, you can use business plan software to house data, attach documentation, and share information with stakeholders. Popular options include LivePlan, Enloop, BizPlanner, PlanGuru, and iPlanner.

How a Business Plan Helps to Grow Your Business

A business plan — both the exercise of creating one and the document — can grow your business by helping you to refine your product, target audience, sales plan, identify opportunities, secure funding, and build new partnerships. 

Outside of these immediate returns, writing a business plan is a useful exercise in that it forces you to research the market, which prompts you to forge your unique value proposition and identify ways to beat the competition. Doing so will also help you build (and keep you accountable to) attainable financial and product milestones. And down the line, it will serve as a welcome guide as hurdles inevitably arise.

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6 Strategies for Presenting Your Business Plan When you're ready to approach people with your finished business plan, these six strategies will help you achieve the results you want.

By The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. • Feb 3, 2015

In their book Write Your Business Plan , the staff of Entrepreneur Media offer an in-depth understanding of what's essential to any business plan, what's appropriate for your venture, and what it takes to ensure success. In this edited excerpt, the authors explain how to present your plan to investors or other individuals after you've completed it.

It doesn't matter how compelling your business plan is if the reader starts with a negative impression. A shopworn plan reeks of failure from the get-go. Make sure the cosmetics are right: Clean paper, crisp font, clear pictures and a professional (noncolloquial) presentation go a long way toward securing a fair reading or hearing of your business plan.

As always, when preparing your plan, keep your audience in mind. Businesslike is almost always best as a fallback decision on how to make a good first impression. Also ask in advance if the recipient wants a hard copy or an e-copy of your plan. In the digital age, we want to give people what they want.

Once you've prepared your plan for presentation, you need to put it in front of the right people. There are six steps for doing so:

1. Obtain leads and referrals. Find names, addresses and phone numbers of the type of investors you wish to target. Ask people you know for referrals. Network as much as possible.

2. Research your target. Learn as much as possible about how much money people have to invest, industries they're interested in and other requirements. Search venture capital directories, Who's Who , news articles, websites and similar sources.

3. Make your pitch. First, email or mail an introductory letter to your target letting them know you have a plan you'd like to send. Sending unsolicited, unanticipated business plans with a mere cover letter won't typically get your plan read. Not only are most people too busy to read whatever comes across their desk or lands in their inboxes, they also don't want to be sued someday for "stealing your ideas," even if they never read your plan.

A letter of introduction is your way of asking them if they'd be interested in reading your business plan. Within the letter, explain why you've selected them and what you have to offer, in a brief compelling manner.

You should also explain generally what you're looking for—an investor, a loan, a long-term supplier relationship or something else. Often this will be obvious from the circumstances. If you've received a personal referral, you'll want to include who gave you the referral very early on, probably in the first sentence following the salutation. Never underestimate the power of a personal referral from a friend, colleague or acquaintance. It may not land you an investor, but it gets your foot in the door. When emailing the individual, you might put the referral in the subject line.

In a world of "who you know" and the power of networking, many of the people you'll be sending your plan to will be referred by others. In some cases, you may even have some personal connection to the person other than a referral. For instance, perhaps you once met this individual while networking or worked together at a company or organization.

Finally, in the letter of introduction, you may want to detail the terms under which you're presenting your plan. For instance, you may say that you're not submitting the plan to any other investor. Or you may explicitly point out that you're currently seeking financing from a number of sources, including this one. If there's a deadline for responding to your plan, if you wish to stress that the plan is confidential and must be returned to you, or if you'd like to ask the recipient to pass it on to someone else who may be interested, this is the place to do so. Somewhere between sending the introductory letter and sending the plan—if the person agrees to see it—is where you can email a non-disclosure agreement if you plan to include one.

If you don't hear from them within a week or so, send a follow-up email, and try once more about two weeks later (in case they were out of town or swamped with other work). If this doesn't produce a meeting, look elsewhere.

4 . Try to meet people in person. Despite the fact that we're living in a text, email and conference-call age, you should still try to meet your recipient face to face, especially if you're seeking any type of funding. It's very hard to get such a commitment through a few texts or by email. Skype may work, but meeting in person for a major financial commitment is best. If they want to keep all communication electronic, then follow their lead.

5. Defuse objections. Although you may think you've answered everything in your plan, you haven't. Prepare a list of possible objections—potential competitors, hard-to-buttress assumptions and the like—that your investor may raise. Then prepare cogent answers. Have friends, co-workers and your team play devil's advocate and provide every possible objection or ask tough question, then formulate your answers.

6. Get a commitment. You won't get an investment unless you ask for it. When all objections have been answered, be ready to offer one last concession—"If I give your representative a board seat, can we do this today?"—and go for the close.

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How to Create a Business Plan Presentation

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Noah Parsons

8 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

It’s been said that business plans are worthless – it’s the planning process that is truly valuable . In many ways, this is a true statement. The business plan document that you create isn’t necessarily that useful because few people will ever review it in detail.

But, the process you went through to create that document forced you to think in detail about your business and answer questions that you might not have answered otherwise. The planning process forced you to become an expert in your business, your target market, and your operations.

The expertise that you created in the planning process is what you need to showcase when you pitch your business to lenders and investors. Figuring out how to distill all of that knowledge into a few slides and a ten-to-twenty-minute presentation is the next challenge. This guide will help you turn your business plan into a cohesive and convincing presentation that will help you win investors and wow your audience. 

  • What is a business plan presentation?

A business plan presentation is also often called a “ pitch deck .” It’s a set of slides, often designed to accompany an in-person or Zoom meeting, that presents the fundamentals of your business. A great business plan presentation explains what you do, who your target audience is, how your business operates, and what your “ask” is. After all, you probably aren’t just presenting your business plan to share your great idea, you’re trying to convince your audience to do something for you.

When you’re designing your business plan presentation, it’s helpful to know if you’re going to be able to talk through your presentation, or if it’s just going to be emailed out. This 

  • Why do you present a business plan?

Your business plan presentation is all about the “ask”. Whether you’re trying to raise money for your business, win a business plan competition, or pitching a potential new employee to join your business, you have a reason for presenting your business. As you work on your business plan presentation, keep this in mind. Know who your audience is and what you want from them at the end of your presentation. More often than not, your goal will be simply to get to the next meeting or have some opportunity to continue the conversation. 

  • 6 Tips to create a convincing business plan presentation

We’ll cover exactly what to include in your business plan presentation in the next section, but first let’s go over a few tips that will help you prepare a great presentation.

1. Start with a review of your business plan

Your business plan presentation is a summary of your business plan, so use your plan as a starting point. You already have all the information you need to, so just go back to your plan and highlight the key points that you plan to cover in your presentation. If there are key statistics or facts about your market that you want to highlight, identify those so that you don’t forget to include them in your presentation.

2. Tell a story

The key to engaging your audience is to hook them with a story. Think about the problems your customers face when they’re using a product or service from the competition. Explain what life is like before your business arrives to provide a novel solution. The more that you can get your audience to nod along and understand the point of view of your customer, the more likely they are to support your business. 

3. Use visuals

Business plan presentations shouldn’t be slides crammed with text and other information. Instead, focus on using imagery to convey your message. You don’t want your audience to just be reading a slide full of information while you talk – they won’t really give you their full attention when this happens. Instead, use photos, charts and graphs, or diagrams to explain your business and the problems you are solving. 

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Create a business plan that maximizes your chances of securing funding., 4. use large, easy to read font.

Always use a relatively large font in your presentation – 30pt or larger. Your audience shouldn’t have to strain to read what’s on your slide. Using a large font will also force you to choose your words carefully because you won’t have that much room on the page for a lot of words. 

6. Research who you’re presenting to

Nailing your presentation requires knowing your audience. For example, if you’ve invented a new medical device and are presenting to a room full of industry experts and medical professionals, you’ll want to present using terminology that they are familiar with. However, if your presentation is to investors who may not be as familiar with your industry, you may need to simplify things and make sure to use language that they will understand. 

  • What to include in your business plan presentation

As a general rule, try to keep your presentation to 10-12 slides. Although you could probably talk about your business all day, your audience is looking for a concise presentation that clearly communicates what your business does and where you are going. Here are the 10 slides you should include your presentation:

1. Introduction 

This is sometimes also called the title slide. You should include your company name and logo and a one line summary of your business. This might be your mission statement, or just a short tagline that explains what you’re doing in a nutshell. For example, Spotify might have said, “We’re revolutionizing how people listen to music and how artists get paid”. Instagram might have said, “We make it easy for anyone to produce professional-looking photos”.

2. The problem and your solution

This is where your story-telling skills need to come into play. You want to make your problem real to your audience. You want them to relate to people who have the problem, even if they don’t have the problem themselves. You want your audience nodding along in understanding.

With your problem clearly identified, you now explain your solution. This is a description of what your product or service is and what it does. Explain how it solves your customer’s problem and how it compares to the competition. 

3. Target market and opportunity

Your next step is to explain the size of your market and what your business opportunity is. You’ll use the market research data from your business plan in this slide to show how many potential customers are out there and you’ll show the different market segments that your business will target . 

4. Business model and pricing strategy

Your business model is an explanation of how you make money. For many businesses, this is very straightforward and doesn’t require much, if any, explanation. For others, more details will be required. For example, a business like Google provides their search engine for free to users, but sells ads in the search results. 

5. Traction

Traction is evidence of early success with your business. This might mean a list of initial customers, pre-orders through a Kickstarter campaign, or signed contracts with potential buyers. Any evidence that you can provide that proves that your business will be a success is useful to showcase here. 

6. Marketing and sales

Be sure to include a slide that provides an overview of your marketing and sales plan . You’ve identified your target market and now you need to explain how you’re going to reach them and sell to them. 

7. Financial projections

You shouldn’t try and fit your entire financial plan into your business plan presentation. Instead, extract the highlights and present them here. A sales forecast chart and profits chart could be useful. If you have a guess as to when you’ll become profitable, include that information. The goal of your presentation is to spark interest and get your audience to ask for additional information, so don’t overload things in your initial presentation.

8. Your team

Who is behind your business is often even more important than your idea. People come up with good ideas all the time. Investors are looking not just for a great idea, but for a team of people who can turn that idea into reality. Use this slide to provide a brief overview of your team and the rationale behind why your team is the right team to make the business a success. 

9. Use of funds

Assuming that you are presenting your business plan to raise money for your business, you’ll need to explain how you’re going to use that money. Is it for marketing or perhaps R&D? Maybe you need to raise funds to hire key additions to your team or to expand to a new location. Make it clear why you need the money and how you’re going to use it.

10. Call to action

Finally, don’t forget your “ask.” If you’re seeking investment, ask for it. If you are trying to convince someone to join your team, ask them to join. Your business plan presentation exists for a reason and there’s no harm in being direct about what you are looking for.

11. Appendix

Aside from the core slides of your presentation, it’s always useful to have additional slides ready to answer questions that come up. A great presentation leaves the audience interested and wanting to know more. Try and anticipate those questions and add slides in the appendix that helps answer those questions. When the audience asks a question that you’ve prepared a slide for, skip into the appendix and answer that question with your slide. This method shows your audience that you’re well prepared and have thought through all aspects of your business.

This is where it all comes back to planning. The plan document itself may not be useful, but the process you went through will leave you well-prepared to have an expert and successful business plan presentation.

  • Download your free pitch deck template

Get a jump start on your business plan presentation by downloading our free pitch deck template . It has everything you need to get started and includes all the key slides you need for a winning presentation. 

Create a business plan that maximizes your chances of securing funding

Content Author: Noah Parsons

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

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How to Effectively Pitch a Business Idea

Business professional pitching idea in office

  • 27 Aug 2020

You’ve identified an underserved need and validated your startup idea . Now it’s time to talk about your business to potential investors. Yet, how do you effectively communicate your idea’s promise and possible impact on the market?

Pitching a business idea is one of the most nerve-wracking parts of any entrepreneur’s journey. It’s what stands in the way between your vision and the financing needed to turn it into a reality. Although daunting, there are steps you can take to ensure a greater chance of success.

Access your free e-book today.

What Makes a Great Pitch?

To make a successful pitch, entrepreneurs must exhibit several characteristics to convince investors to fund their innovative ideas .

Every entrepreneur needs an intricate understanding of their idea, target market, growth strategy, product-market fit , and overall business model . This differentiates your business concept and solidifies the steps needed to make it a reality. The perfect pitch shows investors your proof of concept and instills confidence that they can expect a return on investment .

Another crucial component of a successful pitch is understanding the venture capital (VC) ecosystem.

“It’s critical for entrepreneurs to understand the background and motivations of venture capitalists so when entrepreneurs seek them out to help fund their venture, they know what to prioritize in a firm and how to build a strong, trusting relationship,” says Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Bussgang in the online course Launching Tech Ventures .

To secure funding and support, here are essential steps to ensure your pitch is effective.

How to Pitch a Business Idea

1. know who you’re pitching.

Some entrepreneurs try to get in front of every investor, despite their industry expertise or firm’s investment stage. Consider that, when you accept an investment, it’s about more than money; you enter a partnership. You must perform your due diligence and research potential investors before making your pitch.

Graphic showing three questions to ask potential investors

When researching, ask yourself:

What industries do they invest in?

A VC firm’s industry focus depends on what the partners’ niche is and where their passions lie. Some firms specialize in a particular sector, such as financial technology (fintech) or education technology (edtech).

For example, Rethink Education is a venture capital fund that invests in early- and growth-stage edtech startups, while Blockchain Capital is dedicated to financing companies innovating in the crypto market. Others are generalists and span several industries.

Knowing the types of companies the firm invests in can help you tailor your pitch and zero in on their presumed priorities.

What stage do they invest in?

If you’re in the earliest stages of business development, you won’t receive growth equity, which is reserved for mature companies that need capital to expand operations, enter a new market, or acquire another business. Before making your pitch, have a rough estimate of the money and resources you need to launch, and then align yourself with investors who can help at that particular stage.

What’s the investor’s track record?

Dig deeper into the investor’s experience and investment history to determine the types of companies they typically finance, the background knowledge they might already have, and whether your personalities will mesh. This information will enable you to modify your pitch and determine if this is the right person or fund to partner with.

“The best venture capitalists become trusted partners and advisors to the founders and team,” says HBS Professor William Sahlman in the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials . “They help recruit key employees. They introduce the company to potential customers. They help raise subsequent rounds of capital. In some cases, they signal that the firm they've backed is a winner, which helps make that assertion true.”

Given the benefits and high stakes, the more you know going into a pitch, the better.

Entrepreneurship Essentials | Succeed in the startup world | Learn More

2. Consider How You Present Yourself, Not Simply Your Idea

Although your ideas and skills matter , your personality is equally as important. According to research published in the Harvard Business Review , venture capitalists’ interest in a startup “was driven less by judgments that the founder was competent than by perceptions about character and trustworthiness.”

Investors also want to know they’re entering a partnership with the right people. Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder of Aspect Ventures , acknowledges in Entrepreneurship Essentials that her investment firm “thinks about team and team dynamics as being very critical.”

Investors want to know whether the founders have worked together before, if your startup’s early hires have complementary skill sets, and whether you’ll be flexible, open-minded, and willing to embrace different perspectives.

Think about this as you prepare your pitch. If investors poke holes in your idea, will you get defensive? When they ask for financial projections, will you exaggerate the numbers? Hopefully, your answers are “no”—firms want to partner with founders they can trust who are open to guidance and mentorship—but if you’re second-guessing your reactions, consider what you might be asked and practice your responses.

As Sahlman reinforces in Entrepreneurship Essentials : “Most experienced investors look at the people first and the opportunity second. Even when a team is young and inexperienced, an investor depends on them to make the right decisions.”

3. Tell a Story

When describing your business idea, zero in on the problem you address for your target audience and how you solve it better than the competition. You could do this by presenting a real-life scenario in which you describe the pain point a current or prospective customer faced and how your product or service fixed the issue. This can help engage investors on a personal level and inspire them to see your idea’s potential.

By complementing your spreadsheets and charts with a compelling story, you can paint a fuller picture of your startup’s future and more effectively highlight its business opportunity.

4. Cover the Details

While it’s important to set the stage, you also need to cover the specifics. In your pitch deck, concisely define your value proposition and share a memorable tagline for investors to leave the meeting with.

According to Bussgang in Launching Tech Ventures , every pitch to an investor should contain the following:

  • Intro: Focus on answering important questions like who you are, why you’re asking for funding, and what your founder-market fit is.
  • Problem: Talk about your ideal customer’s pain point and how you plan to solve it.
  • Solution: Explain how your idea is a compelling solution and why it’s better than existing solutions.
  • Opportunity and Market Size: Provide your total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM) through research.
  • Competitive Analysis: Understand your unique differences in the market that can help you sustain a competitive advantage.
  • Go-to-Market Plan: Clarify how you’re going to reach your customers.
  • Business Model: Describe how you’re going to make money.
  • Financials: Define what your financial projections are and how you’re going to provide returns for investors.
  • The Ask: Detail how much funding you need, how long it will last, and what milestones you hope to achieve.

“VCs will expect entrepreneurs to clearly define the milestones they need to achieve with each round of funding,” Bussgang continues. “Entrepreneurs should know what experiments they will run to reach these milestones and what they expect the results will be.”

Launching Tech Ventures | Build a viable, valuable tech venture that can profitably scale | Learn More

5. Show the Roadmap

Although you’re in your business’s early stages, investors want to know how they’ll cash out in the end.

“To truly understand the motivations behind VC firms, remember that they are professional investors,” Bussgang explains in Launching Tech Ventures . “Their objective is to generate the maximum return for their limited partners with a dual fiduciary duty to their investors and the company.”

To clinch your pitch, highlight your exit strategy and the options available.

Graphic showing three common exit strategies for businesses

The most common exit strategies include:

  • Acquisition: When one company buys most or all of another company’s shares to gain control of it
  • Merger: When two existing companies unite into one new company
  • Initial Public Offering (IPO): When a private company issues its first sale of stocks to the public and can start raising capital from public investors

Related: What Are Mergers & Acquisitions? 4 Key Risks

3 Kinds of Pitches for Entrepreneurs

While all effective pitches share foundational elements, you should use different types depending on the scenario. To increase your chances of success, tailor your pitch to your audience and the available time frame.

1. The Elevator Pitch

This is one of the most popular pitches. Use this when you need to communicate their startup’s value in 60 seconds or less.

An effective elevator pitch should be concise, convincing, and convey your startup’s value proposition and differentiators. For tech business ideas, mention the innovative technology that sets your concept apart. At the end, include a call to action, such as the amount of capital required to launch.

2. The Short-Form Pitch

You should portray your business idea’s value to prospective clients and investors as efficiently as possible. This means summarizing the most important elements of your idea in a way that makes them want to hear more. Highlight the market size, how you’ll create barriers for competition, your plan to monetize the business, and how much financing you need.

Short-form pitches can run from three to 10 minutes; if you’re pitching in a competitive setting, note any length requirements. These shorter pitches can pique investors’ interest and earn you the chance to present a long-form pitch.

3. The Long-Form Pitch

Sometimes, you’re fortunate enough to have more than a few minutes to pitch your idea. If this opportunity presents itself, it’s crucial to make the most of your time and address every aspect of your business plan.

“You’re not just trying to start any business,” Bussgang says in Launching Tech Ventures . “You’re trying to create a business that’s profitable, sustainable, and valuable.

Zero in on your story and share a real-life scenario. Detail the market size to illustrate demand and clear examples of how you’ll attract and retain customers, particularly in light of competitors. This will show you’re planning for—and ahead of—future challenges.

You should also have a blueprint for testing product-market fit and early results, along with a detailed monetization plan. Lastly, share your exit strategy and the amount of capital needed to, one day, achieve it. Your long-form pitch should communicate your business concept clearly and concisely, open the possibility for follow-up questions, and capture the investors’ interest.

Consider preparing all three pitch lengths to be ready for any opportunity. It’s important to stay agile so you can modify your pitch to fit specific length requirements.

Which HBS Online Entrepreneurship and Innovation Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Landing the Pitch

Every investor prioritizes different data and information. Yet, if you start by choosing the right investor and then align their needs with your proposed market opportunity, value proposition, and exit strategy, you have a chance at landing the pitch.

“In some ways, startup success depends just as much on whether your hypothesis about the future is right, as it does on whether your idea is a good one,” Bussgang explains in Launching Tech Ventures .

As a result, it’s important for you to do your due diligence before pitching your business idea to investors.

If you’re interested in learning more about what investors look for and how you can create value, explore Entrepreneurship Essentials and Launching Tech Ventures , two of our entrepreneurship and innovation courses . Not sure which is the right fit? Download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

This post was updated on July 28, 2023. It was originally published on August 27, 2020.

best way to present business plan

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24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Clifford Chi

Published: February 06, 2024

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I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

sample business plans and examples

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As you explore business plan examples from real companies and brands, it’s easier for you to learn how to write a good one.

But what does a good business plan look like? And how do you write one that’s both viable and convincing. I’ll walk you through the ideal business plan format along with some examples to help you get started.

Table of Contents

Business Plan Format

Business plan types, sample business plan templates, top business plan examples.

Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game. To me, the same logic applies to business.

If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare for battle before breaking into a market.

Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.

With so much at stake, I’m sure you’re wondering where to begin.

best way to present business plan

  • Outline your idea.
  • Pitch to investors.
  • Secure funding.
  • Get to work!

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Fill out the form to get your free template.

First, you’ll want to nail down your formatting. Most business plans include the following sections.

1. Executive Summary

I’d say the executive summary is the most important section of the entire business plan. 

Why? Essentially, it's the overview or introduction, written in a way to grab readers' attention and guide them through the rest of the business plan. This is important, because a business plan can be dozens or hundreds of pages long.

There are two main elements I’d recommend including in your executive summary:

Company Description

This is the perfect space to highlight your company’s mission statement and goals, a brief overview of your history and leadership, and your top accomplishments as a business.

Tell potential investors who you are and why what you do matters. Naturally, they’re going to want to know who they’re getting into business with up front, and this is a great opportunity to showcase your impact.

Need some extra help firming up those business goals? Check out HubSpot Academy’s free course to help you set goals that matter — I’d highly recommend it

Products and Services

To piggyback off of the company description, be sure to incorporate an overview of your offerings. This doesn’t have to be extensive — just another chance to introduce your industry and overall purpose as a business.

In addition to the items above, I recommend including some information about your financial projections and competitive advantage here too.:

Keep in mind you'll cover many of these topics in more detail later on in the business plan. So, keep the executive summary clear and brief, and only include the most important takeaways.

Executive Summary Business Plan Examples

This example was created with HubSpot’s business plan template:

business plan sample: Executive Summary Example

This executive summary is so good to me because it tells potential investors a short story while still covering all of the most important details.

Business plans examples: Executive Summary

Image Source

Tips for Writing Your Executive Summary

  • Start with a strong introduction of your company, showcase your mission and impact, and outline the products and services you provide.
  • Clearly define a problem, and explain how your product solves that problem, and show why the market needs your business.
  • Be sure to highlight your value proposition, market opportunity, and growth potential.
  • Keep it concise and support ideas with data.
  • Customize your summary to your audience. For example, emphasize finances and return on investment for venture capitalists.

Check out our tips for writing an effective executive summary for more guidance.

2. Market Opportunity

This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market.

The main question I’d ask myself here is this: Where is the gap in the current industry, and how will my product fill that gap?

More specifically, here’s what I’d include in this section:

  • The size of the market
  • Current or potential market share
  • Trends in the industry and consumer behavior
  • Where the gap is
  • What caused the gap
  • How you intend to fill it

To get a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, you'll want to conduct a TAM, SAM, and SOM analysis and perform market research on your industry.

You may also benefit from creating a SWOT analysis to get some of the insights for this section.

Market Opportunity Business Plan Example

I like this example because it uses critical data to underline the size of the potential market and what part of that market this service hopes to capture.

Business plans examples: Market Opportunity

Tips for Writing Your Market Opportunity Section

  • Focus on demand and potential for growth.
  • Use market research, surveys, and industry trend data to support your market forecast and projections.
  • Add a review of regulation shifts, tech advances, and consumer behavior changes.
  • Refer to reliable sources.
  • Showcase how your business can make the most of this opportunity.

3. Competitive Landscape

Since we’re already speaking of market share, you'll also need to create a section that shares details on who the top competitors are.

After all, your customers likely have more than one brand to choose from, and you'll want to understand exactly why they might choose one over another.

My favorite part of performing a competitive analysis is that it can help you uncover:

  • Industry trends that other brands may not be utilizing
  • Strengths in your competition that may be obstacles to handle
  • Weaknesses in your competition that may help you develop selling points
  • The unique proposition you bring to the market that may resonate with customers

Competitive Landscape Business Plan Example

I like how the competitive landscape section of this business plan below shows a clear outline of who the top competitors are.

Business plans examples: Competitive Landscape

It also highlights specific industry knowledge and the importance of location, which shows useful experience in this specific industry. 

This can help build trust in your ability to execute your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Competitive Landscape

  • Complete in-depth research, then emphasize your most important findings.
  • Compare your unique selling proposition (USP) to your direct and indirect competitors.
  • Show a clear and realistic plan for product and brand differentiation.
  • Look for specific advantages and barriers in the competitive landscape. Then, highlight how that information could impact your business.
  • Outline growth opportunities from a competitive perspective.
  • Add customer feedback and insights to support your competitive analysis.

4. Target Audience

Use this section to describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience?

If your immediate answer is "everyone," you'll need to dig deeper. Here are some questions I’d ask myself here:

  • What demographics will most likely need/buy your product or service?
  • What are the psychographics of this audience? (Desires, triggering events, etc.)
  • Why are your offerings valuable to them?

I’d also recommend building a buyer persona to get in the mindset of your ideal customers and be clear on why you're targeting them.

Target Audience Business Plan Example

I like the example below because it uses in-depth research to draw conclusions about audience priorities. It also analyzes how to create the right content for this audience.

Business plans examples: Target Audience

Tips for Writing Your Target Audience Section

  • Include details on the size and growth potential of your target audience.
  • Figure out and refine the pain points for your target audience , then show why your product is a useful solution.
  • Describe your targeted customer acquisition strategy in detail.
  • Share anticipated challenges your business may face in acquiring customers and how you plan to address them.
  • Add case studies, testimonials, and other data to support your target audience ideas.
  • Remember to consider niche audiences and segments of your target audience in your business plan.

5. Marketing Strategy

Here, you'll discuss how you'll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy. I’d suggest including information:

  • Your brand positioning vision and how you'll cultivate it
  • The goal targets you aim to achieve
  • The metrics you'll use to measure success
  • The channels and distribution tactics you'll use

I think it’s helpful to have a marketing plan built out in advance to make this part of your business plan easier.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

This business plan example includes the marketing strategy for the town of Gawler.

In my opinion, it really works because it offers a comprehensive picture of how they plan to use digital marketing to promote the community.

Business plans examples: Marketing Strategy

Tips for Writing Your Marketing Strategy

  • Include a section about how you believe your brand vision will appeal to customers.
  • Add the budget and resources you'll need to put your plan in place.
  • Outline strategies for specific marketing segments.
  • Connect strategies to earlier sections like target audience and competitive analysis.
  • Review how your marketing strategy will scale with the growth of your business.
  • Cover a range of channels and tactics to highlight your ability to adapt your plan in the face of change.

6. Key Features and Benefits

At some point in your business plan, you'll need to review the key features and benefits of your products and/or services.

Laying these out can give readers an idea of how you're positioning yourself in the market and the messaging you're likely to use. It can even help them gain better insight into your business model.

Key Features and Benefits Business Plan Example

In my opinion, the example below does a great job outlining products and services for this business, along with why these qualities will attract the audience.

Business plans examples: Key Features and Benefits

Tips for Writing Your Key Features and Benefits

  • Emphasize why and how your product or service offers value to customers.
  • Use metrics and testimonials to support the ideas in this section.
  • Talk about how your products and services have the potential to scale.
  • Think about including a product roadmap.
  • Focus on customer needs, and how the features and benefits you are sharing meet those needs.
  • Offer proof of concept for your ideas, like case studies or pilot program feedback.
  • Proofread this section carefully, and remove any jargon or complex language.

7. Pricing and Revenue

This is where you'll discuss your cost structure and various revenue streams. Your pricing strategy must be solid enough to turn a profit while staying competitive in the industry. 

For this reason, here’s what I’d might outline in this section:

  • The specific pricing breakdowns per product or service
  • Why your pricing is higher or lower than your competition's
  • (If higher) Why customers would be willing to pay more
  • (If lower) How you're able to offer your products or services at a lower cost
  • When you expect to break even, what margins do you expect, etc?

Pricing and Revenue Business Plan Example

I like how this business plan example begins with an overview of the business revenue model, then shows proposed pricing for key products.

Business plans examples: Pricing and Revenue

Tips for Writing Your Pricing and Revenue Section

  • Get specific about your pricing strategy. Specifically, how you connect that strategy to customer needs and product value.
  • If you are asking a premium price, share unique features or innovations that justify that price point.
  • Show how you plan to communicate pricing to customers.
  • Create an overview of every revenue stream for your business and how each stream adds to your business model as a whole.
  • Share plans to develop new revenue streams in the future.
  • Show how and whether pricing will vary by customer segment and how pricing aligns with marketing strategies.
  • Restate your value proposition and explain how it aligns with your revenue model.

8. Financials

To me, this section is particularly informative for investors and leadership teams to figure out funding strategies, investment opportunities, and more.

 According to Forbes , you'll want to include three main things:

  • Profit/Loss Statement - This answers the question of whether your business is currently profitable.
  • Cash Flow Statement - This details exactly how much cash is incoming and outgoing to give insight into how much cash a business has on hand.
  • Balance Sheet - This outlines assets, liabilities, and equity, which gives insight into how much a business is worth.

While some business plans might include more or less information, these are the key details I’d include in this section.

Financials Business Plan Example

This balance sheet is a great example of level of detail you’ll need to include in the financials section of your business plan.

Business plans examples: Financials

Tips for Writing Your Financials Section

  • Growth potential is important in this section too. Using your data, create a forecast of financial performance in the next three to five years.
  • Include any data that supports your projections to assure investors of the credibility of your proposal.
  • Add a break-even analysis to show that your business plan is financially practical. This information can also help you pivot quickly as your business grows.
  • Consider adding a section that reviews potential risks and how sensitive your plan is to changes in the market.
  • Triple-check all financial information in your plan for accuracy.
  • Show how any proposed funding needs align with your plans for growth.

As you create your business plan, keep in mind that each of these sections will be formatted differently. Some may be in paragraph format, while others could be charts or graphs.

The formats above apply to most types of business plans. That said, the format and structure of your plan will vary by your goals for that plan. 

So, I’ve added a quick review of different business plan types. For a more detailed overview, check out this post .

1. Startups

Startup business plans are for proposing new business ideas.

If you’re planning to start a small business, preparing a business plan is crucial. The plan should include all the major factors of your business.

You can check out this guide for more detailed business plan inspiration .

2. Feasibility Studies

Feasibility business plans focus on that business's product or service. Feasibility plans are sometimes added to startup business plans. They can also be a new business plan for an already thriving organization.

3. Internal Use

You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals.

4. Strategic Initiatives

Another business plan that's often for sharing internally is a strategic business plan. This plan covers long-term business objectives that might not have been included in the startup business plan.

5. Business Acquisition or Repositioning

When a business is moving forward with an acquisition or repositioning, it may need extra structure and support. These types of business plans expand on a company's acquisition or repositioning strategy.

Growth sometimes just happens as a business continues operations. But more often, a business needs to create a structure with specific targets to meet set goals for expansion. This business plan type can help a business focus on short-term growth goals and align resources with those goals.

Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some of my favorite templates.

1. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan

Download a free, editable one-page business plan template..

The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot and is perfect for businesses of any size — no matter how many strategies we still have to develop.

Fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline give this one-page business plan a framework for how to build your brand and what tasks to keep track of as you grow.

Then, as the business matures, you can expand on your original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.

Why I Like It

This one-page business plan is a fantastic choice for the new business owner who doesn’t have the time or resources to draft a full-blown business plan. It includes all the essential sections in an accessible, bullet-point-friendly format. That way, you can get the broad strokes down before honing in on the details.

2. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

Sample business plan: hubspot free editable pdf

We also created a business plan template for entrepreneurs.

The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business. You’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it.

There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.

Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a workable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.

This business plan kit is essential for the budding entrepreneur who needs a more extensive document to share with investors and other stakeholders.

It not only includes sections for your executive summary, product line, market analysis, marketing plan, and sales plan, but it also offers hands-on guidance for filling out those sections.

3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template with built-in automation

Sample Business Plan: LiveFLow

This free template from LiveFlow aims to make it easy for businesses to create a financial plan and track their progress on a monthly basis.

The P&L Budget versus Actual format allows users to track their revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, operating profit margin, net profit, and more.

The summary dashboard aggregates all of the data put into the financial plan sheet and will automatically update when changes are made.

Instead of wasting hours manually importing your data to your spreadsheet, LiveFlow can also help you to automatically connect your accounting and banking data directly to your spreadsheet, so your numbers are always up-to-date.

With the dashboard, you can view your runway, cash balance, burn rate, gross margins, and other metrics. Having a simple way to track everything in one place will make it easier to complete the financials section of your business plan.

This is a fantastic template to track performance and alignment internally and to create a dependable process for documenting financial information across the business. It’s highly versatile and beginner-friendly.

It’s especially useful if you don’t have an accountant on the team. (I always recommend you do, but for new businesses, having one might not be possible.)

4. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

sample business plan: ThoughtCo.

One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’s financial plan and financial statements.

After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.

I absolutely love this business plan template because of its ease-of-use and hands-on instructions (in addition to its finance-centric components). If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of writing an entire business plan, consider using this template to help you with the process.

6. Harvard Business Review’s "How to Write a Winning Business Plan"

Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.

With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of " Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum ", you'll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service.

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

7. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business.

Fortunately, with HubSpot's comprehensive guide to starting a business, you'll learn how to map out all the details by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.

If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot's guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, and fund your business. It will also give small business tax information and includes marketing, sales, and service tips.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of starting a business, in addition to writing your business plan, with a high level of exactitude and detail. So if you’re in the midst of starting your business, this is an excellent guide for you.

It also offers other resources you might need, such as market analysis templates.

8. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

sample business plan: Panda Doc

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty-gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to its success.

This template has two things I love: comprehensiveness and in-depth instructions. Plus, it’s synced with PandaDoc’s e-signature software so that you and other stakeholders can sign it with ease. For that reason, I especially love it for those starting a business with a partner or with a board of directors.

9. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

sample business plan: Small Business Administration

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan.

Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need — a traditional or lean start-up plan.

Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.

We love both of the SBA’s templates because of their versatility. You can choose between two options and use the existing content in the templates to flesh out your own plan. Plus, if needed, you can get a free business counselor to help you along the way.

I’ve compiled some completed business plan samples to help you get an idea of how to customize a plan for your business.

I chose different types of business plan ideas to expand your imagination. Some are extensive, while others are fairly simple.

Let’s take a look.

1. LiveFlow

business plan example: liveflow

One of the major business expenses is marketing. How you handle your marketing reflects your company’s revenue.

I included this business plan to show you how you can ensure your marketing team is aligned with your overall business plan to get results. The plan also shows you how to track even the smallest metrics of your campaigns, like ROI and payback periods instead of just focusing on big metrics like gross and revenue.

Fintech startup, LiveFlow, allows users to sync real-time data from its accounting services, payment platforms, and banks into custom reports. This eliminates the task of pulling reports together manually, saving teams time and helping automate workflows.

"Using this framework over a traditional marketing plan will help you set a profitable marketing strategy taking things like CAC, LTV, Payback period, and P&L into consideration," explains LiveFlow co-founder, Lasse Kalkar .

When it came to including marketing strategy in its business plan, LiveFlow created a separate marketing profit and loss statement (P&L) to track how well the company was doing with its marketing initiatives.

This is a great approach, allowing businesses to focus on where their marketing dollars are making the most impact. Having this information handy will enable you to build out your business plan’s marketing section with confidence. LiveFlow has shared the template here . You can test it for yourself.

2. Lula Body

Business plan example: Lula body

Sometimes all you need is a solid mission statement and core values to guide you on how to go about everything. You do this by creating a business plan revolving around how to fulfill your statement best.

For example, Patagonia is an eco-friendly company, so their plan discusses how to make the best environmentally friendly products without causing harm.

A good mission statement  should not only resonate with consumers but should also serve as a core value compass for employees as well.

Patagonia has one of the most compelling mission statements I’ve seen:

"Together, let’s prioritise purpose over profit and protect this wondrous planet, our only home."

It reels you in from the start, and the environmentally friendly theme continues throughout the rest of the statement.

This mission goes on to explain that they are out to "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature."

Their mission statement is compelling and detailed, with each section outlining how they will accomplish their goal.

4. Vesta Home Automation

business plan example: Vesta executive summary

This executive summary for a smart home device startup is part of a business plan created by students at Mount Royal University .

While it lacks some of the sleek visuals of the templates above, its executive summary does a great job of demonstrating how invested they are in the business.

Right away, they mention they’ve invested $200,000 into the company already, which shows investors they have skin in the game and aren’t just looking for someone else to foot the bill.

This is the kind of business plan you need when applying for business funds. It clearly illustrates the expected future of the company and how the business has been coming along over the years.

5. NALB Creative Center

business plan examples: nalb creative center

This fictional business plan for an art supply store includes everything one might need in a business plan: an executive summary, a company summary, a list of services, a market analysis summary, and more.

One of its most notable sections is its market analysis summary, which includes an overview of the population growth in the business’ target geographical area, as well as a breakdown of the types of potential customers they expect to welcome at the store. 

This sort of granular insight is essential for understanding and communicating your business’s growth potential. Plus, it lays a strong foundation for creating relevant and useful buyer personas .

It’s essential to keep this information up-to-date as your market and target buyer changes. For that reason, you should carry out market research as often as possible to ensure that you’re targeting the correct audience and sharing accurate information with your investors.

Due to its comprehensiveness, it’s an excellent example to follow if you’re opening a brick-and-mortar store and need to get external funding to start your business .

6. Curriculum Companion Suites (CSS)

business plan examples: curriculum companion suites

If you’re looking for a SaaS business plan example, look no further than this business plan for a fictional educational software company called Curriculum Companion Suites. 

Like the business plan for the NALB Creative Center, it includes plenty of information for prospective investors and other key stakeholders in the business.

One of the most notable features of this business plan is the executive summary, which includes an overview of the product, market, and mission.

The first two are essential for software companies because the product offering is so often at the forefront of the company’s strategy. Without that information being immediately available to investors and executives, then you risk writing an unfocused business plan.

It’s essential to front-load your company’s mission if it explains your "Why?" and this example does just that. In other words, why do you do what you do, and why should stakeholders care? This is an important section to include if you feel that your mission will drive interest in the business and its offerings.

7. Culina Sample Business Plan

sample business plan: Culina

Culina's sample business plan is an excellent example of how to lay out your business plan so that it flows naturally, engages readers, and provides the critical information investors and stakeholders need. 

You can use this template as a guide while you're gathering important information for your own business plan. You'll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do since Culina’s plan outlines these details so flawlessly for inspiration.

8. Plum Sample Business Plan

Sample business plan: Plum

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How to create a business plan presentation?

Business plans are essential for any company. Start with a business plan to ensure your business idea is promising and feasible.

It can be much easier to understand with business plan slides and attractive visuals. Hence, it is best to include them in your business plan presentation so that the target audience will welcome and internalize them without confusion.

first slide of presentation

What is a Business Plan Presentation?

The business plan presentation PowerPoint is an animated document describing your company’s activities, the services and products offered, your company’s business goals and strategy, and the action plan you have defined. A business plan must outline how you plan to make money and achieve your goals.

The main objectives of a business plan PPT include:

  • Assistance in identifying risks affecting the company’s growth and strategies to overcome those risks.
  • Demonstration of the company’s financial performance and the state of the economy to investors.
  • Help predict competitors and major market trends and explain key business objectives.
  • An essential resource for various development budgets.

Ten tips for creating a business plan presentation:

  • Add your company details: name, headline, name, and tagline to the first slide of your business plan. When introducing the slide, you can describe your actions in one sentence.
  • Imagine a specific problem. Make sure it relates to your target audience. You can also add statistics to this part of a business plan to clarify how you influence others.
  • Describe the solution in simple terms. Offer a solution to the problem mentioned in slide 2. Offer a unique approach.
  • Explain how you want to make money. Indicate the pricing structure, customers, sources of income, and ways of making a profit.
  • Add some details to your business plan. Explain how it works and make a summary. Add a visual slide to show how it all works.
  • Briefly outline the strategy. Briefly explain how you can plan for your company to go to market. Provide specific details to your audience. Publish your marketing plan and budget.
  • Tell about your main competitors and indicate how and how you differ from them.
  • Name something about your team. Highlight each participant’s business experience.
  • Provide your audience with a clear and concise financial forecast for several years. Tell about the methods by which you have reached the current numbers.
  • Show where you are now. Presentation of the business plan must share what you have done, what you are looking for, and how you plan to achieve your goals. On the last slide, call your audience to action.

analysis slide

How to Create a Business Plan: 16 Components of a Business Plan

You can make a business plan summary at the end or do it first. However, it would be better to generate it in the episode. It is where you need to explain the benefits of your business model and present your products and services.

It should be attractive and concise for the reader. After you complete the rest of the plan, it’s easy to write a meaningful resume.

Company Profile

In your company profile, tell readers certain information:

  • The customer problem you want to solve;
  • History of the company;
  • Business contact data;
  • Services or products;
  • The market you serve.

It would be better to use an infographic to show all these details in the business plan. Much easier to understand and read more clearly and concisely than tons of paragraphs of additional information in your business plan.

company profile slide

Market analysis

With market analysis, you can add many bright details to the business plan presentation PPT: determine customer segments, their needs, your target market, or its size and present them with graphs, pies, and charts.

Add competitor analysis to your business plan

There, you research your most important competitors. For example, you can indicate your strengths, weaknesses, and influence on the market. Learn about specific threats and explain products and services, pricing recommendations, and marketing strategies.

Client profiles

Here, you should summarize all the results for your clients, e.g, their problems, needs, and responsibilities.

Perception map

This method will assist you in presenting or analyzing your target group. You should get to know other brands and their products well. This way, you can find out the primary purpose of your competitors’ products or services. You can post research data in a business plan as you see fit.

perceptual map slide

Porter’s five forces

You can use this device to assess your position relative to competitors and a company’s competitiveness. With it, you can find out if your new service or product is profitable.

SWOT analysis

Use a SWOT analysis when you create a business plan to find out the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, as well as the threats and opportunities they pose to you in the industry. You can also use it to assess your company’s capabilities.

Pest analysis

It is short for political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological factors. It is a great way to learn how the outside forces of your market can affect your business. You can also develop a risk management plan and a marketing strategy to include in the business plan.

Competitor profile

One more critical point of the business plan presentation outline requires all data about your competitors can be collected here, such as suppliers, partners, strategies, sales figures, etc. Use this method to organize information about your competitors to include in your business plan presentation.

Competitive Intelligence/Intelligent Map

You can also transfer this information to a mind map. Add it to business plan presentations, wikis, intranets, websites, or online documents. You can view and quickly navigate all the links in the mind map.

Marketing and sales strategies

It is the part of a business plan where you describe how you will sell and promote your product. It is now easier because you understand your competitors, target customers, and the market well.

  • When you have a marketing strategy described in your business plan, you can consider factors such as your resources, marketing budget, marketing goals, communication channels, etc.
  • When you have a sales plan , you should pay more attention to your resources, tools, goals, etc.
  • Use mind maps to ensure that all this information is visible to your target audience.
  • Use two smart cards to show your marketing strategies and sales separately or one smart card to showcase both.

swot analysis slide

Organizational structure

Tell us about the key personnel who work for the company in your business plan. Mention them in this section and share your knowledge.

Use an organization chart to represent your team and their roles. It can also help you highlight the hierarchy of the organizational structure.

organizational structure slide

Products and services

This part of the business plan tells about your product or service and how customers can use it. You can use several visualizations to make this piece more appealing to your audience.

Product canvas

Use this device to display, describe or design a specific product strategy. It considers your target customer, the required product features (from models, sketches, epics/sprints, design systems, and storyboards), and the tasks you need to complete to create the entire product.

Core value proposition

Use this device when you want to clarify whether your product or service meets a specific customer need. It will help you learn the following:

  • What customer problems are you trying to solve?
  • What profit can you provide to your customers through your services or products?
  • What customer needs do you want to satisfy?
  • What is your product’s job to help a buyer complete it?
  • What different products do you offer to each customer segment?

Financial plan

Provide all financial data related to your company. This part is essential when presenting a business plan to investors. It includes historical information such as profit and loss statements, profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, etc., as well as financial projections based on the impact of the new product.

Whenever you offer investors a new service or product, you can also add your own funding requirements. You can use your financial database with a handy mind map to make a great business plan presentation. Anyone accessing a mind map can easily access your linked resources from your business plan when you do.

Want to Create a Good Presentation of Your Business Plan?

We hope you’d take advantage of the above business plan presentation tips. We are also eager to offer our excellent services to get support in submitting your business plan. We promise to create a presentation of your business plan from scratch in no time.

All the data on your slides will be neatly organized and show your target group your personalized plan. You can achieve your goals without knowing how to create a business plan presentation ─ do it by ordering us to create your business plan. Feel free to contact us now!

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How to Make a Business Plan Presentation? Guide & Examples

This guide helps you make a strong business plan presentation easily. You will learn about important parts, how to organize them well, and use visuals effectively to explain your business idea clearly. You will get better at telling your business story to feel more confident in a competitive environment.

How to Make a Business Plan Presentation? Guide & Examples

An innovative way to display your ideas and convince your team or clients is to present an idea with a business plan presentation. An effective presentation can showcase your mind and create an engaging meeting covering all necessary plan elements.

Every venture requires funding to start or grow and expand its business. A clear and detailed business plan will make it easy for the investor to understand your vision and goals. Hence, making it easier for them to fund you.

Whether you are a team, investor, or client, you must understand the importance of a business plan PowerPoint presentation. With the right strategy, you can influence anyone about your objectives and pitch your idea with an effective presentation. In this article, you will learn how to make a business plan presentation to grow your business. 

What is a business plan presentation?

The purpose of a business plan presentation is to summarize a company’s strategic goals, operational details, and financial forecasts concisely and visually engagingly. It typically includes key information such as the business model, target market, competitive analysis, marketing strategy , and financial projections. The business plan aims to communicate the business concept, demonstrate viability to stakeholders, and secure support or funding.

How to Make a Business Plan Presentation Tutorial & Examples blue infographic with four people

Key elements Of A Business Plan Presentation

A business plan presentation must include certain content that accurately represents your ideas. Usually, about 10 to 12 slides are required for an effective presentation. The key elements of the business plan must include the following:

Customer Profiles

Marketing and sales strategies.

  • Organizational Structure And Management

Services And Products

Financial plan.

Your plan must have details about the company profile and should be explained using infographics in your slides. With the right graphics, one can better understand your company and its objectives. The company profile usually includes the history of the company, an overview of products and services, its customers, and its targeted market. 

Company Profile Global PowerPoint Template for How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

The market analysis in your business plan presentation explains the size of your target audience, the problem it solves, and the consumer’s needs. It should include the strengths and weaknesses of your products and services. It must also include competitors’ market research and how your product will handle the competition. This way, you can show your investors how your product will stand out from the competition and your Unique Selling proposition. 

Comparative Market Analysis Template for How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

It is a sub-part of your market analysis. Your market research not only focuses on the competition but also the consumers. The customer profile includes most customers’ age, career, or location. It also includes their goals, problems, and behavior patterns. It can also provide how to attract that particular audience section and how they will trust your products. With customer profiles, you can determine the right price point, after-sales services, and market reach for consumers (both online and offline).

Target Audience Behaviour PowerPoint Template for How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

Once you explain your products’ needs, the next step is to market them. It is best to have a better market analysis to understand the ins and outs of your targeted market. The strategies usually include budgets, communication channels, marketing goals, and the resources needed to sell the products. Any investor investing in your product will be more easily convinced if they see a foolproof plan that guarantees a solid return on investment. Nothing is better than showcasing your marketing and sales strategies and impressing investors with effective plans. 

Digital Marketing Strategy PowerPoint Template for How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

Organizational Structure and Management

The next order of business after your marketing strategy is the team. It is better to introduce your team and management people to make your investors acquainted with the ones in charge. Investors bet on the foundations, and your team is your foundation to grow your business It is easier for them to trust when they know who your team members are. 

An organizational chart representing your team and explaining their work and roles in the project is a good start. It will also highlight the effective hierarchy of work and establish a formal order of command that is followed. This structure will ensure your team follows a professional work culture. 

Org Chart PowerPoint Template How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

The services and products include tools that can benefit the targeted consumers. These tools include product canvas, value proposition canvas, and many others. Such tools ensure that the product fits the said customer. It also helps define your customer profiles and explains the market needs. 

Service Catalogue PowerPoint Template for How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

The last but most important section of this business plan is the project’s financials. It is what the investors most care about. You can include the history data to establish your successful operations and how it will give you an edge in handling your new product.

Along with history, a future plan about how much funding you need and how you will execute your plan to use the said funding. You can use templates to save your time. They are available online. For example, try SlideUpLift templates to create a financial map for your investors. This plan must include all financial data and a plan B. This shows the investors that you are well prepared for all the situations.

Budget Finance Table PowerPoint Template How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

It is best to conclude your presentation with an executive summary . It is a great way to explain how and why your plan is the right step for them. You can also add features and services you will offer. A precise yet appealing conclusion can offer you an edge. You can take it as the perfect ending as it concludes your plan. 

How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

What is the difference between a business presentation & a business plan presentation?

A business presentation is a method of presenting information about your business. It can include marketing strategy or any other aspect related to the business. 

On the other hand, a business plan presentation is a way to interact with your investors, shareholders, and the audience. It includes your objectives, market research, customer profile, financial stakes, and the core of your idea. The business plan PowerPoint presentation is a foolproof roadmap of how you will execute your idea into a business model. 

How to make a business plan presentation?

A business plan presentation helps you explain your plan and execution strategies in an organized way through visuals. You can influence your audience with a good presentation that includes step-by-step interaction with all the sections. Each part and content of the presentation displays the need for your product and ensures trust and confidence for the investors. It is best to include useful information through a well-prepared visual aid and verbal explanation.

Here are the steps on how to create a business plan presentation:

Review essential business information

The first step is to review each element of your business plan closely. It acts as the base while collecting information for your presentation. It creates a firm foundation and effectively starts your business plan.

Research business competitors

You must also include your competitors’ information and statistics in your business plan presentation. With sufficient information and facts, you can help your product stand out. This information can help you build your reputation as a unique brand. This will create a professional and reliable image of your business for the consumers.

Network with prospective investors

Once you have collected the necessary information and prepared your strategies, the next step is approaching the right investors and stakeholders to showcase your business plan. You have higher chances of maximizing your investments by reaching the right audience. It also helps you understand and question your product in detail before you enter the market at your full capacity. Investors can also provide their valuable feedback, and all of this requires networking. 

Recommended: Explore our Strategy Roadmap PowerPoint Template here!

Create a slide presentation of your business plan

The next step is to display your plan uniformly and convince them to put their money into your product. One can attract investors and stakeholders better with effective strategy and influential products. Slides presentation is a visual approach and is better at convincing investors than just sharing statistics tables. 

Practice your business plan presentation

The final step is to practice your presentation before presenting. You can do a demo run of the presentation for your team members and understand the common doubts they have. A demo run can help you identify your faults and prioritize which section is more vital than others. Your team must also brainstorm questions your investors are likely to ask so that you are well-prepared beforehand.

Top 10 slides you need for a business plan presentation

You need at least ten slides to present your idea effectively. Covering one topic in each slide is more appealing as it helps the audience counter questions after each slide. Here are the top 10 slides you can add to the plan presentation:

How to Make a Business Plan Presentation Tutorial & Examples slides that are included

Slide 1: The Title Slide

A title slide is an introduction to your presentation. Just add your business name, logo,  slogan, and motto you believe in. You can begin your presentation with the next slide with just a few introductory lines.

Slide 2: The Problem Statement

As we discussed, it is better to come directly to your product and explain the problem it solves. Rather than beating around the bush, please focus on the facts and explain them with a story. You can also include effective infographics, fun facts, and engaging questions to increase audience attentiveness. You must ensure that your problem statement is short, clear, and easy to understand. This slide will shape your whole presentation. You will attract your audience’s attention by clearly conveying the problem your business solves. 

Slide 3: Your Business Solution

Now, as soon as you discuss the problem, you must focus on the solution to how your products solve the problem and conclude the slide by connecting it with the story. You can add a step-by-step solution or use graphs to help your audience understand the process.

Slide 4: Your Pricing Plan

The following slide should discuss your price strategy. A more effective payment plan will only retain prospective customers. It is better to attract customers with appealing prices and impress them so they keep on purchasing your product or service. It is easier said than done. But once you convince investors of your problem/solutions, you must impress them with your revenue stream strategy. You may also add your competitors’ pricing to this slide to justify how reasonable your pricing plan is.

Slide 5: Business Operations Information

Briefly explain your business objectives and operations in your Business Plan Presentation. Add how you have planned to streamline your business operations to save time and resources. You can help them understand your work better by explaining it step-by-step. 

Slide 6: Your Marketing Plan

Now you have a Problem statement and your solution. But how will you enter the market?  How will you let your target audience know about your services and products? A product is as good as nothing if it doesn’t reach your customers’ hands. For this, you need a marketing strategy. Add your go-to market strategy to this slide. It helps investors understand how you will reach your targeted audience. The more you impress investors with a marketing strategy, the more chances you have of investment. 

How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

Slide 7: Industry Overview

This slide shows current industry conditions. It includes your competitors and how they are operating the market. Just keep the data fact-based to make it more credible. 

Slide 8: Financial Projections

This slide displays how fast you will grow and what your investors can expect in returns. It will include money management and growth strategy as well. Add all the details about how much you will spend on various stages. Include your revenue and profit expectations for the following years as well. Financial projections for 3-5 years can help you reach your goals faster.

Slide 9: Your Team

This slide is an introduction to your team. Add all the crucial team members responsible for executing the plan. This will give investors a sense of your company’s hierarchy. And help them understand who is responsible for what. A well-established team with dedicated and motivated people always boosts investors’ and stakeholders’ confidence in the business.

Project Team Leadership PowerPoint Template for How to Make a Business Plan Presentation?

Slide 10: Concluding Slide

The last slide must be an executive summary or a conclusion. This slide will discuss all the essential topics you discussed in a precise form and help you conclude better. Adding this slide is best; it helps your audience remember the vital topics and keeps them engaged throughout. 

Business plan powerpoint presentation examples

There are thousands of business plan powerpoint presentation examples and templates you can select from. Besides basic free presentations, you can download executive summary templates , project management presentation templates , and other templates from many online resources. It is easier to select among these templates once you have a concept in mind. Even if you have no budget to buy premium PowerPoint templates , you can download a free template to cater to your needs from SlideUpLift’s website.

How to present a business plan presentation?

The best way to present your business plan is with PowerPoint presentations. You can use ready-made templates and edit them as per your requirements to ease the job. Usually, up to 15 slides must be displayed to display your overall execution strategy. But you can add or remove slides as per your content. Using simple vocabulary and easy-to-understand terminology for such business presentations is vital. 

Most interesting presentations have a variety of graphs, tables, and infographics to engage the audience. You can also add a risk assessment to ensure you are prepared for every situation. With effective market and consumer research, you can convince investors better. Even if you have the best presentation, you might lose the opportunity if you don’t practice it well. Always practice presentations multiple times and be prepared for questions from investors. 

Collection of Business Plan PowerPoint Template to understand How to Make a Business Plan Presentation

Tips and Tricks to make your Business Plan powerPoint more Memorable

Here are some tips that can help you present your business plan presentation effectively and influence investors easily:

Focus on the Main Points

The presentation usually covers a vast range of topics and information. However, it is necessary to focus on the prioritized data. Most investors are more interested in financial data than understanding each other’s aspects. Provide precise yet critical points about each slide and ask questions after each topic to ensure they know everything. It is not ideal to explain each topic in detail as It will make your presentation boring.

Use Common Language

Use simple yet professional language for your presentation. Try to use easier words over technical language or over-the-top vocabulary, as it will make the presentation challenging to understand. Most financial data is already too entangled, and using confusing language can make it worse. Using simple, layman-like, and understandable language to express your viewpoint is better. Also, use infographics and graphs to make it more engaging and easy to grasp.  

Genuinely Deliver Information

A presentation is a serious matter for your business. It is essential to maintain professionalism so that your investors can rely upon you with your money. Always stay excited and try to deliver information genuinely. Try to avoid using filler content. Write to the point and short content. Ensure your overall presentation is easy to read and skimmable. 

Prepare for the Questions Beforehand

Always prepare an expected questionnaire for the investors. These must include all questions you and your team think your investor will be curious to ask. Put yourself in the investors’ shoes and think. If prepared beforehand, you can give accurate answers and include the necessary information.

Practice Again and Again

The best thing you can do is practice repeatedly. The more presentations you give, the better you will be at presenting them. It’s better to present twice in front of your team so you are prepared overall. 

Time Management

Any presentation that goes on for long will eventually become boring. With just facts and data, your audience will lose interest. Hence, it is better to share necessary information quickly. Always time your presentation and try to keep it on point. This will maintain audience enthusiasm about your product and help you answer their questions correctly.

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Mistakes to Avoid When Making A Business Plan Presentation

Sometimes, no matter how much you try, mistakes are unavoidable. But there is no harm in minimizing these to present your product efficiently. Hence, here are the most common mistakes one can avoid in a business plan presentation:

Not Timing Your Presentation

The most obvious mistake is not timing your presentation. If one fails to time the presentation, it can become extended and boring. It must catch up on the targeted goals and shouldn’t become repetitive. It is better to keep the presentation precise and short. With just 10 to 12 slides, one can present effectively and share the overall project without wasting time on unnecessary topics. 

Focusing on Non-Essential Information in the Presentation

The presentation usually involves a variety of topics. You must focus on the priority topics more than the rest of the information. If each topic is explained thoroughly, it will consume a lot of time. Deciding what is necessary and what must be explained well is better. This also guides investors to understand what your primary goal is and what comes next.

Overloading Data

Refrain from overloading your presentation with information. Keep your slides’ data content precise and short. Also, explain it in keynotes, as explaining each topic will elongate the presentation. The audience can better understand your presentation with simple bullet points and visuals.

Lack of Graphs and Tables

A presentation is more engaging than raw data because of the infographics. It can be just a data dump if your presentation lacks graphs, tables, and other visuals. Creating a business plan presentation filled with visuals, color schemes, and easy-to-read fonts is better to keep the audience interested in your idea.

Ignoring Audiences and Their Needs

One of the blunders you can make while creating a presentation is to ignore your audience. You must prioritize your audience’s needs and keep pushing how your products solve those needs. You should buy your product and assess it like your consumers. This can decide whether your investor thinks your product is worth it.

Why you should choose SlideUpLift’s pre-made business plan presentation templates

A premade presentation template from SlideUpLift can offer you an edge and make the business plan presentation process much faster. Our ready-made, fully editable presentation template can be easily altered to your needs and likes in just a few clicks. You can add more or reduce the amount of data you want. With thousands of templates, SlideUpLift covers all bases to create your desired perfect presentation. Not only do we offer free PowerPoint templates, but we also have an exclusive variety of templates for Google Slides as well at affordable prices.

How To download SlideUpLift’s business planning templates? 

The most essential step before downloading SlideUpift Templates is registering on our website. You can then login and select from a range of templates. Depending on your need, you can either pay for a template or select a free template for your presentation. In addition, we also offer membership plans if you are interested in getting various other services apart from professionally designed business plan presentations. The process of getting the membership and downling these templates is simple and easy to follow. 

best way to present business plan

Here is a list of some of the best and most used templates from SlideUpLift:

  • Executive Summary Templates For PowerPoint & Google Slides
  • Project Management Presentations Collection PowerPoint Template
  • Roadmap Templates For PowerPoint & Google Slides
  • 30 60 90 Day Plan Collection For PowerPoint
  • List Templates Collection For PowerPoint  
  • Business Planning Isometric PowerPoint Template
  • One Page Strategic Plan PowerPoint Template

Business Plan Presentation — Conclusion

The best answer for how to make a business plan presentation is to use research data appealingly. A simple download template can be converted into an effective way to engage an audience and convince them to understand your business model. 

With effective sales, marketing, and business strategies, a business plan presentation can showcase your objectives clearly and ensure your idea influences the investors. Your presentation can become a vision for your business, so it should inspire your investor as it motivates you. 

With SlideUpLift, download, edit, and create your own version of a presentation that helps you to see the bigger picture. With attractive templates, fonts, and color schemes, find your own way to deliver your vision and display it in a structured manner. 

A business plan presentation is a way to interact with your audience to display your business plan. It is a detailed presentation that targets investors and shareholders to get inspired by the product and acquire funding for the business.

How do you create a business plan presentation?

The simplest way to create a business plan presentation is to download a premade template online. You can then edit it according to your needs. You must research the market, targeted audience, and your competition in-depth. 

This will include information, and your business plan must include such data. Also, include a financial strategy to ensure your business is a wise choice for investment. One can also include sales marketing and awareness strategies to attract more customers. Finally, a risk assessment makes your plan more foolproof. Hence, including one will make your presentation more engaging

One can present a business plan presentation with at least ten slides. Each slide should include a topic and explain why the product stands out to the investors. Data must be kept short and precise, and graphs and infographics must be presented enough to engage the audience. With easy-to-understand language, more straightforward vocabulary, and effective planning, a presentation can inspire your audience and encourage them to invest more and more in your project. 

What should be included in a business plan presentation?

The business plan presentation must include every detail of your overall business plan. It must include your team, operations, marketing, and sales strategies, and financial goals. Along with these, it must also include your mission, vision, objectives, and how you solve the issues. It should be a gateway to your product’s vision, so you must be precise and explain why and how it is essential. 

Where do you find the best templates related to business plan PowerPoint?

There are hundreds of websites that offer business plan PowerPoint templates. Among others, SlideUpLift stands as the best there is to offer. With over 4000 templates, we cater to every professional’s needs. You can select free-of-cost, affordable, or exclusive templates depending on your needs. Professionally designed templates allow you to edit and create unique presentations as per your requirements. With SlideUpLift’s easily customizable templates, you can inspire the audience better.

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Home Blog PowerPoint Tutorials How To Present an Action Plan

How To Present an Action Plan

How to present an action plan cover PowerPoint templates

Creating a plan of action helps managers and executives implement their vision. Turn it into reality efficiently and with accountability of the involved stakeholders.

What is an Action Plan?

According to Wikipedia , an Action Plan is a list, with a sequence of tasks and resources, which outlines needed actions and when they need to be carried out, to achieve predefined goals. Action Plans are a very popular management tool within professional organizations. They are extensively used during strategic planning for their simplicity and effectiveness in a reality check.

Benefits of Creating an Action Plan

Action plans are very useful for communicating strategies and establish a clear direction. They provide visibility of objectives and the steps required to make them tangible, concrete. A plan of action breaks down the entire vision into achievable pieces that are manageable and executable. During this process, executives are able to visualize the strategy into smaller chunks and identify during this planning phase if they are realistic enough or if there exist constraints that can disqualify them before even creating projects or initiatives. Generally, Action Plans evolve into Plans which will provide detailed description of tasks, resources, timelines and their preconditions, and can then be monitored during execution.

Key Elements of an Action Plan

Action Plans can differ in structure depending on the area of application or planning practices. Most of them share the following six main components.

Key Elements of an Action Plan PowerPoint Template.

1. Describe Your Objectives

Start by defining and describing the objectives you’re trying to achieve. There may be one overarching goal for your strategy, or there may be various. This is an integral part of goals based strategic planning . Break down the vision into objectives and move into the next steps. The objective should be clear and self-explanatory. You can start with a one-liner and iterate drill-downs into more detail.

2. Break Down Tasks and Steps

Break down your objectives into tasks. Visualize the steps that need to be done in order to achieve the goal. Depending on how large the objective is, you may need to break it down into categories or phases, before listing the steps needed. Be exhaustive with this list in order to avoid any unforeseen hurdles in the process.

3. Assign People Responsible

Specify who or what team will be in charge of performing each of the tasks and steps previously listed.

4. Establish Deadlines and Milestones

Make sure you specify when each of the previous tasks should be completed, taking into account review and rework time. If you’ve broken down your action plan into phases, then establish the milestones at each phase in your plan of action. Make sure to determine precedence and preconditions to identify bottlenecks.

5. Anticipate Needed Resources

Visualize what people and resources you will need to get each of the tasks completed? Reasoning about resources is critical to understand the size and dimensions of the endeavor. This step is critical for a reality check.

6. Plan Progress Metrics

No plan is complete until progress and achievement indicators are defined. Individual tasks, milestones, and overall objectives will have their own ways to measure progress and completion. Establish this from the beginning to be able to carry out the appropriate monitoring and control.

How to Make Sure Your Action Plan is Effective

Visualize your action plan.

We can’t stress enough how important it is to have a visual form of your action plan. It will give you an idea of where to go and what your goal is. If you can see it in front of you, it’s easier to follow. Try using action plan PowerPoint templates to make this visualization process all the more easier (and probably more attractive).

Action Plan Slide template for PowerPoint

Write SMART Goals

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. As long as you set your SMART Goals with these key points in consideration, you will be able to reach your objective more effectively. Apart from the SMART Goals method, you can use the OKR framework (Objectives Key Results) to add another level of formality to your objective-setting process. Finally, every goal should pass the “reality check” reasoning. You can read further how to apply critical thinking goals .

Involve the Whole Team in the Planning

Making the best action plan isn’t just the job of managers and executives. The whole team should be involved. Everyone needs to know what their specific roles and responsibilities will be. Teams and individuals need to sign off and accept the tasks and their timeline. If any of the planned activities is at risk of completion, this should be identified and analyzed as soon as possible.

Know Each Step In-Depth

You need to know which tasks are more essential than others, which tasks depend on others being done first, and which are more flexible. This means adding your tasks into a detailed plan. Identify duration, precedence and resources involved.

Break Your Project into Milestones

Milestones are checkpoints during which management and team review what has been worked on and what is done already. These are like small goals you want to reach on your way to the larger objective. It is an essential part of monitoring activities. Make sure milestones are clear and associated with a deliverable.

Go Over the Action Plan (With Others)

Take this space as an opportunity to bring in other people and hear their opinions on the feasibility of your steps, deadlines, roles, and milestones. Make sure your action plan can be easily tracked, is comprehensive, and is accessible to everyone involved, from team members to stakeholders. Everyone should be able to understand what it is and where you are on the project.

Monitor, Measure, and Update as You Go

This might be the most important step in making sure your action plan is effective. You’ll need to be constantly following up on the tasks, checking in with the players, and adjusting when needed. Monitoring should be objective. This means a clear KPI should be used for this purpose. You can start with the basics as “progress of completion” over time, but depending on the level of sophistication, you can include more complex KPIs as budget burn down or risks related KPI’s.

How to Present Your Action Plan?

Presenting an action plan to an audience is a common task in all types of organizations. In every endeavor someone needs to approve the initiative, be it to get it funded or to approve the team’s efforts. Also people need to be notified about the action plan in order to understand its scope and how they are involved, or if any of the planned tasks will affect in any way. There is a difference between the steps involved in writing an action plan (as described above) and the required steps to present the action plan. Mainly because the purposes are different. The creation of an action plan is a planning activity. In this case, the people involved are picturing objectives and how they materialize through actions.

How to present your action plan to an audience

On the other hand, presenting an action plan is a communication activity. The presenter/s needs to clearly transmit the objectives of the action plan, list the high level tasks involved and be able to communicate which were the facts evaluated, during the planning process. Decisions made to reach the plan are also important as they distill the reasoning behind the plan.

As general guidance, we suggest following presentation best practices. Check our guides on how to make a presentation and how to start a presentation .

In the next section, we break down the suggestions in three, based on the objective of the presentation; Persuade, Inform, Monitor & Control.

Present Your Action Plan to Persuade

If you want to persuade an educated audience to approve your action plan, there are three items you will need to highlight:

Achieving the action plan objectives needs to provide a benefit to the audience. Make sure your message is clear. Highlight how the objectives solve an existing problem/pain or how they materialize items of the organization strategy.

Implementation of the Vision

After you present the benefits, you need to communicate how it was planned to achieve them. Ideally a high level roadmap should be presented, in order to allow the audience to divide the solution in smaller pieces and picture the sequence of events.

Return of Investment

The action plan has costs and resources associated. Instead of deliberately explaining the costs of execution, adapt the message monetizing the benefits and contrasting them against the costs. This should be a positive percentage of increase over the investment. Show how this return is evaluated and which time frame covers it. Finally, contrast the return against the option of not doing . This generally settles the idea in the audience and triggers acceptance subconsciously.

Persuading is generally conceived more as an art rather than a science. But science has progressed a lot in this field and there are several frameworks and techniques you can apply. Check out our guide on how to deliver a persuasive speech , or one of our favorite frameworks, the rhetorical triangle .

Present your action plan to Inform

Presenting an action plan to inform is a common task in organizations. Be it before or after approval, informing the stakeholders about the action plan, will align expectations and will help gaining traction within the involved teams or individuals.

The Action Plan presentation will need to focus on two areas, purpose and activities.

To resonate with the audience, it is essential to inform how the action plan will help achieve goals that have a purpose. The message should be crafted in a way that connects with the audience and triggers interest. Empathy is crucial. Fulfilling a purpose is always more powerful as a goal rather than other concepts such as “making more money”. To achieve this, connect the goals and tasks with the strategic vision they are trying to materialize.

As an example, you can think of an organization that sells auto parts. One of the action plan objectives is to produce cheaper parts without compromising quality. The presenter can inform the audience about this objective with an associated purpose like investing more in reducing emissions (which is a concept extracted from the strategy).

Execution of any plan is crucial. Before the endeavor starts, it is necessary to inform everyone involved about their responsibility in the plan, with which resources they will count on, the expected timeline and the relationship between tasks and resources.

Every activity should answer one of the following questions:

  • Why is the activity part of the plan?
  • Where should the activity happen?
  • Who (team or individual) is responsible for carrying out the activity and knowing about it?
  • What resources are planned to consume during the activity.?
  • When should the activity start and end?
  • How will the activity be carried out?

These questions (also known as the 5W1H framework ) will help you drill down the action plan and inform appropriately.

Example of 5W1H framework design for presenting an Action plan

Present your plan for Monitoring and Control

All plans are created to follow and evolve. Once the action plan is converted into a project or program, execution starts, and the management practices too. Management will define regular checkpoints for evaluating the current progress of the activities, resource consumption and achieved goals.

During monitoring and control presentations, the presenter should communicate a simple concept. Current status, versus previous status versus planned status at this point. In this way, the audience will be able to understand where the tasks are at the present time, which was the evolution compared to the previous meeting, and which is the deviation compared to the planned status at this point.

After this presentation, a new set of activities will be planned according to deviations and achievements, and the plan will be updated for future analysis.

Free Action Plan Template

Put all your theoretical knowledge into practice and start developing your own Action Plan with our free template. Thanks to our Action Plan Template you will be able to develop each of the objectives of your project and break down each of its tasks, assigning responsibilities, deadlines and priorities. This action plan presentation template will allow you to organize your teamwork, and optimize time and effort.

Free Action Plan Template

Remember: Action Plans Are Not Set in Stone

Action plans are supposed to help organize strategy vision implementations from the beginning, as well as monitor progress throughout. Sticking to the plan is a laudable feat, but not the only endgame. As the initiative takes on its own life, you’ll find tasks you hadn’t anticipated, issues that keep people from delivering as you’d hoped, and many other barriers to success. However, that shouldn’t faze you. Use your action plan as a guide, but be prepared to problem solve and do what it takes to get your project done. If you get it done on the deadline you’d established in the beginning, then give yourself a mighty pat on the back. And if you don’t… You can be sure you’ll have learned many valuable things for the next time you start a new project and create a brand new action plan.

1. Action Plan PowerPoint Diagram

best way to present business plan

The Action Plan PowerPoint Diagram is designed for Consultants, Managers, or executives in the path of deploying action planning in an organization. The template enumerates the six necessary elements of every action plan. It uses a modern PowerPoint diagram with custom-made PowerPoint icons. Presenters can use these visual metaphors later in any presentation related to the topic, creating a cohesive theme.

Use This Template

2. Goals Based Strategic Planning PowerPoint Templates

best way to present business plan

Action Plans are created through different Corporate Planning Activities. For example, when applying a Goals-Based Strategy, executives need to write the action plan to execute and target the specified goals. In the Goals Based Strategic Planning PowerPoint Template, there is a specific slide where the action plan is summarized according to the goals created to follow the corporate strategy.

3. Action Plan Slide Template for PowerPoint

best way to present business plan

The Action Plan Slide Template for PowerPoint is a simple and useful One Pager to write an action plan. Its design seeks to establish a primary objective and break it down into different vital areas and steps to monitor and control its execution. This presentation is a minimalistic approach to Action Planning. The user can display a simple plan and describe each of its steps in detail.

4. Action Priority Matrix PowerPoint Template

best way to present business plan

The Action Priority Matrix is a management tool designed to prioritize Actions. Based on this concept, the Action Priority Matrix PowerPoint Template provides a visually appealing representation of the matrix that can explain the different prioritization decisions made during the Action Planning process and why specific actions were prioritized or discarded.

5. Project Work Plan Template

best way to present business plan

The Project Work Plan Template provides a simple layout for a manager when generating and presenting an Action Plan. This work plan template , compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides, allows establishing an estimated work time, main objectives, the estimated budget, and which team will be responsible for carrying out the tasks. It also allows setting the different phases and milestones of the action plan.

6. 30-60-90 Day Plan Slides for PowerPoint

best way to present business plan

The 30 60 90 Day Plan is a valuable presentation for new managers and executives of a company, seeking to generate and present an action plan with clear objectives and an estimated time of 3 months. This presentation allows establishing the key areas to work on and the tasks for each of the three months and selecting the different KPIs to measure the success of the actions to be taken.

best way to present business plan

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Leap for joy! The creative ways NPR listeners are marking Feb. 29

Rachel Treisman

best way to present business plan

Nearly 80 "leaplings" of all ages celebrated their leap day birthday on a Caribbean cruise in 2020. Organizers expect a similar turnout this year. Jason Bohn hide caption

Nearly 80 "leaplings" of all ages celebrated their leap day birthday on a Caribbean cruise in 2020. Organizers expect a similar turnout this year.

Thursday is a leap day, the rare date of February 29 that's added to the calendar nearly every four years.

That means the roughly 5 million people worldwide born on that day — aka "leaplings" — will get to celebrate on their actual birthday. Others will spend it commemorating a leap day wedding, engagement or anniversary.

For many, Thursday may just be another day — but one they'd like to use wisely by doing something they love, taking time for themselves or giving back to others. That can take many forms.

Why do we leap day? We remind you (so you can forget for another 4 years)

Strange News

Why do we leap day we remind you (so you can forget for another 4 years).

"Think about that extra that you can give or that extra that you can do, and enjoy that bonus day that we only get once every four years," said Katheryn Jager, of Cedar Park, Texas.

Jager, 50, has big plans for the day: She and her fiancé are "taking the leap," getting married in their backyard surrounded by friends and family on the four-year anniversary of their first date.

How Do You Celebrate A Leap Year Birthday?

How Do You Celebrate A Leap Year Birthday?

She said their first date in 2020 wasn't specifically planned for leap day. It was just the day that the two of them — longtime friends who reunited after being divorced and widowed — happened to be free. The day now carries special significance, not to mention some perks.

"It has been fun to hear how many people have congratulated my fiancé on being so clever as to get an anniversary which only occurs once every four years," Jager said. "He very happily tells them we'll celebrate close to the day."

best way to present business plan

Katheryn Jager and Garrett Smith, pictured inside Honey Creek Cave in Texas in 2023. Jager says the two bonded over their love of outdoor adventures and will go caving immediately after their leap day wedding. Katheryn Jager hide caption

Katheryn Jager and Garrett Smith, pictured inside Honey Creek Cave in Texas in 2023. Jager says the two bonded over their love of outdoor adventures and will go caving immediately after their leap day wedding.

Jager is one of the more than 100 respondents who answered NPR's callout asking how people plan to celebrate leap day this year. Their responses ranged from the elaborate to the everyday.

Several leap day babies and their family members said they'll be celebrating with birthday trips abroad — on a cruise, to a new continent or to a bucket list city. Others said they'll be enjoying leap day birthdays with parties at home, many inspired by the age they'll technically be turning.

"We are hosting an 8 year old party!" wrote Grace Boersma, who will be turning 32 by other calculations. "Going ice skating then heading back to a house for a 'Frozen Food Feast,' as 8-year olds love frozen foods (dino chicken nuggets, cheese sticks, fries, etc.). There is also a cocktail part as well for attendees to come up with a cocktail that an 8-year old would like (if they could drink)."

Several people are honoring late relatives born on the day by making family recipes or doing a good deed. Others are celebrating wedding anniversaries, some for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020.

Pop Culture

2024 is a leap year and there's an irish tradition associated with leap day.

Many will try to make the day special for their young children, like the parent who maintains a "leap year fund" to throw her daughter a big celebration every four years, and the family planning a "last first day" party to celebrate the final calendar date their baby has yet to experience.

And lots of people don't have personal ties to the day but still plan to take off work, catch up on chores or use it to enjoy some of their favorite activities, like thrifting, seeing a movie or clocking some extra miles on a run.

"Even the day I gave birth on Leap Day 2016 Facebook asked me 'Did you make the most of your extra day today?' Um, yes Facebook ... I birthed a baby," wrote Stephanie Vazquez. "I would encourage everyone to use that extra day for yourself somehow."

In case you need some inspiration, NPR's Morning Edition spoke to nearly a dozen people around the U.S. about how they're making the most out of leap day.

How to celebrate a leap year birthday

best way to present business plan

On the 2020 leap day cruise, people celebrated their birthday with a ball on board. Jason Bohn said many of them have kept in touch since. Jason Bohn hide caption

On the 2020 leap day cruise, people celebrated their birthday with a ball on board. Jason Bohn said many of them have kept in touch since.

Many people born on Feb. 29 told NPR that they have strong feelings about which day to celebrate in non-leap years.

Many prefer Feb. 28, reasoning that they were born on the last day of the month. Some go with March 1, since they were born the day after Feb. 28. Others claim both days, or they switch, depending on the year.

Jason Bohn, who is turning 11 (or 44) on Thursday, says that he's in the minority who celebrates on March 1 — and that it's a topic of heavy debate in the leap year community. He's especially plugged in, as a member of the leap day baby group on Facebook and one of the organizers behind the second consecutive leap day cruise.

Bohn was one of nearly 80 leaplings who took a four-day cruise to the Bahamas in 2020. Attendees ranged in age from 1 year old to their upper 70s, and they represented more than 30 states and 10 countries. They celebrated the actual leap day itself at sea with a leap day ball, swapping baby photos and getting to know each other.

People who were born on Feb. 29 often feel left out. Not this year, it's leap year

"When we kind of came together, it was just like we were already family," Bohn said. "We got back home, and two weeks later the world shut down. And it was really comforting to have that group of people that we had met on the cruise. It was almost kind of a second family for a lot of us, and we've stayed in touch throughout the years."

Bohn says about a dozen of the original cruisers will be back this time around, joined by some 60 newcomers. He estimates that all told, leaplings and their families will make up some 250 passengers — "a little bit of a force on that ship."

The West Allis, Wis., resident is excited to get some sun and celebrate with other leaplings. He has helped plan activities — and matching lanyards — to help the group bond. Those include pre-cruise drinks in Miami and another Feb. 29 ball, which he described as the true highlight last time.

"It was just great to just have that time to kind of really focus on ourselves and the thing that makes us all a little more special than most," he added.

Other leap day babies celebrating on land told NPR that they will be spending time with their families, eating at their favorite restaurants, partying with friends and stocking up on freebies from businesses that do leap day giveaways with proof of a Feb. 29 birthday (or at least they did in 2020 ).

A great day to mark an anniversary or even get (re)married

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Chris Goonan and his wife, Caroline, returned to the Florida beach where they got married on leap day 2020 — this time with their 1-year-old son. Christopher Goonan hide caption

Chris Goonan and his wife, Caroline, returned to the Florida beach where they got married on leap day 2020 — this time with their 1-year-old son.

Several respondents said they'll be celebrating a wedding anniversary on Feb. 29, with a few even planning to get married — or remarried — on the day itself.

Chris Goonan, 33, says he and his wife, Caroline, will be celebrating their "first real wedding anniversary" since they got married in 2020.

They had a destination wedding at Gilbert's Bar House of Refuge, a historic site near Stuart, Fla., where Goonan had been stationed with the Coast Guard. They booked it because of the venue's availability, not the date itself.

"We knew that we wanted to do it in February because all of our family would be coming down from upstate New York," he explained. "And we saw that February 29th was available. It was a Saturday. We didn't even consider that it was a leap year, and we were like, 'Absolutely, we have to do it.'"

This year, the couple plans to travel from their home in Syracuse back to the same beach and eat at the restaurant that catered their wedding. And Goonan says it will be even more special this time, since they are bringing their 1-year-old son with them.

"This will be his first time down to Florida to see the ocean and actually touch the ocean," he said, adding they plan to repeat the tradition every leap year going forward.

Cindy and PJ Gaynard will be celebrating their fifth anniversary, 20 years after they got married.

Wed as teens, they renew vows 71 years later — and share secrets to everlasting love

Goats and Soda

Wed as teens, they renew vows 71 years later — and share secrets to everlasting love.

They specifically wanted to get engaged and married on leap day, in part to buck the pressure they felt to celebrate every single anniversary of the day they met. They couldn't even remember the date, but they say it was July and not February.

"We're like, 'That's a lot of pressure.' So we were just like, 'Well, let's just do it every four years, and every four years we'll celebrate our anniversary really big,'" said Cindy.

They do so by holding vow renewal ceremonies every four years, or as they call it, "getting married again." The Gaynards, who now have two children, have picked a wide variety of themes and asked different friends to officiate each one.

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Cindy and PJ Gaynard renew their vows every four years to celebrate their leap day wedding anniversary. Previous venues have included a planetarium, beach, Las Vegas chapel and roller-skating rink. PJ and Cindy Gaynard hide caption

They first got married at a planetarium, underneath star charts representing their connecting trajectories. Their second "wedding" was officiated in Las Vegas close to midnight by an Elvis impersonator, whom they recall being visibly drained from doing weddings all day. The next leap year, they ate cupcakes on a beach in Malibu, Calif., near where they lived at the time.

Then the couple moved to Pittsburgh and celebrated their next anniversary "getting married" at a roller-skating rink while strapped into roller blades. Four years ago, after a snowstorm canceled their travel plans, they threw together a clown-themed wedding at a local "vegan restaurant-slash-vintage shop."

This year, they're hosting a screening of one of Cindy's favorite movies, Pretty in Pink , at PJ's film studio — with a surprise twist.

Cindy says she, like many people, has always hated the ending of the movie, in which Andie (Molly Ringwald) chooses rich-kid Blane (Andrew McCarthy) over lovable Duckie (Jon Cryer) at prom. It was actually shot the other way around at first, says PJ.

"We're going to stop the movie early, do the ending the way that was originally in the script and then get married as Andie and Duckie," he added.

There are plenty of other ways to make the day special

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Rachel Nantt is throwing a 2020-themed party on leap day, and plans to dress up in the graduation cap and gown she didn't get to wear (or return) during the pandemic. Rachel Nantt hide caption

Rachel Nantt is throwing a 2020-themed party on leap day, and plans to dress up in the graduation cap and gown she didn't get to wear (or return) during the pandemic.

Even if you're not celebrating a birthday or anniversary, or rewriting cinema history, there are still things you can do to make your bonus day a little extra special.

That could mean getting more done, from chores to socializing to sleeping in.

One respondent told NPR they're thankful for an extra day to pack up their apartment before their lease ends on March 1. Another says her family always goes out to eat at IHOP, citing her dad's love of puns.

It could also mean doing nothing at all.

"Why not make it a self-care, indulge care, hobby day," wrote Emeka Barclay. "For me, that feels like a day of no social media, no newsfeeds, no politics... I just know that whatever I do, it will be a free day for me."

Others are hosting parties to celebrate the day itself, like graduate student Jillian Winter. She said things can feel bleak and overwhelming, both for those finishing their PhDs and anyone following the news cycle, and she is eager to spread some good cheer.

"Obviously, there will be party games that involve leaping ... Candy will be tossed at people ... There will be a 'shrimp tree,' aka I'll decorate my ficus tree with shrimp ornaments (which will double as party favors)," she wrote. "Folks will share Leap Day secrets and offer up toasts for the bonus day ... Never forget, 'Real life is for March !'"

Unique ways Americans celebrate the holidays, from skiing Santas to Festivus feats

Unique ways Americans celebrate the holidays, from skiing Santas to Festivus feats

For Rachel Nantt and her friends, it will be a day of nostalgia, reflection, and sweatpants. The Fargo, N.D., resident is throwing a party with a 2020 theme — the updated version of the 2016-themed bash she attended four years ago.

The 27-year-old will don the college graduation gown she didn't get to wear during her COVID graduation. The group will play Among Us , the online game that kept many people connected during the early months of the pandemic.

Nantt says she has fielded plenty of jokes about the theme, including attendees saying they should dress up as someone who just got laid off. But she says it's uplifting to think about how far she and her friends have come since that difficult time.

"I feel like I've kind of taken life more by the horns and done what I wanted," she said, pointing to her career transition and new relationship. "And when I was 23, four years ago, I can't say that I was doing that. So I look back and I think, how amazing that I can just be happy and be truly who I am to this day."

And Nantt hopes others can find joy in the day too, even if it's just another Thursday.

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Budget live: Tax cut to be announced in budget - but Labour says surprise is on cards

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will announce a further cut in national insurance in his budget, Sky News understands. Politics Hub is the place for live, comprehensive coverage of the budget throughout today - with the announcement itself starting at around 12.30pm.

Wednesday 6 March 2024 10:55, UK

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  • Budget 2024:  Watch live coverage from 11am, with PMQs at noon and budget from 12.30pm
  • Cut in national insurance expected
  • In full: What we're expecting Hunt to announce
  • Labour says chancellor is underplaying how much he has - and income tax cut also possible
  • Ed Conway : The forecasts these budgets are based on have been very inaccurate
  • Target Towns:  Key constituencies shaping election battle
  • Live reporting by Faith Ridler  and Katie Williams

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has just appeared for the "Red Box moment" outside Number 11 with members of his Treasury team.

It comes just a few hours before he will deliver his spring budget in the Commons, which is widely expected to involve tax cuts.

The Labour Party has claimed the Tories have made 21 "broken promises" of higher wages, skills or growth in their financial statements for the last decade.

The party claimed that every single Conservative budget since December 2014 has "promised action to deliver higher wages, higher skills, or higher growth".

Labour claims: "Despite the promises by successive Tory chancellors, Britain is worse off – with higher taxes, lower wages and stagnant economic growth. 

"Rishi's recession shows that his promise to grow the economy is in tatters and our economy is now smaller than when the prime minister entered 10 Downing Street in 2022. 

"Labour is ready to fight a general election on the economy by offering long-term change to deliver more jobs, more investment and to cut people's bills."

Sir Keir Starmer's party claims the promises of growth began with George Osborne's autumn statement in 2014, when he vowed to "boost skills".

These claims continued through budgets delivered by Phillip Hammond, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng and now Jeremy Hunt.

Away from the budget for a moment...

The UK's patience is running "thin" with Israel over aid entering Gaza, Lord David Cameron has said, as he is set to warn Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz over the matter today.

The foreign secretary is set to meet Mr Gantz, a former general, after the Israeli had meetings in the White House, which also raised concerns about the aid entering Gaza.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Lord Cameron said the amount of assistance entering Gaza in February was half the amount that entered in January.

The foreign secretary is set to meet Mr Gantz, a former general, after the Israeli had meetings in the White House, which also raised concerns about the aid entering  Gaza .

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday,  Lord Cameron  said the amount of assistance entering Gaza in February was half the amount that entered in January.

You can read more from Sky News below:

Today is a "massive moment" for the government, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, says our political editor Sam Coates .

It's "unusual" that the Treasury has already confirmed the significant measure of another 2p cut to national insurance, he adds.

"It's very rare that you get a tax issue confirmed before the budget itself. For years, chancellors have wanted to do that on the floor of the House of Commons."

Coates explains it could spark to complaints to the Speaker as "that was [the Tories'] big moment".

It now raises the question: "Is that it?," he says.

"A question at the heart of this budget, a question being asked by Tory MPs, is whether or not we already know the main measures in this budget... or whether there's a rabbit, a secret, something new that we don't know about.

"After weeks of the Treasury saying there's no money left, might they have found more?"

One MP has told Coates that if the budget is currently as billed, "Rishi Sunak could be in trouble".

Police have launched an investigation after Jeremy Hunt's constituency office in Surrey was vandalised with "die Tory scum" graffiti.

The graffiti on the front door and two windows of the Hindhead office was first discovered yesterday morning, according to the Woking News and Mail report.

The chancellor has told the Guardian he wouldn't be "deterred" by the attack.

Surrey Police, which has opened a probe into the damage, said it likely occurred between 8pm and 9pm on Monday night.

It comes as MPs are set to have a dedicated police contact for safety issues as part of a new £31m package to boost their security.

Home Secretary James Cleverley said no MP should have to accept threats as "part of the job".

A cut to national insurance is "effective" at helping workers but has proven not to be "powerfully effective" for Jeremy Hunt, a political journalist says.

A 2p cut to the tax makes economic sense as it is cheaper and easier to put in place, Ian Dunt tells Sky News' Kay Burley.

But with a reduction having already taken place in January, with no significant improvement in the polls for the Tories, "it's much harder to understand the political incentives that would lead him back to that," Mr Dunt says.

"We're talking existential levels of polling damage. So it clearly wasn't enough then," he adds.

Katy Balls, Spectator political editor, adds that Conservative MPs would prefer an income tax cut as they feel they've "been there, tried that, got the t-shirt" with national insurance.

"That didn't lead to a poll bounce and therefore doing it again - will it?," she says.

She says the Treasury will likely argue the cumulative effect of consecutive 2p cuts to national insurance is "significant".

But she adds: "It feels as though the spring budget is going to fall short of expectations in the [Conservative] party. 

"If it isn't tax cuts, what is it, if anything, that's going to improve their fortunes? That's what a lot of them are going to be thinking."

This week, as Jeremy Hunt was putting the final touches to his budget, a poll dropped putting the Conservatives on their lowest level of support in 40 years.

MPs are desperate for the chancellor to give them something this week that just might pull them back up.

As the chancellor prepares to deliver his budget, political editor Beth Rigby sets out the task he confronts:

Ahead of the budget this afternoon, Prime Minister's Questions will take place in the House of Commons as usual at noon.

Sir Keir Starmer will have his typical six questions, and the SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn will pose two, before the floor opens to backbenchers.

Here's who we expect to hear from...

 Later today, the chancellor will rise to his feet in the Commons to deliver what will likely be the final budget before the general election.

Jeremy Hunt will set out the state of Britain's public finances, and will announce how government funding will be allocated for the year ahead.

The contents of the budget are a closely guarded secret until the chancellor delivers it in the Commons, but you can read our round-up of what he could announce here .

Sky News will have live coverage of PMQs at 12pm, followed by the budget immediately after at 12.30pm. 

We will have live analysis of what it will mean for you, your family, and businesses with our expert team of political and business correspondents.

And we will, of course, have full coverage right here in the Politics Hub.

Watch the Budget 2024 on Wednesday  from 12.30pm on Sky channel 501, Virgin channel 602, Freeview channel 233, on the  Sky News website  and  app  or on  YouTube .

By Joely Santa Cruz, data journalist, and Aaliyah Harris, news reporter

Graduates in their 20s are earning less in real terms than they were before the 2008 financial crash, and are £1,200 worse off than they were at the start of the pandemic on average, despite recent cuts to national insurance.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has teased further national insurance cuts in his upcoming budget, following on from the recent decrease announced in his autumn statement.

It could be welcome news to some who have seen their pay packets squeezed over recent years as a result of the cost of living crisis, though economists have warned tax cuts would be unaffordable and would need to be reversed after an election.

People aged between 22 and 29 are earning less in real terms now than they were in 2002.

This is when factoring in inflation, including rising housing and food costs, over the period.

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IR-2024-45, Feb. 21, 2024

WASHINGTON — During the busiest time of the tax filing season, the Internal Revenue Service kicked off its 2024 Tax Time Guide series to help remind taxpayers of key items they’ll need to file a 2023 tax return.

As part of its four-part, weekly Tax Time Guide series, the IRS continues to provide new and updated resources to help taxpayers file an accurate tax return. Taxpayers can count on IRS.gov for updated resources and tools along with a special free help page available around the clock. Taxpayers are also encouraged to read Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals) for additional guidance.

Essentials to filing an accurate tax return

The deadline this tax season for filing Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return , or 1040-SR, U.S. Tax Return for Seniors , is April 15, 2024. However, those who live in Maine or Massachusetts will have until April 17, 2024, to file due to official holidays observed in those states.

Taxpayers are advised to wait until they receive all their proper tax documents before filing their tax returns. Filing without all the necessary documents could lead to mistakes and potential delays.

It’s important for taxpayers to carefully review their documents for any inaccuracies or missing information. If any issues are found, taxpayers should contact the payer immediately to request a correction or confirm that the payer has their current mailing or email address on file.

Creating an IRS Online Account can provide taxpayers with secure access to information about their federal tax account, including payment history, tax records and other important information.

Having organized tax records can make the process of preparing a complete and accurate tax return easier and may also help taxpayers identify any overlooked deductions or credits .

Taxpayers who have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or ITIN may need to renew it if it has expired and is required for a U.S. federal tax return. If an expiring or expired ITIN is not renewed, the IRS can still accept the tax return, but it may result in processing delays or delays in credits owed.

Changes to credits and deductions for tax year 2023

Standard deduction amount increased. For 2023, the standard deduction amount has been increased for all filers. The amounts are:

  • Single or married filing separately — $13,850.
  • Head of household — $20,800.
  • Married filing jointly or qualifying surviving spouse — $27,700.

Additional child tax credit amount increased. The maximum additional child tax credit amount has increased to $1,600 for each qualifying child.

Child tax credit enhancements. Many changes to the Child tax credit (CTC) that had been implemented by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 have expired.

However, the IRS continues to closely monitor legislation being considered by Congress affecting the Child Tax Credit. The IRS reminds taxpayers eligible for the Child Tax Credit that they should not wait to file their 2023 tax return this filing season. If Congress changes the CTC guidelines, the IRS will automatically make adjustments for those who have already filed so no additional action will be needed by those eligible taxpayers.

Under current law, for tax year 2023, the following currently apply:

  • The enhanced credit allowed for qualifying children under age 6 and children under age 18 has expired. For 2023, the initial amount of the CTC is $2,000 for each qualifying child. The credit amount begins to phase out where AGI income exceeds $200,000 ($400,000 in the case of a joint return). The amount of the CTC that can be claimed as a refundable credit is limited as it was in 2020 except that the maximum ACTC amount for each qualifying child increased to $1,500.
  • The increased age allowance for a qualifying child has expired. A child must be under age 17 at the end of 2023 to be a qualifying child.

Changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The enhancements for taxpayers without a qualifying child implemented by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will not apply for tax year 2023. To claim the EITC without a qualifying child in 2023, taxpayers must be at least age 25 but under age 65 at the end of 2023. If a taxpayer is married filing a joint return, one spouse must be at least age 25 but under age 65 at the end of 2023.

Taxpayers may find more information on Child tax credits in the Instructions for Schedule 8812 (Form 1040) .

New Clean Vehicle Credit. The credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles has changed. This credit is now known as the Clean Vehicle Credit. The maximum amount of the credit and some of the requirements to claim the credit have changed. The credit is reported on Form 8936, Qualified Plug-In Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit , and on Form 1040, Schedule 3.

More information on these and other credit and deduction changes for tax year 2023 may be found in the Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals) , taxpayer guide.

1099-K reporting requirements have not changed for tax year 2023

Following feedback from taxpayers, tax professionals and payment processors, and to reduce taxpayer confusion, the IRS recently released Notice 2023-74 announcing a delay of the new $600 reporting threshold for tax year 2023 on Form 1099-K, Payment Card and Third-Party Network Transactions . The previous reporting thresholds will remain in place for 2023.

The IRS has published a fact sheet with further information to assist taxpayers concerning changes to 1099-K reporting requirements for tax year 2023.

Form 1099-K reporting requirements

Taxpayers who take direct payment by credit, debit or gift cards for selling goods or providing services by customers or clients should get a Form 1099-K from their payment processor or payment settlement entity no matter how many payments they got or how much they were for.

If they used a payment app or online marketplace and received over $20,000 from over 200 transactions,

the payment app or online marketplace is required to send a Form 1099-K. However, they can send a Form 1099-K with lower amounts. Whether or not the taxpayer receives a Form 1099-K, they must still report any income on their tax return.

What’s taxable? It’s the profit from these activities that’s taxable income. The Form 1099-K shows the gross or total amount of payments received. Taxpayers can use it and other records to figure out the actual taxes they owe on any profits. Remember that all income, no matter the amount, is taxable unless the tax law says it isn’t – even if taxpayers don’t get a Form 1099-K.

What’s not taxable? Taxpayers shouldn’t receive a Form 1099-K for personal payments, including money received as a gift and for repayment of shared expenses. That money isn’t taxable. To prevent getting an inaccurate Form 1099-K, note those payments as “personal,” if possible.

Good recordkeeping is key. Be sure to keep good records because it helps when it’s time to file a tax return. It’s a good idea to keep business and personal transactions separate to make it easier to figure out what a taxpayer owes.

For details on what to do if a taxpayer gets a Form 1099-K in error or the information on their form is incorrect, visit IRS.gov/1099k  or find frequently asked questions at Form 1099-K FAQs .

Direct File pilot program provides a new option this year for some

The IRS launched the Direct File pilot program during the 2024 tax season. The pilot will give eligible taxpayers an option to prepare and electronically file their 2023 tax returns, for free, directly with the IRS.

The Direct File pilot program will be offered to eligible taxpayers in 12 pilot states who have relatively simple tax returns reporting only certain types of income and claiming limited credits and deductions. The 12 states currently participating in the Direct File pilot program are Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington state and Wyoming. Taxpayers can check their eligibility at directfile.irs.gov .

The Direct File pilot is currently in the internal testing phase and will be more widely available in mid-March. Taxpayers can get the latest news about the pilot at Direct File pilot news and sign up to be notified when Direct File is open to new users.

Finally, for comprehensive information on all these and other changes for tax year 2023, taxpayers and tax professionals are encouraged to read the Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals) , taxpayer guide, as well as visit other topics of taxpayer interest on IRS.gov.

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    Instead, use photos, charts and graphs, or diagrams to explain your business and the problems you are solving. 4. Use large, easy to read font. Always use a relatively large font in your presentation - 30pt or larger. Your audience shouldn't have to strain to read what's on your slide.

  14. How to Present Your Business Plan to Stakeholders

    Here are some tips on how to make a compelling and convincing presentation of your business plan. Find expert answers in this collaborative article Selected by the community from 4 contributions.

  15. The Right Way to Present Your Business Case

    July 21, 2014. Nicholas Blechman for HBR. You've already put a great deal of work into preparing a solid business case for your project or idea. But when it comes to the critical presentation ...

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    Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired ...

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    These shorter pitches can pique investors' interest and earn you the chance to present a long-form pitch. 3. The Long-Form Pitch. Sometimes, you're fortunate enough to have more than a few minutes to pitch your idea. If this opportunity presents itself, it's crucial to make the most of your time and address every aspect of your business plan.

  18. 24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

    8. Panda Doc's Free Business Plan Template. PandaDoc's free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

  19. How to Make a Good Business Plan Presentation

    Ten tips for creating a business plan presentation: Add your company details: name, headline, name, and tagline to the first slide of your business plan. When introducing the slide, you can describe your actions in one sentence. Imagine a specific problem. Make sure it relates to your target audience. You can also add statistics to this part of ...

  20. How To Write An Effective Business Proposal

    Types of Business Proposals. Understanding the different types of business proposals is key to selecting the right approach for your situation. Typically, proposals are categorized into two main ...

  21. How to Make a Business Plan Presentation? Guide

    The best way to present your business plan is with PowerPoint presentations. You can use ready-made templates and edit them as per your requirements to ease the job. Usually, up to 15 slides must be displayed to display your overall execution strategy. But you can add or remove slides as per your content.

  22. How to Make an Effective Presentation (Guide, Tips & Examples)

    2. Research your topic and know it inside and out. When the time comes to present your presentation, you need to feel confident in yourself and your abilities in order to win your crowd's trust. One way you can achieve this is by knowing all the ins and outs of your topic.

  23. How To Present an Action Plan

    The Action Plan Slide Template for PowerPoint is a simple and useful One Pager to write an action plan. Its design seeks to establish a primary objective and break it down into different vital areas and steps to monitor and control its execution. This presentation is a minimalistic approach to Action Planning.

  24. 19 Small Business Ideas For 2024

    4. Pet Care Services. A dog walking business is an excellent opportunity for someone who loves dogs and is good with other people's dogs. You get out every day and enjoy fresh air with grateful ...

  25. Leap year 2024: How to make the most of your extra day : NPR

    Jager, 50, has big plans for the day: She and her fiancé are "taking the leap," getting married in their backyard surrounded by friends and family on the four-year anniversary of their first date ...

  26. Politics latest: Speculation mounts over pre-election budget; Labour to

    The pre-election budget will be delivered on Wednesday, with the Conservatives hoping to shift the dial as they languish in the polls. Listen to this week's Politics at Jack and Sam's podcast as ...

  27. Tax Time Guide 2024: What to know before completing a tax return

    The pilot will give eligible taxpayers an option to prepare and electronically file their 2023 tax returns, for free, directly with the IRS. The Direct File pilot program will be offered to eligible taxpayers in 12 pilot states who have relatively simple tax returns reporting only certain types of income and claiming limited credits and deductions.