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Free PDF Business Plan Templates and Samples

By Joe Weller | September 9, 2020

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We’ve gathered the most useful collection of business plan PDF templates and samples, including options for organizations of any size and type.

On this page, you’ll find free PDF templates for a simple business plan , small business plan , startup business plan , and more.

Simple Business Plan PDF Templates

These simple business plan PDF templates are ready to use and customizable to fit the needs of any organization.

Simple Business Plan Template PDF

This template contains a traditional business plan layout to help you map out each aspect, from a company overview to sales projections and a marketing strategy. This template includes a table of contents, as well as space for financing details that startups looking for funding may need to provide. 

Download Simple Business Plan Template - PDF

Lean Business Plan Template PDF

This scannable business plan template allows you to easily identify the most important elements of your plan. Use this template to outline key details pertaining to your business and industry, product or service offerings, target customer segments (and channels to reach them), and to identify sources of revenue. There is also space to include key performance metrics and a timeline of activities. 

Download Lean Business Plan Template - PDF

Simple 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template PDF

This template is designed to help you develop and implement a 90-day business plan by breaking it down into manageable chunks of time. Use the space provided to detail your main goals and deliverables for each timeframe, and then add the steps necessary to achieve your objectives. Assign task ownership and enter deadlines to ensure your plan stays on track every step of the way.

Download Simple 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template

PDF | Smartsheet

One-Page Business Plan PDF Templates

The following single page business plan templates are designed to help you download your key ideas on paper, and can be used to create a pitch document to gain buy-in from partners, investors, and stakeholders.

One-Page Business Plan Template PDF

Use this one-page template to summarize each aspect of your business concept in a clear and concise manner. Define the who, what, why, and how of your idea, and use the space at the bottom to create a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) for your business. 

Download One-Page Business Plan Template

If you’re looking for a specific type of analysis, check out our collection of SWOT templates .

One-Page Lean Business Plan PDF

This one-page business plan template employs the Lean management concept, and encourages you to focus on the key assumptions of your business idea. A Lean plan is not stagnant, so update it as goals and objectives change — the visual timeline at the bottom is ideal for detailing milestones. 

Download One-Page Lean Business Plan Template - PDF

One-Page 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template

Use this business plan template to identify main goals and outline the necessary activities to achieve those goals in 30, 60, and 90-day increments. Easily customize this template to fit your needs while you track the status of each task and goal to keep your business plan on target. 

Download One-Page 30-60-90 Day Business Plan Template

For additional single page plans, including an example of a one-page business plan , visit " One-Page Business Plan Templates with a Quick How-To Guide ."

Small Business Plan PDF Templates

These business plan templates are useful for small businesses that want to map out a way to meet organizational objectives, including how to structure, operate, and expand their business.

Simple Small Business Plan Template PDF

A small business can use this template to outline each critical component of a business plan. There is space to provide details about product or service offerings, target audience, customer reach strategy, competitive advantage, and more. Plus, there is space at the bottom of the document to include a SWOT analysis. Once complete, you can use the template as a basis to build out a more elaborate plan. 

Download Simple Small Business Plan Template

Fill-In-the-Blank Small Business Plan Template PDF

This fill-in-the-blank template walks you through each section of a business plan. Build upon the fill-in-the-blank content provided in each section to add information about your company, business idea, market analysis, implementation plan, timeline of milestones, and much more.

Download Fill-In-the-Blank Small Business Plan Template - PDF

One-Page Small Business Plan Template PDF

Use this one-page template to create a scannable business plan that highlights the most essential parts of your organization’s strategy. Provide your business overview and management team details at the top, and then outline the target market, market size, competitive offerings, key objectives and success metrics, financial plan, and more.

Download One-Page Business Plan for Small Business - PDF

Startup Business Plan PDF Templates

Startups can use these business plan templates to check the feasibility of their idea, and articulate their vision to potential investors.

Startup Business Plan Template

Use this business plan template to organize and prepare each essential component of your startup plan. Outline key details relevant to your concept and organization, including your mission and vision statement, product or services offered, pricing structure, marketing strategy, financial plan, and more.

‌Download Startup Business Plan Template

Sample 30-60-90 Day Business Plan for Startup

Startups can use this sample 30-60-90 day plan to establish main goals and deliverables spanning a 90-day period. Customize the sample goals, deliverables, and activities provided on this template according to the needs of your business. Then, assign task owners and set due dates to help ensure your 90-day plan stays on track.

‌Download Sample 30-60-90 Day Business Plan for Startup Template 

For additional resources to create your plan, visit “ Free Startup Business Plan Templates and Examples .”

Nonprofit Business Plan PDF Templates

Use these business plan PDF templates to outline your organization’s mission, your plan to make a positive impact in your community, and the steps you will take to achieve your nonprofit’s goals.

Nonprofit Business Plan Template PDF

Use this customizable PDF template to develop a plan that details your organization’s purpose, objectives, and strategy. This template features a table of contents, with room to include your nonprofit’s mission and vision, key team and board members, program offerings, a market and industry analysis, promotional plan, financial plan, and more. This template also contains a visual timeline to display historic and future milestones.

Download Nonprofit Business Plan Template - PDF

One-Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organization PDF 

This one-page plan serves as a good starting point for established and startup nonprofit organizations to jot down their fundamental goals and objectives. This template contains all the essential aspects of a business plan in a concise and scannable format, including the organizational overview, purpose, promotional plan, key objectives and success metrics, fundraising goals, and more.

Download One-Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organization Template - PDF

Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan PDF Templates

Use these fill-in-the-blank templates as a foundation for creating a comprehensive roadmap that aligns your business strategy with your marketing, sales, and financial goals.

Simple Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan PDF

The fill-in-the-blank template contains all the vital parts of a business plan, with sample content that you can customize to fit your needs. There is room to include an executive summary, business description, market analysis, marketing plan, operations plan, financial statements, and more. 

Download Simple Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan Template - PDF

Lean Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan PDF

This business plan is designed with a Lean approach that encourages you to clarify and communicate your business idea in a clear and concise manner. This single page fill-in-the-blank template includes space to provide details about your management team, the problem you're solving, the solution, target customers, cost structure, and revenue streams. Use the timeline at the bottom to produce a visual illustration of key milestones. 

Download Fill-In-the-Blank Lean Business Plan Template - PDF

For additional resources, take a look at " Free Fill-In-the-Blank Business Plan Templates ."

Sample Business Plan PDF Templates

These sample business plan PDF templates can help you to develop an organized, thorough, and professional business plan.

Business Plan Sample 

This business plan example demonstrates a plan for a fictional food truck company. The sample includes all of the elements in a traditional business plan, which makes it a useful starting point for developing a plan specific to your business needs.

Download Basic Business Plan Sample - PDF

Sample Business Plan Outline Template

Use this sample outline as a starting point for your business plan. Shorten or expand the outline depending on your organization’s needs, and use it to develop a table of contents for your finalized plan.

Download Sample Business Plan Outline Template - PDF

Sample Business Financial Plan Template

Use this sample template to develop the financial portion of your business plan. The template provides space to include a financial overview, key assumptions, financial indicators, and business ratios. Complete the break-even analysis and add your financial statements to help prove the viability of your organization’s business plan.

Download Business Financial Plan Template

PDF  | Smartsheet

For more free, downloadable templates for all aspects of your business, check out “ Free Business Templates for Organizations of All Sizes .”

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Download Free Business Plan Examples

Download a free business plan in pdf or word doc format to make writing a plan fast and easy, find your sample plan.

Discover the sample plan that best fits your business. Search our gallery of over 550 sample business plans and find the one that's right for you.

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What You'll Get:

A complete business plan Unlike other blank templates, our business plan examples are complete business plans with all of the text and financial forecasts already filled out. Edit the text to make the plan your own and save hundreds of hours.

A professional business plan template All 550 of our business plans are in the SBA-approved format that’s proven to raise money from lenders and investors.

Instructions and help at every step Get help with clear, simple instructions for each section of the business plan. No business experience necessary.

A Word doc you can edit We don’t just have PDF documents that make editing a challenge. Each plan is available in Word format so you can start editing your business plan example right away.

Key Sections Included in our Example Business Plans:

Executive Summary : A quick overview of your plan and entices investors to read more of your plan.

Company : Describes the ownership and history of your business.

Products and Services : Reviews what you sell and what you’re offering your customers.

Market Analysis : Describes your customers and the size of your target market.

Strategy and Implementation : Provides the details of how you plan on building the business.

Management Team : An overview of the people behind the business and why they’re the right team to make the business a success.

Financial Plan : A complete set of forecasts including a Profit and Loss Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Balance Sheet.

Looking for a sample business plan PDF? You can download a few PDF examples below:

• Accounting and Bookkeeping Sample Business Plan PDF
• Agriculture Farm Sample Business Plan PDF
• Cleaning Service Sample Business Plan PDF

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Write a business development plan

Now that you’re in the growth stage of your business, set things in motion with a business development plan.

A business development plan sets goals for growth and explains how you will achieve them. It can have a short-term or long-term focus. Review and revise your plan as often as you can. And keep building on it as your business evolves.

How to write a business development plan

Your business development plan is your roadmap to growth, so make it clear, specific and realistic.

What to include in a business development plan

• Opportunities for growth: Identify where growth will come from – whether it’s in creating new products, adding more services, breaking into new markets, or a combination of these.
• Funding plan: Determine how you’ll fund your business growth. How much capital do you already have? How much more do you need and how will you get it? Check out our guide on financing your business.
• Financial goals: Work out what revenue, costs and profits you’ll have if things stay the same. Use those numbers as a basis for setting new, more ambitious financial goals.
• Operational needs: Identify what things about your business will need to change in order to achieve growth. Will you need extra people, more equipment, or new suppliers?
• Sales and marketing activities: Figure out what sales and marketing efforts will effectively promote growth and how these efforts will change as the business gets bigger and better. Make sure your sales and marketing plan is sturdy enough to support your growing business.
• Team needs: You may need people to take on some of the tasks you’ve been doing. Think about what parts of running the business you enjoy most – and you’re good at – and what parts you might want to delegate to others. And give some thought to the culture you want to develop in your business as it grows. Check out our guide on hiring employees.

A sample business development plan

Avoid these common business development mistakes.

• Thinking short-term instead of long-term
• Underestimating how much money it will take to grow
• Not budgeting enough money to cover the costs of growth
• Focusing on too many growth opportunities: think quality, not quantity

Micro-planning can keep you focused

You may want to create some micro-plans for specific growth projects so their details don’t get overlooked. And you can build in some KPIs to measure your progress and successes. As your business grows, take note of your progress and make periodic adjustments to your business development plan to make sure it’s still relevant.

Support is out there

Remember you’re not the first to go through this. Seek out mentors, advisors or other business owners who can help you with your planning. Your accountant or bookkeeper may also be able to help or point you in the direction of the right people.

Xero does not provide accounting, tax, business or legal advice. This guide has been provided for information purposes only. You should consult your own professional advisors for advice directly relating to your business or before taking action in relation to any of the content provided.

Growing your business

Are you ready to drop the hammer and take your business to the next level? Let’s look at how to grow.

Before you leap into growth, reflect on where you’ve come from. Find out the stage of business growth you’re at.

Understanding your business performance will help you grow. Check out common examples of small business KPIs.

Increasing sales revenue is one obvious way to help grow your business. But how do you sell more?

You can grow your business by selling more things to more people, or fewer things to fewer people. Let’s look at how.

You’re all set to grow your business. But there’s so much to keep track of. Xero’s got resources and solutions to help.

Download the guide to growing your business

Learn how to grow a business, from planning to expansion. Fill out the form to receive this guide as a PDF.

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Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint

Growth is something every CEO and business leader aspires to deliver, but for many, it remains elusive. About a quarter of companies don’t grow at all, and between 2010 and 2019, only one in eight achieved more than 10 percent revenue growth annually. 1 Statistics in this section are based on McKinsey’s analysis of data from Corporate Performance Analytics by McKinsey and regulatory filings, S&P Global, for the period 2010–19. Sustained, profitable growth is possible, however, and it comes down to “choice.”

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Michael Birshan , Biljana Cvetanovski , Rebecca Doherty , Tjark Freundt , Andre Gaeta, Greg Kelly , Erik Roth , Ishaan Seth , and Jill Zucker , representing views from McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing & Sales and Strategy & Corporate Finance practices.

Do you, as a leader, make an explicit choice to grow? Or do you pay lip service to your growth ambitions and let your resolve falter if profit isn’t immediate?

When sustainable, inclusive, and profitable growth becomes a conscious, resolute choice, it shapes decision making across every area of the business. Growth becomes the oxygen of an organization, feeding the culture, elevating ambitions, and inspiring a sense of purpose. Growth leaders generate 80 percent more shareholder value than their peers over a ten-year period. Beyond creating shareholder value, growth attracts talent, fosters innovation, and creates jobs.

With only one in ten S&P 500 companies reporting growth above GDP for more than 30 years, sustained, profitable growth may seem difficult. But the choice to grow is paramount—and it is available to every leader, regardless of industry or economic climate. Indeed, many high-growth companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Burger King, Hyatt Hotels, Microsoft, and Airbnb, to name a few, were founded during economic downturns.

Incumbents have also achieved impressive growth during downturns. US-based retailer Target managed to deliver growth during each of the last two recessions. In 2000, Target doubled down on growth investments, adding new locations, products, and partnerships that resulted in double-digit growth for sales and profits. In 2008, Target analyzed customer trends and expanded its food offerings to include more fresh meat and produce; the food category has since added billions to annual revenue. In 2020, Target achieved record growth during the COVID-19 pandemic by investing consistently in online services and accelerating its ability to use stores as distribution centers and enable online-order pickups from their parking lots. 2 Ranjay Gulati, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen, “Roaring Out of Recession,” Harvard Business Review , March 2010.

The leaders who choose growth and outperform their peers not only think, act, and speak differently; they align around a shared mindset, strategy, and capabilities. In turn, they actively track leading and lagging growth indicators to tie their aspirations to clear and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs). They explore and invest in opportunities both within and outside their core business. Their commitment to growth leads them to invest in an appropriate mix of enablers at the right time and scale, and they stay resolutely faithful to their growth vision in the face of unexpected challenges in their business and operating context, even turning disruption to their advantage.

Drawing on McKinsey’s extensive research into growth and leadership as well as our experience in partnering with leaders in every sector on sustainable, profitable growth , this article explores what happens when business leaders make and follow through on a purposeful choice to grow. 3 For more, see Mehrdad Baghai, Stephen Coley, and David White, The Alchemy of Growth , Basic Books, September 1999; Mehrdad Baghai, Patrick Viguerie, and Sven Smit, The granularity of growth: How to identify the sources of growth and drive enduring company performance , John Wiley & Sons, 2007. The leader’s blueprint for growth shows how subtle changes in thoughts and actions arising from choice can make the difference between sustained standout growth and remaining with the pack.

When a business leader chooses growth, that choice begins to shape behavior, mindset, risk appetite, and investment decisions, creating a growth orientation across the organization. In fact, growth leaders across the C-suite are 70 percent more likely than peers to have growth as their top priority. 4 Biljana Cvetanovski, Eric Hazan, Jesko Perrey, and Dennis Spillecke, “ Are you a growth leader? The seven beliefs and behaviors that growth leaders share ,” McKinsey, September 26, 2019.

Growth-oriented leaders also shape their thinking and actions toward growth over both short- and long-term horizons. They react decisively to shorter-term disruptions that can be turned into opportunities—what we term “ timely jolts ”—and build organizational resilience and agility to respond to change and leverage disruption. These leaders follow a timeless blueprint for growth that flows from mindset into growth pathways and execution (Exhibit 1).

Set an aspirational mindset and culture

C-suite growth leaders share a common series of mindsets and behaviors from their communications to their willingness to learn through failure. Those who display at least three of the five key growth mindsets are 2.4 times more likely to profitably outgrow their peers (Exhibit 2).

The first part of the timeless holistic growth blueprint is to support aspirations with clear targets, milestones, and motivators—creating a North Star that feeds the broader strategic and cultural narrative of the business. Leaders are able to commit their company to action and maintain this focus in the face of timely jolts, inspiring an organization-wide culture that continually seeks out and pursues growth opportunities.

On the other hand, the leader who aspires to growth but underinvests in initiatives or removes funding from growth is one whose actions do not match their aspirations. C-suite leaders who choose growth are much less likely to yield when challenges arise, finding opportunity in headwinds and reasons to innovate where others retreat to conventional defensive playbooks.

A further differentiator of growth leaders is their ability to build organizational buy-in, including from the board and investors. They tend to directly involve the board in their growth planning and they proactively communicate with investors 5 For more, see “ Where companies with a long-term view outperform their peers ,” McKinsey Global Institute, February 8, 2017. using significant and credible targets to show how the growth plan will generate value. Growth leaders allocate the resources required to achieve goals and are more willing to change their operating model to enable growth, if that is what is needed.

Activate the growth pathways

When leaders choose growth and develop the right leadership mindsets and behaviors to support that choice, their natural position is to look for opportunity wherever it exists. Those companies that set growth strategies to address all available pathways to growth are 97 percent more likely to achieve profitable above-peer growth.

The second part of the timeless holistic growth blueprint is activating three pathways: expanding the core business, innovating into new markets and adjacencies, and purposefully pursuing opportunities for breakthrough growth through new-business building or mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

The most successful companies are able to balance and sequence these growth choices in response to their changing operating environments, advances in technology, and emerging customer needs and preferences.

Mindset to action: Imperatives for Growth

Expand the core business.

Growth begins with the core, and growth leaders understand the importance of optimizing their current core business. With more than 80 percent of total revenue growth, on average, derived from the core, achieving excellence in current operations is crucial. 6 Statistics in this section are based on McKinsey’s analysis of data from Corporate Performance Analytics by McKinsey, regulatory filings, and S&P Global, for the period 2005–19; we have analyzed the 3,000 largest public companies as of 2018 reporting revenues by segment. Total revenue growth split is derived from the summation of the respective company segment revenues in this sample. Some sectors—healthcare, for example—achieve as much as 90 percent of growth from the core business, while others, such as financial services, generate around 74 percent from the core and 23 percent or more from adjacent opportunities (Exhibit 3).

These variations are partly explained by the idiosyncrasies of different industries. For example, healthcare businesses make long-term R&D and capital investments for innovation, but their patents enable them to generate most of their growth within the core. Financial-services companies, on the other hand, tend to be more able to move into adjacent services, with many companies actively making big bets across industry sub-sectors (eg, investment banks entering wealth management, and vice versa).

Regardless of industry, growth leaders turbocharge their core through a mix of strategic shifts to higher growth pockets (for example, shifting product mix to higher growth value or premium segments and higher growth channels such as e-commerce), innovation of the core products and services, and improved executional excellence in their commercial capabilities.

Having a growth mindset is especially important for the core business. Growth outperformers almost always grow their core—either through their main products, sectors, or local market. In fact, it is unlikely that they can raise their growth trajectory without winning in their local market. 7 Defined as the largest region in the portfolio by revenue.  In fact, fewer than one in five of the companies in our sample that had below-average growth rates in their local region managed to outperform their peers in growth.

Whatever the exact mix of strategies and focus areas, growth leaders are maximizing their core through all available means. And they are twice as likely to report having identified pockets of growth within their existing business.

Innovate into adjacencies

Having a strong core is essential. Outperformers build beyond it to achieve their growth aspirations. Businesses that expand into adjacent industries or segments are 20 percent more likely to achieve greater growth than their peers.

The obvious places to look for growth are new geographies and adjacent industries where growth leaders can adapt their existing offerings to serve new customer segments. For example, CVS Health transformed into a consumer-centric, integrated health solutions company by expanding its business from pharmacy and retail to healthcare services, which accounted for 67 percent of the company’s revenue growth from 2005–19.

Growth leaders recognize the need to unlock the next wave of growth through expansion beyond the core. However, choosing the best adjacencies is critical. Growth leaders are increasingly harnessing advanced analytics to identify promising or previously overlooked opportunities that leverage core competencies and provide a good chance to establish a strong leadership position. McKinsey research shows that businesses that expand to adjacencies with high similarity to their core and exploit their unique competitive advantages are more likely to profitably outperform their peers on growth.

Outperformers use the full growth blueprint to excel in adjacencies, with a particular focus on strategies that build on core competencies. They use and refresh growth maps to consistently surface opportunities, to understand which are most achievable, and set growth strategies to capture them. They choose among the different avenues to grow adjacently, such as M&A or business building, and they evolve their operating models to support these growth choices.

Growth leaders are also increasingly building ecosystems around their core capabilities and assets and deploying new offerings into adjacent products or markets. Tencent, for instance, has become an Asian tech giant worth around $500 billion through its online platforms that include messaging, gaming, payments, e-commerce and advertising—in addition to evolving its social messaging app WeChat into an extensive “super app.” Tencent’s full ecosystem offering spans fintech , entertainment and media, cab hailing, location sharing, and more, fueling a revenue compound annual growth rate of 28 percent over the decade 2011 to 2021.

Ignite breakout businesses

According to McKinsey research on more than 1,000 business leaders, on average, executives believe 50 percent of their revenues will come from new products, services, or businesses within the next five years. Not surprisingly, many are looking beyond natural adjacencies to exploit entirely new business opportunities. Between 2018 and 2020, “new-business building” doubled its appearances among the top three items on executive agendas.

Expanding into new markets through business building can unlock new opportunities without cannibalizing existing products and services. Done right, the rewards can be well worth the risk, as illustrated by a number of growth leaders across different industries.

Amazon famously expanded beyond its e-commerce business into public cloud services through Amazon Web Services (AWS). By leveraging its core competencies of brand and commercial strength, it built AWS into a business that generated $62 billion revenue.

Science and technology innovator Danaher Corporation combatted the single-digit growth in its core industrial businesses by looking toward high-growth markets in life sciences and niche diagnostics. After testing the waters with small acquisitions and investing heavily in its platforms business, Danaher spun off its old industrial core, Fortive, repositioned life sciences and diagnostics as its new core business—and beat the S&P 500 by 3.8 times between 2002 and 2016. While core growth is critical, investments in breakout opportunities could enable a long-term shift to a new core within a higher-growth market.

Marcus by Goldman Sachs launched its first digital consumer business in 2016, allowing customers to bank from their phones. In the ensuing six years, it has attracted millions of customers, accumulated deposits of over $92 billion, and made more than $7 billion in loans via a combination of organic growth, acquisitions, and partnerships with Apple and Amazon.

Growth leaders can improve their odds of achieving growth in breakout opportunities by committing to innovation , identifying and understanding the needs and wants of valued customers, and developing the right value propositions to appeal to them. Given the accelerating pace of innovation, growth leaders also look to agile methodologies , strategic alliances, and M&A, with a willingness to rapidly test and learn, fail and iterate, and invest in scaling opportunities.

Of course, pursuing breakout growth can require longer-term investment and commitment before seeing returns. That’s why growth leaders need the mettle to stay the course and make significant investments—or the sense to know when to call it quits.

Execute with excellence

This is the critical and third portion of the timeless holistic growth blueprint, where strategy meets action, and orchestrated execution is the final step in achieving growth. Execution works hand-in-hand with strategy to empower leaders to make the right choices at the right time to drive both short-term and long-term growth.

Leaders who choose growth support their ambitions by prioritizing a critical set of execution enablers: operating model and resource allocation, ecosystems, M&A, joint ventures and alliances, and functional capabilities.

Built-for-growth operating models and resource allocation

Leaders who fully commit to growth choose these initiatives for purposeful and assertive investment and are 60 percent more likely to regularly reallocate resources from lower-return to higher-return spaces. These leaders fund more dynamically, relying less on historical budgets that can be psychologically “anchoring,” and they actively explore how to fuel growth without eroding their existing core businesses. 8 Tim Koller, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony, “ Bias busters: Being objective about budgets ,” McKinsey Quarterly , September 28, 2018; Michael Birsham, Marja Engel, and Olivier Sibony, “ Avoiding the quicksand: Ten techniques for more agile corporate resource allocation ,” McKinsey Quarterly , October 1, 2013.

Alongside this willingness to dynamically reallocate resources , growth leaders are more likely to have multiple, tailored operating models to support their unique growth initiatives and opportunities. While the core business may have a distinct, more traditional operating model, breakout opportunities may adopt a more agile, learning-driven operating approach , for example, having small, cross-functional teams with the autonomy to focus on rapidly building and testing products, features, or services with customers. They segment their product-development processes and combine standard product-development stage gates for incremental innovations while using venture-capital-inspired stage gates and funding mechanisms for bolder growth projects. This agility helps them respond robustly to timely jolts and opportunities.

In managing performance, growth leaders adopt a growth vocabulary, leveraging the adage, “You get what you measure.” They actively track leading and lagging growth-oriented metrics, such as recurring revenue, revenue per customer, and customer-acquisition cost, tying them to organizational goals and incentives.

Strengthen ecosystems, M&A, and joint ventures

Specialization in a sea of sameness is a differentiator. That’s why growth leaders often look outside of their businesses to find quick access to complementary skills and capabilities to buy or scale innovation and growth. Those who do this are 30 to 50 percent more likely to continually scan for these types of alliances, joint ventures, and M&A opportunities.

In recent years, digital M&A has become increasingly popular and effective, accounting for double the share of all M&A value from 2011–21. Businesses are becoming increasingly strategic about how they evaluate and leverage these digital transactions, from acquiring new talent and capabilities to accessing new markets and products. 9 Michael Bogobowicz, Anika Pflanzer, Leandro Santon, and Brett Wilson, “ How to find and maximize digital value in any M&A deal ,” McKinsey, November 9, 2020; CapitaIQ, McKinsey analysis. Many companies with programmatic M&A strategies (that is, steadily growing through two or more acquisitions of less than 30 percent of their own market cap per year) have added digital-investment themes to their M&A blueprints. Over almost 20 years of research, it has become clear that programmatic M&A is the only M&A strategy that delivers outsized total shareholder return (TSR) . M&A investment themes, especially those on digital M&A, should be highly specific and clearly articulate how they will add value for the acquirer.

Forming ecosystems with partners is another way to build capabilities and expand offerings more quickly, while simultaneously enhancing customer experience and enlarging reach and innovation opportunities across the ecosystem. This creates value along two dimensions—it allows participants to consolidate a range of customers, often across sectors, and to play a pivotal role in optimizing touchpoints in both B2C and B2B.

Functional capabilities

Execution is impossible without the right functional strengths and growth leaders identify which new functional capabilities are needed—or need to change—to support growth initiatives, both in the short term and over longer-term innovation horizons.

From building out AI and advanced analytics platforms to deepening their customer experience capabilities—and even enhancing or modernizing existing capabilities like pricing and marketing—growth leaders ensure the organization’s capabilities are positioned to fuel growth. While the exact blend varies by industry and company, a common cross-sectoral focus point is harnessing digital and analytics to revamp distribution, marketing returns, customer value management (CVM), 10 Customer value management is a systematic approach to working with loyal customers. It is based on personalized offerings targeted to meet particular customer needs, created using advanced analytics, and aimed at increasing lifetime customer value through raising purchasing frequency and average basket size. and dynamic pricing. 11 Rachel Diebner, David Malfara, Kevin Neher, Mike Thompson, and Maxence Vancauwenberghe, “ Prediction: The future of CX ,” McKinsey Quarterly , February 24, 2021; Ralph Breuer, Kedar Naik, Bogdan Toma, and Martina Yanni, “ Executive quick take: A guide to implementing marketing-and-sales transformations that unlock sustainable growth ,” McKinsey, September 23, 2019; Matt Deimund, Michael Drory, Daniel Law, and Maria Valdivieso, “ The five things sales-growth winners do to invest in their people ,” McKinsey, October 9, 2018; Minti Ray, Stefano Redaelli, Sidney Santos, Jared Sclove, and Andrew Wong, “ Accelerating revenue growth through tech-enabled commercial excellence ,” McKinsey, December 4, 2019.

In distribution, e-commerce is a powerful lever for collecting valuable digital customer data along the purchasing journey and ensuring effective and measurable media spend. Nike, for example, was able to increase its nike.com e-commerce platform’s contribution to sales from 7.5 percent to 24 percent, thereby fuelling a compound annual growth rate of 6.7 percent from 2017–21, a time frame that includes the height of the pandemic. 12 Statista, ecommerceDB, and S&P Capital IQ.

For customer value management, investing in greater personalization through advanced analytics and digital capabilities can improve both the customer experience and client lifetime value. American Express, for instance, leverages advanced analytics to provide customized recommendations to customers based on their location, opening additional transaction opportunities both for their partners and for their own credit cards.

Greater analytical sophistication enables companies to differentiate pricing across dimensions such as region, channel, and customer lifecycle. 13 Claus Heintzeler, Mathias Kullman, Karin Lauer, and Maximilian Totzauer, “ Pricing and promotions: The analytics opportunity ,” McKinsey, June 28, 2021. A leading Asian e-commerce company was able to increase gross margins by ten percentage points and gross merchandise value by three percentage points by developing a dynamic pricing capability. 14 Gadi BenMark, Sebastian Klapdor, Mathias Kullmann, and Ramji Sundararajan, “ How retailers can drive profitable growth through dynamic pricing ,” McKinsey, March 27, 2017.

Commercial capabilities are bolstered by investments in digital—in fact, growth leaders are 60 percent more likely to have successfully used AI and advanced analytics to predict customer behaviors and become a “sensing and predicting” organization. Growth leaders also tend to invest in expanding and deepening their customer experience capabilities to streamline and personalize customer journeys.

Beyond the commercial excellence, growth leaders map R&D and product development portfolios, balanced across incremental innovations and bolder long-term breakout initiatives with clear mapping to the capabilities needed to execute. Tangentially, it is imperative to ensure that growth leaders are investing in their people, creating a pipeline of talent that will help strengthen and broaden the tools needed to achieve their growth aspirations.

Choosing to grow: the subtle difference between success and failure

The growth blueprint defines the timeless elements on which leaders need to focus diligently once they’ve made a deliberate and purposeful choice to grow.

This blueprint prepares an organization to grow in the face of timely jolts. The blueprint encourages leaders to answer a series of clear questions:

• Am I setting the right aspiration, mindset, and culture to encourage growth? Are my ambitions high enough, and how can I ensure my organization has the full potential to achieve it?
• Am I actively choosing growth opportunities across my core and adjacencies?
• Am I establishing the right enablers to execute against my growth aspirations and strategies?
• Do I have the right operating model and resource allocation to achieve my growth ambitions?
• And am I investing in the right functional capabilities?

The choices leaders make in response to these questions differentiate those who achieve growth from those who aspire to it but don’t get results.

Take two leaders of similar-sized businesses operating in the same market. Both see an opportunity for growth and pursue it, but their outcomes are very different. Why?

The one who made a choice to grow aligned their board and leadership team on the company’s direction and dedicated the necessary resources to growth. They adapted the operating model for the long term and understood the risk profile of the new businesses they were trying to build. They invested meaningfully in building the right functional capabilities, sometimes at the expense of a few quarters of earnings, to achieve their long-term growth aspirations.

The other leader, who didn’t explicitly “choose growth,” also did a lot of things right. They hired the right talent and took the time to understand the new businesses they wanted to build. They believed they were allocating enough resources to growth, but ultimately their focus was divided by an emphasis on quarterly earnings and short-term profitability. Though they aspired to growth, they didn’t have the long-term strategy or commitment to achieve it. They tried to protect the management team so they could meet their short-term goals but didn’t secure buy-in from the board for long-term growth initiatives.

Making the conscious choice to grow creates powerful momentum that orients the entire business toward that goal, from the C-suite to frontline employees. The growth blueprint defines the timeless elements on which leaders need to focus diligently once they have made a deliberate and purposeful choice to grow. It also prepares an organization to unlock growth opportunities in timely jolts. The clarity of purpose and vision that comes from choice is what helps leaders and their teams believe in the seemingly impossible and make it happen.

Michael Birshan is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office, where Biljana Cvetanovski is a partner; Rebecca Doherty is a partner in the San Francisco office; Tjark Freundt is a senior partner in the Hamburg office; Andre Gaeta is an associate partner in the Sao Paulo office; Greg Kelly is a senior partner in the Atlanta office; Erik Roth is a senior partner in the Stamford office; Ishaan Seth and Jill Zucker are senior partners in the New York office.

The authors wish to thank Jaidit Brar, Luis Cerquiera, Vincent Cremers, Brian Gregg, Eric Hazan, Martin Hirt, Anna Koivuniemi, Pablo Leon, Duncan Miller, and Dennis Spillecke for their contributions to this article.

We are also grateful to the many McKinsey colleagues who contributed their industry expertise and perspectives to this research: Marco Aukofer, Matt Banholzer, Kurt Bazarewski, Dani Ebersole, Stephen Guerin, Tim Koller, Karin Löffler, Katherine Lovemore, Patrick McCurdy, Sakina Mehenni, Camille Meeùs, Bridget Morton, Michael Park, Tido Röder, Jeff Rudnicki, Manny Sasson, Balint Stellek, Marija Vukojevic, Qian Wan, and Michelle Wycoff.

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Writing a Business Growth Plan

Table of Contents

When you run a business, it’s easy to get caught in the moment and focus only on the day in front of you. However, to be truly successful, you must look ahead and plan for growth. Many business owners create a business growth plan to map out the next one or two years and pinpoint how and when revenues will increase. 

We’ll explain more about business growth plans and share strategies for writing a business growth plan that can set you on a path to success. 

What is a business growth plan?

A business growth plan outlines where a company sees itself in the next one to two years. Business owners and leaders apply a growth mindset to create plans for expansion and increased revenues.

Business growth plans should be formatted quarterly. At the end of each quarter, the company can review the business goals it achieved and missed during that period. At this point, management can revise the business growth plan to reflect the current market standing.

What to include in a business growth plan

A business growth plan focuses specifically on expansion and how you’ll achieve it. Creating a useful plan takes time, but keeping your growth efforts on track can pay off substantially.

You should include the following elements in your growth plan:

• A description of expansion opportunities
• Financial goals broken down by quarter and year
• A marketing plan that details how you’ll achieve growth
• A financial plan to determine what capital is accessible during growth
• A breakdown of your company’s staffing needs and responsibilities

Your growth plan should also include an assessment of your operating systems and computer networks to determine if they can accommodate profitable growth .

How to write a business growth plan

To successfully write a business growth plan, you must do some forward-thinking and research. Here are some key steps to follow when writing your business growth plan.

1. Think ahead.

The future is always unpredictable. However, if you study your target market, your competition and your company’s past growth, you can plan for future expansion. The Small Business Administration (SBA) features a comprehensive guide to writing a business plan for growth.

2. Study other growth plans.

Before you start writing, review models from successful companies.

3. Discover opportunities for growth.

With some homework, you can determine if your expansion opportunities lie in creating new products , adding more services, targeting a new market, opening new business locations or going global, to name a few examples. Once you’ve identified your best options for growth, include them in your plan.

4. Evaluate your team.

Your plan should include an assessment of your employees and a look at staffing requirements to meet your growth objectives. By assessing your own skills and those of your employees, you can determine how much growth can be accomplished with your present team. You’ll also know when to ramp up the hiring process and what skill sets to look for in those new hires.

5. Find the capital.

Include detailed information on how you will fund expansion. Business.gov offers a guide on how to prepare funding requests and how to connect with SBA lenders.

6. Get the word out.

Growing your business requires a targeted marketing effort. Be sure to outline how you will effectively market your business to encourage growth and how your marketing efforts will evolve as you grow.

7. Ask for help.

Advice from other business owners who have enjoyed successful growth can be the ultimate tool in writing your growth plan.

8. Start writing.

Business plan software has streamlined the process of writing growth plans by providing templates you can fill in with information specific to your company and industry. Most software programs are geared toward general business plans; however, you can easily modify them to create a plan that focuses on growth. 

If you don’t have business plan software, don’t worry. You can create a business growth plan using Microsoft Word, Google Docs or a similar tool. For each growth opportunity, create the following sections: 

• What is the opportunity? Is your growth opportunity a new geographic expansion, a new product or a new customer segment? How do you know there’s an opportunity? Include your market research to demonstrate the idea’s viability.
• What factors make this opportunity valuable at this time? For example, your growth opportunity could utilize new technology, take advantage of a strategic partnership or capitalize on a consumer trend.
• What are the risk factors for this opportunity? Identify factors that may make this growth opportunity challenging to execute. For example, challenges may include the state of the overall economy, intense competition or supply chain distribution issues. What is your plan for dealing with these challenges?
• What is your marketing and sales plan? Identify the marketing efforts and sales processes that can help you seize this growth opportunity. Detail the marketing channel you’ll use ( social media marketing , print marketing), your message and promising sales ideas. For example, you could hire sales reps for a new geographic area or set up distribution deals with relevant brick-and-mortar or online retailers .
• What are the costs involved in this growth area? For example, if you add a new product, you may need to buy new manufacturing equipment and raw materials. While marketing costs are a given, remember to include incremental sales costs like commissions. Outline any economies of scale or places where your existing operations make the new growth area less expensive than a stand-alone initiative.
• How will your income, expenses and cash flow look? Project your income and expenses, and prepare a cash flow statement for the new growth area for the next three to five years. Include a break-even analysis, a sales forecast and all projected expenses to see how much the new initiative will add to the bottom line. Include how the new growth area will positively (or negatively) impact existing sales. For example, if you sell bathing suits and you decide to grow by adding cover-ups and sunglasses, you will likely sell more bathing suits. 

A cash flow statement will indicate if you must secure additional financing, and a break-even analysis will let you know when the growth opportunity will stop being a drain on the company’s financial resources and start turning a profit.

After completing this exercise for each growth opportunity:

• Create a summary that accounts for all growth areas for the period.
• Include summarized financial statements to see the entire picture and its impact on the company. 
• Evaluate the financing you’ll need to implement the plan, and include various options and rates. 

Why are business growth plans important?

These are some of the many reasons why business growth plans are essential:

• Market share and penetration: If your market share remains constant in a world where costs consistently increase, you’ll inevitably start recording losses instead of profits. Business growth plans help you avoid this scenario.
• Recouping early losses: Most companies lose far more than they earn in their early years. To recoup these losses, you’ll need to grow your company to a point where it can make enough revenue to pay off your debts.
• Future risk minimization: Growth plans also matter for established businesses. These companies can always stand to make their sales more efficient and become more liquid. Liquidity can come in handy if you need money to cover unexpected problems.
• Appealing to investors: For most businesses, a business growth plan’s primary purpose is to find investors . Investors want to outline your company’s plans to build sales in the coming months.
• Concrete revenue plans: Growth plans are customizable to each business and don’t have to follow a set template. However, all business growth plans must focus heavily on revenue. The plan should answer a simple question: How does your company plan to make money each quarter?

Motivate your employees by sharing your growth plan. When employees see an opportunity for increased responsibility and compensation, they’re more likely to stay with your business.

What factors impact business growth?

Consider the following crucial factors that can impact business growth:

• Leadership: To achieve your goals, you must know the ins and outs of your business processes and how external forces impact them. Without this knowledge, you can’t direct and train your team to drive your revenue, and you will experience stagnation instead of growth.
• Management: As a small business owner, you’re innately involved in management – obtaining funding, resources, and physical and digital infrastructure. Ineffective management will impact your ability to perform these duties and could hamstring your growth.
• Customer loyalty: Acquiring new customers can be five times as expensive as retaining current ones, and a 5 percent boost in customer retention can increase profits by 25 percent to 95 percent. These statistics demonstrate that customer loyalty is fundamental to business growth.

What are the four major growth strategies?

There are countless growth strategies for businesses, but only four primary types. With these growth strategies, you can determine how to build on your brand.

• Market strategy: A market strategy refers to how you plan to penetrate your target audience . This strategy isn’t intended for entering a new market or creating new products and services to boost your market share; it’s about leveraging your current offerings. For instance, can you adjust your pricing? Should you launch a new marketing campaign?
• Development strategy: This strategy means looking into ways to break your products and services into a new market. If you can’t find the growth you want in the current market, a goal could be to expand to a new market.
• Product strategy: Also known as “product development,” this strategy focuses on what new products and services you can target to your current market. How can you grow your business without entering new markets? What are your customers asking for?
• Diversification strategy: Diversification means expanding both your products and target markets. This strategy is usually best for smaller companies that have the means to be versatile with the products or services they offer and what new markets they attempt to penetrate.

Max Freedman contributed to this article.

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Top 10 Business Growth Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

Mohammed Sameer

Every organization should have a strategic business growth plan that aligns with the company’s goals. A strategy with attainable and measurable goals can be the difference between success and stagnation.

This is true for most people, from entrepreneurs to athletes. Identifying where you want to go, and the steps you need to take to get there will ensure that your company meets all objectives with ease.

A growth strategy integrates all functional areas of the business to achieve your long-term goals. Every department, from sales and marketing to product development, must contribute to the detailed development of this plan. This collaboration aids in achieving synergy and enables your business to achieve unparalleled efficiencies. 

We've compiled a list of the top 10 Business Growth Plan Templates to ensure that business leaders can reap the benefits.

Business Growth Templates Your Company Needs

Napoleon Hill once said, "Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle." And without a proper plan in place, all your efforts and struggles could be futile. Growth planning is a strategic exercise that allows business owners to schedule and monitor the progress of their revenue. SlideTeam's Business Growth Plan Templates make it easier and faster to create these plans. Let's explore them.

Template 1: Business growth plan PPT Template

Draft an inclusive business growth plan leveraging our content-ready PPT Template. It covers the heart and soul of an effective business growth plan. It emphasizes the importance of revenue streams, SWOT Analysis , PESTEL Analysis, financial plan, and risk control. It’s a resource that is a must-have. Download it now.

Get this template

Template 2: Business Growth And Development Plan

In the deck of all kings , this illustrative template is an Ace of Spades. It is ripe with knowledge and aesthetically-pleasing graphics that make the perfect blend of memorable and impactful presentations. A download of it will ensure you and your team has a concrete business growth plan to work on and take your organization to the heights of success. Get it now.

Download this template

Template 3: Business Growth Planning PPT Framework

Business growth never comes easy. You have to be relentless in your work and diligent in your efforts to give a fair shot to your business to reach success (which is still not guaranteed). SlideTeam has prepared this PowerPoint Presentation to make your life easy. This template helps you frame an effective and workable business growth plan. Get it now.

Grab this template

Template 4: Business Growth Strategy And Revenue Model

Here’s a star PPT Template for preparing a business growth strategy that aligns with your company’s brand and vision. From business growth model and revenue model to go-to-market strategy and marketing strategy, this presentation template has everything that makes a business plan a success. Get it now.

Template 5: Business Growth and Strategy Planning 

Business growth and strategic planning can be daunting tasks to accomplish. With SlideTeam as your PPT Presentation partner, you can rest assured that you never have to worry about anything. We have built this PPT Template on extensive research and analysis to ensure you have the best resource for your business. Grab it now.

Template 6: Two-Stage Business Growth Plan

Here’s a two-stage business growth plan that can help your enterprise break free of the grip of stagnation. Improve your business’ visibility and take steps to move from mere existence to a stage where your key decision-makers have the maturity to offer new products. Use this slide to showcase business growth in two steps and the attractive backdrop to convince clients of your resolve to grow your business. Download it now.

Template 7: Growth-Oriented Business Plan PowerPoint Presentation Slides

This business growth template contains the overview, financial highlights of the company, revenue streams, growth strategies, and much more. Using it, you can easily present the financial highlights covering turnover, net assets, and EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation). You can quickly identify and analyze the company's strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. Showcase PESTLE analysis that examines external and internal business factors affecting your organization's performance.

Template 8: Next Year Annual Business Growth Plan

As 2022 is almost over, it is time to plan for the year ahead. One of the absolute essentials for any business is to have a solid business growth plan. Not sure about how to make the next year’s annual business growth plan? Fret not; SlideTeam is here to help. By downloading this template, you can have all the right resources critical to framing a relevant business growth plan.

Template 9: Key Essential of Business Growth Plan

As a business development manager, building a business growth plan without knowing the key essentials is suicidal. It is also akin to giving directions to a location you have no clue about. Your business will end up stuck in the middle of nowhere. Here’s an exemplary PPT Template that describes the key essentials necessary to draft an effective business growth plan. Grab it now.

Template 10: Strategies for Business Growth PPT Template

Business growth is not an overnight achievement. You need proven strategies to guide your business to success. With a lot already on your plate, you will need assistance in strategizing. SlideTeam acknowledges that constraint and has developed an illustrative PPT Template that describes the strategies for business growth. Grab it now.

Before We Bid Adieu

There is no quick fix or silver bullet that will result in exponential growth.

Indeed, growth is a lengthy process that necessitates a keen focus and understanding of the data and metrics that influence the moving parts of an organization. That is why, in order to truly succeed, you must have a well-thought-out growth strategy (and our business growth plan templates to build one).

FAQs on Business Growth Plan

How do i write a business growth plan.

Steps to Make a Growth-Oriented Business Plan:

• Define your Aim
• Determine your Market(s) and Customers (s)
• Choose your Value Proposition
• Set your Goals and Objectives
• Plan Out your Operations
• Create a well-defined marketing strategy
• Outline your Budget and Forecasting
• Step-wise Execution with Real-time Monitoring

What are the 4 types of business growth strategies?

The following are the four primary growth strategies:

Market Penetration

This strategy aims to increase sales of existing products or services in markets where you are already present, giving you an increased share. You can accomplish this by luring customers away from competitors and ensuring that your existing customers purchase your products or services more frequently. It can be achieved through price reductions, increased promotion and distribution support, acquiring a competitor in the same market, or minor product refinements.

Market Development

It entails expanding existing product or service sales into previously untapped markets. Market expansion entails determining how a company's existing products can be sold in new markets or how to grow the existing market. It can be accomplished through a study of customer segments, such as industrial buyers, for a product that was previously only sold to households. Example: Internet service providers targeted employers for using their product, when it was not so ubiquitous.

Product Development

The goal is to introduce new products or services into existing markets. Product development can be used to expand the offer to current customers to increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). These products can be obtained by investing in additional product research and development, acquiring the rights to manufacture someone else's product, purchasing the product, and "branding" it.

Diversification

It entails introducing new products or services into previously untapped markets. Diversification involves higher business risk. It involves the company marketing completely new products and services in a completely unknown market.

What is a growth plan in a business plan?

Business and growth planning are similar. A growth plan primarily focuses on revenue generation or expansion and the actions required to achieve it.

It is a detailed, systematic record of your company's future goals. It outlines your company's goals and objectives and clear strategies and tactics for achieving these.

A growth plan considers the following:

• Your company's current state, including its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
• What do you want your company to be in the future?
• A strategy and timetable for achieving your goals.

What is the 5 Ps strategy?

Mintzberg developed his 5 Ps of Strategy as five distinct definitions of (or approaches to) strategy development. He first discussed the 5 Ps of Strategy in 1987. Each of the 5 Ps represents a distinct approach to strategy. 

• Perspective

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Growth Business Plan Template

This template helps you to create a business plan for a growth-oriented company. Use this resource to speed up the preparation process with a proven outline to communicate your business plan in a professional, compelling format that will improve your chances of attracting a banker or equity investors.

Although positioned at the beginning of the plan the executive summary is best completed at the end. It's primary purpose is to "sell" the plan to the intended audience, enticing them to read on. It should be an easy-to-read overview presented concisely, ideally on one side of A4.

What will your business be doing in 5 years time? What will it have achieved? What are the main growth targets for sales revenue and profit by the end of year 3? By the end of year 5?

What does the product or service do (the features)? What benefits make the offer unique, or just different? What customer problem does your product or service solve? How would you describe a typical customer for the offer? How do you know they will spend money on your product and/or service?

What is the market potential in terms of sales revenue? Is the market growing, staying the same, or declining? What is causing this? Who are your main competitors? Describe their strengths and weaknesses. How will the business compete and grow in the market (e.g. faster service, lower cost etc.)?

Which routes to access your target customers will you choose (e.g. shop, distributor, website etc.)? What is your basic approach to pricing (e.g. high price/low volume, low price/high volume)? What range of promotional methods will you use (e.g. email, social media, advertising, discounts etc.)? How will the pattern of your sales develop and grow over the next 3 years?

What assets (e.g. equipment, machinery etc.) are needed to get started and grow your business? What are the ongoing resource requirements (e.g. premises, outsourced services etc.)? What are the key processes in your business (the activities that makes the most difference for your customer)? How do you measure and cost the capacity available for supplying your product and/or service? Who are your key partners (e.g. suppliers, subcontractors) and what is their role?

Who are the key team members, their roles and profiles (e.g. skills, experience) Are there any important gaps in skills and/or experience to fill? How will these gaps be filled now, and in future to achieve your growth targets (e.g. employ, specialist consultant)? Who will act as your mentor/adviser?

What are the key internal measures of performance that must be closely monitored (e.g. unit costs, response times etc.)? What are the key external measures of performance (e.g. monitoring customer satisfaction and needs, market and competitor intelligence)? What potential events would have a significant adverse impact on your business or prevent its growth? What is their likelihood? What specific countermeasures will you take?

List the main goals, activities and/or events in the next 12 months that will help you to reach your growth targets.

What is your financial contribution to the business? Is there any additional funding needed? Where will it come from (e.g. friends, family, bank, business angels, venture capital)? What will it be used for? You may wish to add comments and highlights on the financial projections below such as financial milestones already achieved (e.g. break even) and/or the assumptions made (e.g. about the rate of forecast growth).

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Napoleon Hill had right once said, “Strength and Growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” And without a proper sample plan in place, all this effort and struggle is useless. For a business, growth planning is a strategic exercise that allows company holders to schedule and monitor their revenue’s natural development. Growth Plan Templates make the process of creating these plans easier and quicker. You can also see more on Development Plans .

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Step 2: define the target audience, step 3: determine your indicators, step 4: specify your revenue sources, step 5: check your competition, step 6: concentrate on your strengths and opportunities, step 7: invest in talent.

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How to Decide If AI Should Be Part of Your Growth Strategy

By: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic PhD., Darko Lovric

Five steps to help your company create a plan.

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• Publication Date: Mar 20, 2024
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Should your company be betting on AI as a growth strategy now? How do you distinguish genuine opportunities from speculative fads and make an informed decision on whether AI is your next big bet? In this article, the authors cover five steps to help your company answer this question. After thoughtful analysis, your decision ultimately boils down to this: Does the current state of AI align with your business strategy? If it does, the investment in this tech wave could propel your business to new heights.

Mar 20, 2024

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• UK: FCA Business Plan 2024/25: a quick guide to the FCA’s key priorities

UK: FCA Business Plan 2024/25: a quick guide to the FCA’s key priorities

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On 19 March 2024, the FCA published its Business Plan for 2024/25 setting out its planned programme of work for the coming year. The FCA states that it remains resolute in supporting the vital role the financial sector plays in the UK’s long term economic growth, embracing the potential benefits that technology presents for the FCA and the firms it regulates whilst also continuing to protect consumers and ensure market integrity. The FCA’s key objective for the final year of its 3-year strategy is to achieve better outcomes for consumers and markets.

• FCA Business Plan key areas of focus for 2024/2025
• Economic and geopolitical challenges ahead
• FCA commitments - new areas of focus for the coming year
• New FCA Approach Documents published
• FCA resources and resilience

In the FCA’s Business Plan for 2024/2025 , the FCA sets out how it will continue to deliver the  commitments in its 3-year strategy which focus on:

• reducing and preventing serious harm,
• setting and testing higher standards; and
• promoting competition and positive change. 

The 2024/2025 FCA Business Plan considers each of these themes in turn, with details of the FCA’s planned work against its commitments, including work already started. Details of the outcomes it wants to achieve are also provided. Each commitment is linked to  outcomes and metrics  to help measure progress and performance.  The FCA states that it will provide an update on its performance in the summer including metrics on how it is achieving its new objective to support the international competitiveness and growth of the UK economy in the medium to long term.

FCA Business Plan key areas of focus for 2024/2025

The FCA states that it will prioritise the following areas of focus for 2024/2025:

Protecting consumers by:

testing if firms are meeting the higher standards set by the Consumer Duty;

supporting consumers ’s long term financial wellbeing for consumers and unlocking innovation in retail investment markets through the Advice Guidance Boundary Review;

working with regulatory partners to ensure pension products deliver value for money and working with consumers to help them better engage with their pensions; and

continuing to develop the FCA’s use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help prevent fraud and scams to improve the experience of consumers and firms

Ensuring market integrity by:

monitoring risks in markets and taking action where appropriate;

finalising far-reaching capital markets reforms;

continuing to lead the debate on how the right form of regulation can support growth for UK markets, with a number of significant policy changes in or approaching consultation; and

continuing to invest in data and technology to support rigorous market oversight.

Promoting effective competition by:

continuing to promote competition and innovation to deliver good outcomes for customers;

identifying where more effective competition can better deliver fair outcomes under the Consumer Duty; and

looking to market reforms that bring the benefits of innovation and digitalisation.

Contributing to UK competitiveness and growth by:

• improving the attractiveness and global reach of UK wholesale markets
• supporting firms to invest, innovate and expand through the FCA’s Sandboxes and Innovation pathways; and
• continuing to make it quicker and easier for firms to apply for authorisation and strengthening.

The FCA identifies the following key uncertainties in the economic and geopolitical environment over the year ahead which it will continue to monitor in light of its objectives for the coming year:

• Higher interest rates and persistent inflation – monetary policy is likely to remain restrictive in the medium term to return inflation to the 2% target;
• Global financial risks – higher levels of public debt in major economies could affect UK financial stability;
• Geopolitical risks – remain high, dampening global growth and affecting shipping and trade, with the potential for shocks to cause severe disruption.

The FCA states that in the coming year it will continue to deliver the following 13 commitments focusing on reducing and preventing financial crime, putting customers’ needs first and strengthening the UK’s position in global wholesale markets. The following is a snapshot of some of the key 2024/2025 activities in relation to the 13 commitments.

Reducing and preventing financial crime

As for last year’s Business Plan reducing and preventing financial crime remains one of the FCA’s areas of particular focus, with desired outcomes including slowing the growth in investment and Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud victims and losses.

The key new activity for 2024/25 will be increasing investment in the FCA’s systems to use intelligence and data more effectively within its financial crime work, so that it can target higher risk firms and activities. This will be complemented by continuing to:

• Focus on proactive assessments of anti-money laundering systems and controls for those firms deemed higher risk;
• Use data to target the firms that are more susceptible to receiving the proceeds of fraud and ensure they do more to stop the flow of illegitimate funds; and
• Strengthen its supervision of firms’ sanctions systems and controls.

The FCA will also carry on using its powers to disrupt, pursue and sanction those committing and enabling financial crime, as well as aiming to improve its ability to identify and request platforms remove unauthorised financial promotions, associated websites and social media accounts.

The FCA makes the point that while the financial services sector must continue to take the lead in identifying potential harm for supervisory and/or enforcement action (such as continuing action to tackle scams and fraudulent websites),  other partners and sectors also have an important role to play. Given this, other continuing activities this year will include active engagement with partners including the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) to strengthen the system-wide response to financial crime.

Putting consumers’ needs first

The Consumer Duty remains the focal point of this second core commitment. The FCA makes it clear that it will continue to focus its interventions where there is greatest risk of harm or where more work is needed by firms to identify and address gaps and to meet the higher standards of the Duty. This will include supervisory work to test firms’ implementation of the Duty and to improve delivery of good consumer outcomes, with specific areas including complaints-handling and root cause analysis, consumer support journeys, consumer understanding, fair value and closed products and services. 

In terms of its wider work, this will include responding to cost of living pressures, financial inclusion, access to cash and addressing consumer difficulties in accessing required financial products and services. Specific continuing activities will include:

• Finalising changes to its mortgage, consumer credit, and overdraft rules to improve outcomes for consumers in financial difficulty. 
• Implementing new rules to ensure consumers and businesses have reasonable access to cash and continued supervision of branch closures. Take a look at our Engage article for more on the FCA’s recent consultation on a new regulatory regime for access to cash.
• Holding a Financial Inclusion TechSprint.
• Consulting on changes to its debt advice rules to improve outcomes for vulnerable consumers.

New activities in 2024/25 will be:

• Multi-firm work and market studies across different sectors to drive up standards. This will include looking at unit-linked pensions and long-term savings products to test the transparency of charges across value chains, how firms assess overall product value and their response where they identify unfair value. There will also be multi-firm work on how quickly the insurance industry responds to claims, including where customers are more likely to show characteristics of vulnerability.
• As recently confirmed in a press release , a review of firms’ treatment of customers in vulnerable circumstances (with findings shared by the end of 2024).

Strengthening the UK’s position in global wholesale markets

The FCA wants to continue to strengthen its position in global wholesale markets and to host markets which support the domestic economy and growth.  The FCA’s aim is to have markets which are open to innovation, underpinned by high standards of market integrity and investor protection.  Key activities that the FCA will start in 2024/2025 include:

• Encouraging innovation and evolving markets by supporting industry work on T+1 accelerated settlement in order to increase efficiency.  The Accelerated Settlement Taskforce is currently exploring the potential for faster settlement of financial trades in the UK.

Work the FCA will continue in 2024/2025 in relation to wholesale markets includes:

• Concluding the review of the Listing Regime and publishing proposals for a new public offer and admission to trading regime.
• Consulting on regulatory changes to introduce more options on how to pay for investment research.
• Consulting on proposals for the commodity position limits regime to ensure venues are able to remain resilient during extreme events.
• Ensuring an orderly transition away from LIBOR and ensure derivative markets are ready to implement the new derivative reporting rules under UK European Market Infrastructure Regulation (UK EMIR) in September 2024.
• Opening the Digital Securities Sandbox applications during 2024.
• Launching the intermittent trading platform Private intermittent Share and Capital Exchange Service (PISCES) by the end of 2024.
• Finalising the consolidated tape for bonds before deciding on the approach for equities.
• Supporting asset management industry groups on tokenisation.
• Confirming the final rules for the Overseas Fund Regime applications gateway.

Preparing financial services for the future

The FCA states that in light of progress to date in implementing the government’s Smarter Regulatory Framework (SRF), it is moving this commitment down the priority list for 2024/25. It will, however, continue to work with HM Treasury and other regulatory authorities to ensure an efficient and appropriately sequenced workflow of the repeal of assimilated (formerly ‘retained EU’) law and its replacement, where appropriate, with rules (where appropriate, tailored to better suit UK markets). It will also continue to embed the changes to the regulatory framework, e.g. in relation to its accountability.

Dealing with problem firms

Ongoing work this year will include increasing its auto-detection capabilities of problem firms and individuals and identifying any barriers in its regulatory framework that might constrain its ability to take action

Taking assertive action on market abuse

The FCA is aiming to significantly increase the FCA’s capability to tackle market abuse, within a proportionate framework that supports innovation to lower industry costs.  The FCA highlights its ongoing work in the coming year includes:

• Developing improved market monitoring and intervention in Fixed Income and Commodities, covering both market abuse and market integrity.
• As part of the SRF process, it will issue a discussion paper on transferring the MiFID data reporting regimes for transactions (RTS 22) and reference data (RTS 23).  
• Assisting in delivering a proportionate market abuse regime for crypto assets and the PISCES facility.
• Extending the FCA’s data reporting supervision approach to EMIR, SFTR and Orderbook regimes.
• Publishing the results of the FCA’s peer review of market abuse systems and controls in providers of Direct Market Access.
• Publishing revised Market Cleanliness Data in Q3 2024 to capture anomalous trading compared to existing metrics.

Reducing harm from firm failure

Here the FCA emphasises the particular importance of its ability to respond to, and effectively manage, the impact of severe market shocks in the current environment. With a continuing increase in corporate insolvencies likely in 2024, its ongoing work will include continuing to use data and horizon-scanning mechanisms to spot firms at risk of failure and ensure an appropriate response – protecting consumers and ensuring market integrity - if they do fail.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities

The FCA highlights that its ongoing work this year in relation to ESG will include the following:

• Integrating the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) and Investment Labels across the market, including the anti-greenwashing rule and guidance .
• Continuing to expand the SDR regime by publishing a consultation on extending the SDR to portfolio management in 2024.
• Engaging on new and emerging risks with UK and international partners.
• Progressing work on transition finance and preparing to have regard to a ‘nature’ regulatory principle coming into force.

Shaping digital markets to achieve good outcomes

Ongoing work to manage the risks from transformational technologies will include assessing the impact of AI on UK markets to better understand the associated risks and benefits and publishing the outcome of its November 2023  Big Tech Call for Inputs on data asymmetry between Big Tech firms and other financial services firms .

There is also a “heads up” that the FCA will continue to ‘robustly investigate’ digital consumer journeys and firms using sludge practices.

Improving the redress framework

Continuing initiatives this year will include the FCA’s work on redress Guidance for firms, complaints reporting, the Advice Guidance Boundary Review (see our Engage article here and related activity under ‘Enabling consumers to help themselves’ below), its proposed capital deduction for redress for personal investment firms and a review of lead generation in the claims management company (CMC) sector.

There is also a reminder that the FCA is aiming to set out its next steps on its review of historic discretionary commission arrangements in the motor finance market in Q3 2024. Our Engage article sets out more detail on the review, which was launched in January this year.

Enabling consumers to help themselves

With an emphasis on the importance of providing consumers with good information to help them make good decisions – especially in the current challenging economic environment – the FCA’s ongoing work in relation to this commitment will include:

• Continuing to robustly assess firms’ applications to approve financial promotions for unauthorised firms. This Engage article provides a short guide to the new FCA financial promotions gateway which came into effect on 7 February 2024.
• Continuing supervision of cryptoasset firms’ financial promotions, increasing its technological capability to detect harmful financial promotions, developing its  InvestSmart  and Consumer Awareness (currently  ScamSmart ) campaigns and its work with social media platforms and search engines.
• Following the Online Safety Act, continuing work with OFCOM to successfully implement the legislation for financial services.
• Publishing a response following last year’s  Advice Guidance Boundary Review  discussion paper (see also related activity under ‘Improving the redress framework’ above).

Minimising the impact of operational disruptions

The FCA states that firms still face a high and growing level of cyber threats and operational resilience risks against a complex geopolitical backdrop.  It is also seeing increasing levels of systemic risk build up in the system due to reliance on critical third parties. It will continue to work on the following in the coming year:

• From 31 March 2025, all relevant firms will need to maintain their important business services without intolerable harm to consumers and markets.
• It will publish a consultation paper clarifying the FCA’s expectations on how firms should report operational incidents to the FCA.
• It will progress the proposed new rules in relation to the systemic risks presenting by critical third parties to the financial sector. 

Improving oversight of Appointed Representatives

In the wake of the new rules and guidance on appointed representatives (ARs) introduced in December 2022 (see our Engage article ), the FCA will continue to target its resources through deeper analysis of existing data and using significantly improved data, including from updated Gateway forms, new regulatory returns and a dataset covering all ARs. On the supervisory front, it is looking to continue to strengthen its scrutiny and engagement with principal firms as they appoint ARs as well as continuing ‘assertive supervision’ of high-risk principals.

The FCA has also published updated Approach Documents for:

• Supervision , summarising how the FCA carries out its regulatory oversight and designed to help firms, consumers and markets understand how it works, and to fulfil its accountability to Parliament and to the public;
• Consumers , setting out how the FCA uses its powers and tools to protect consumers of financial services, in line with its consumer protection objective; and
• Competition , explaining how the FCA identifies potential harm caused by a lack of competition, and what actions it can take to protect consumers.

The FCA states that to help meet its growing remit, its workforce will grow to more than 5000 people by the end of March 2024.  The FCA intends to continue to focus on ensuring it has the right skills to achieve its business objectives sustainably.  The FCA also intends to invest in its own operational effectiveness and resilience to protect consumers, ensure market integrity and promote effective competition. 

It is encouraging that in this year’s FCA Business Plan, the FCA commits to investing further in its data resources and technology, which could lead to more efficient and better outcomes for consumers and regulated firms particularly relating to data collection and authorisation procedures. In addition, the benefits of innovation and digitalisation appear to be at the heart of the upcoming 2024/2025 focus areas for the FCA particularly in the context of promoting the attractiveness and global reach of UK markets.  Perhaps surprisingly, the FCA states that it no longer considers the SRF as highly prioritised as it was in 2023/2024 but it does acknowledge that it will continue to be an important programme for the FCA during 2024/25. There remains a significant number of SRF core files on the list for review so we look forward to seeing further progress and clarity about how these files will be transferred to the regulator rulebooks during 2024/2025. 

The FCA states that it will update on its progress with its objectives in summer 2024, including against metrics on its new objective to support the international competitiveness and growth of the UK economy in the medium to long term. 

If you would like to discuss any aspect of the FCA’s Business Plan, please get in touch with one of the listed lawyers or your usual Hogan Lovells contact.

Authored by  Virginia Montgomery and  Melanie Johnson.

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Sample Used Car Dealership Business Plan

Writing a business plan is a crucial step in starting a used car dealership business. Not only does it provide structure and guidance for the future, but it also helps to create funding opportunities and attract potential investors. For aspiring used car dealership business owners, having access to a sample used car dealership business plan can be especially helpful in providing direction and gaining insight into how to draft their own used car dealership business plan.

Download our Ultimate Used Car Dealership Business Plan Template

Having a thorough business plan in place is critical for any successful used car dealership business venture. It will serve as the foundation for your operations, setting out the goals and objectives that will help guide your decisions and actions. A well-written business plan can give you clarity on realistic financial projections and help you secure financing from lenders or investors. A used car dealership business plan example can be a great resource to draw upon when creating your own plan, making sure that all the key components are included in your document.

The used car dealership business plan sample below will give you an idea of what one should look like. It is not as comprehensive and successful in raising capital for your used car dealership business as Growthink’s Ultimate Used Car Dealership Business Plan Template , but it can help you write a used car dealership business plan of your own.

Example – PreLoved Motors

Table of contents, executive summary, company overview, industry analysis, customer analysis, competitive analysis, marketing plan, operations plan, management team, financial plan.

PreLoved Motors, situated in the bustling heart of the St. Louis, MO area, is a pioneering used car dealership dedicated to offering an expansive selection of high-quality, pre-owned vehicles. Our business model is built on the foundation of trust, reliability, and exceptional customer service, aiming to redefine the used car buying experience. By focusing on meticulously vetted, versatile vehicles, we ensure our customers receive cars that are not just reliable but also offer the best value for their money. Our commitment to affordability, without compromising on quality, positions us as a unique entity in the competitive used car market, making vehicle ownership accessible to a broader demographic in our community.

Key to our success has been our ability to curate a diverse inventory that meets the high standards of condition and reliability our customers expect. This commitment, combined with competitive pricing and a customer-centric sales approach, has allowed us to stand out in a crowded marketplace. To date, our accomplishments include establishing a loyal customer base, building a strong brand presence in the St. Louis area, and consistently achieving positive feedback for our service quality and vehicle lineup. Our adeptness at adapting to market demands and customer needs continues to fuel our growth and success in the used car dealership industry.

The used car dealership industry is undergoing significant transformation, driven by shifting consumer preferences towards more cost-effective and reliable transportation options. The demand for pre-owned vehicles has seen a steady increase, particularly in urban areas like St. Louis, MO, where economic considerations play a crucial role in consumer purchase decisions. This trend is further bolstered by advancements in vehicle technology and maintenance, which have extended the lifespan of cars, making used vehicles an even more attractive option for budget-conscious buyers. However, the industry is also characterized by intense competition, with dealerships vying to offer the best mix of quality, price, and service to attract discerning customers. In this dynamic environment, dealerships that can effectively differentiate themselves through superior product offerings and exceptional customer service are poised to capture significant market share.

Our target customers range from first-time car buyers to seasoned vehicle enthusiasts, all seeking reliable, affordable pre-owned vehicles in the St. Louis, MO area. These individuals prioritize value for money, vehicle reliability, and a transparent, hassle-free buying experience. Our market research indicates a growing segment of environmentally conscious consumers interested in fuel-efficient and hybrid models, reflecting broader societal shifts towards sustainability. Catering to this diverse clientele, we tailor our inventory and services to meet the nuanced needs and preferences of our customer base, ensuring a personalized, satisfying purchase journey for every buyer.

Enterprise Car Sales, iAutoAgent, and 123 Auto are our main competitors, each with their unique selling propositions from wide-ranging inventories to personalized brokerage services. However, PreLoved Motors distinguishes itself through a curated selection of quality vehicles, competitive pricing, and a transparent, customer-first sales approach. Our deep understanding of local market dynamics and consumer preferences enables us to offer tailored solutions that not only meet but exceed customer expectations, setting us apart as a trusted name in the used car industry.

At PreLoved Motors, our product lineup is carefully selected to ensure a wide range of high-quality, reliable pre-owned vehicles that cater to various customer needs and preferences. We emphasize competitive pricing to make vehicle ownership accessible to a broader audience, without compromising on quality. Our promotions plan is multifaceted, leveraging both digital and traditional marketing channels to reach potential customers effectively. We focus on digital marketing strategies, including SEO, social media advertising, and email marketing, to build brand awareness and engage with our audience. Simultaneously, local community engagement and strategic partnerships are employed to establish a strong local presence and drive foot traffic to our dealership.

Our operational strategy is centered around maintaining a seamless flow from vehicle acquisition to customer sale, ensuring each car meets our stringent quality standards before it reaches the showroom floor. Key operational processes include meticulous vehicle inspection, certification, and detailing, alongside efficient inventory management to keep pace with market demand. Milestones to be accomplished involve expanding our inventory to include electric and hybrid vehicles, implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system to enhance customer service, and achieving a set sales growth target in the next fiscal year, thereby solidifying our market position.

The management team at PreLoved Motors is a blend of industry veterans and dynamic young professionals, bringing together decades of experience in automotive sales, marketing, and operations. Our leadership is committed to fostering a culture of innovation, excellence, and integrity, guiding the company towards sustained growth and success in the competitive used car market. This diverse expertise ensures that we remain agile in our strategic approach, capable of navigating industry challenges while capitalizing on emerging opportunities.

At PreLoved Motors, we are proud to introduce ourselves as a new Used Car Dealership dedicated to serving the unique needs of the St. Louis, MO community. Our establishment fills a significant gap in the local market for high-quality, pre-owned vehicles. Unlike the existing offerings, we focus on delivering exceptional value and customer service, ensuring every customer finds the perfect vehicle to match their needs and budget.

Our product lineup is extensive, featuring a diverse range of vehicles to cater to the varied preferences and requirements of our customers. From sedans that combine efficiency and comfort, to SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) that offer the versatility for both city driving and off-road adventures, we have something for everyone. For customers in need of robust performance, our selection of trucks is second to none. We also stock an exciting range of coupes and convertibles for those seeking a more exhilarating driving experience. Additionally, our vans and minivans are perfect for families or businesses looking for practical, spacious vehicle solutions.

PreLoved Motors is strategically located in St. Louis, MO, making it accessible to customers throughout the city and beyond. Our commitment to serving the St. Louis community is unwavering, and we aim to become a trusted partner for anyone looking to purchase a high-quality used vehicle.

We are uniquely positioned for success, thanks to a combination of factors. Firstly, our founder brings invaluable experience from previously operating a successful used car dealership, ensuring that we have the knowledge and expertise to thrive in this industry. Secondly, our inventory stands out for its versatility, practicality, and affordability. We meticulously select vehicles that not only meet but exceed the expectations of our customers in terms of condition and value for money. This commitment to excellence sets us apart from our competitors and forms the foundation of our business.

Since our founding on January 3, 2024, PreLoved Motors has achieved several significant milestones. As an S Corporation, we have laid a solid foundation for our business operations. Our accomplishments to date include the creation of a distinctive logo that reflects our brand identity, the development of our company name that resonates with our mission, and securing a prime location that offers convenience and visibility to our customers. These achievements are just the beginning of our journey towards becoming the premier choice for used cars in St. Louis, MO.

The Used Car Dealership industry in the United States is a thriving market with a current size of over $120 billion. This industry has shown steady growth over the past few years, with an expected annual growth rate of 2.5% in the next five years. This growth can be attributed to several factors, including the increasing demand for affordable vehicles and the rising popularity of certified pre-owned cars.

One of the key trends in the Used Car Dealership industry is the shift towards online sales and digital platforms. Consumers are increasingly turning to online channels to research, compare, and purchase used cars, making it essential for dealerships to have a strong online presence. This trend bodes well for PreLoved Motors, as a new dealership in St. Louis, MO, as it can leverage digital marketing strategies to reach a wider audience and attract more customers.

Another trend in the industry is the growing focus on customer experience and transparency. Consumers are becoming more informed and cautious when purchasing used cars, placing a premium on dealerships that offer quality vehicles and trustworthy services. PreLoved Motors can differentiate itself by providing excellent customer service, offering detailed vehicle histories, and establishing a reputation for honesty and integrity in the market.

Below is a description of our target customers and their core needs.

Target Customers

PreLoved Motors will target local residents looking for affordable and reliable transportation options. This customer segment is primarily composed of individuals and families seeking value in the used car market, aiming to maximize their investment without compromising on quality. The dealership will tailor its inventory and services to meet the needs of this diverse group, ensuring a wide range of vehicles that cater to various preferences and budgets.

In addition to local residents, PreLoved Motors will also attract first-time car buyers. This group is typically searching for economical choices and may require guidance through the purchasing process. The dealership will provide educational resources and personalized assistance, making the car buying journey as smooth and reassuring as possible for these customers.

Another significant customer segment includes individuals looking for specialty vehicles or those interested in cars with unique features. PreLoved Motors will cater to enthusiasts and collectors seeking rare finds or specific models not readily available in the new car market. By maintaining a varied and intriguing inventory, the dealership will become a go-to destination for those pursuing distinct automotive experiences.

Customer Needs

PreLoved Motors recognizes the importance of providing high-quality vehicles to residents who prioritize reliability and value in their automotive choices. Customers can expect a carefully curated selection of pre-owned cars that meet strict standards for performance, safety, and aesthetics. This commitment ensures that every vehicle on the lot is not only a mode of transportation but also a source of pride for its new owner.

In addition to offering high-quality vehicles, PreLoved Motors understands the significance of an exceptional purchasing experience. Customers can anticipate attentive service that focuses on their unique needs and preferences, making the car buying process both enjoyable and efficient. The dealership also offers comprehensive after-sales support, ensuring that customers have access to maintenance and advice, further enhancing the longevity and enjoyment of their vehicles.

Moreover, PreLoved Motors caters to the financial needs of its customers by providing flexible financing options. This approach allows individuals from various economic backgrounds to find a vehicle that fits their budget without compromising on quality. By facilitating easier access to financing, PreLoved Motors ensures that more residents can experience the joy and convenience of owning a dependable and aesthetically pleasing vehicle.

PreLoved Motors’s competitors include the following companies:

Enterprise Car Sales offers a wide range of used vehicles, including cars, trucks, and SUVs. Their price points vary significantly, depending on the vehicle’s make, model, year, and condition. Enterprise Car Sales generates significant revenue, leveraging its brand strength and extensive network of car rental locations that serve as sources for many of its used vehicles for sale. Enterprise Car Sales has locations across the United States, making it accessible to a broad customer segment. They serve individual buyers looking for reliable used vehicles and business clients seeking fleet solutions. The company’s key strengths include a large and diverse inventory, a well-known brand, and a comprehensive certification process that ensures the quality of their vehicles. However, their prices can be higher than those of smaller competitors due to their brand prestige and certification processes.

iAutoAgent differentiates itself by offering a broker-like service for buyers and sellers of used cars. They facilitate the sale process, aiming to get sellers the highest price for their vehicle while providing buyers with a transparent and hassle-free purchasing experience. iAutoAgent’s revenue comes from commissions and fees associated with their brokerage services. iAutoAgent operates primarily in the St. Louis, MO area, focusing on local clients but also dealing with customers from neighboring regions. They cater to individual buyers and sellers, emphasizing quality customer service and convenience. Key strengths include personalized service and a hassle-free buying and selling process. However, their reliance on local markets might limit their growth potential compared to larger, nationwide competitors.

123 Auto is a used car dealership known for offering a wide selection of vehicles at competitive prices. They focus on affordability, aiming to attract budget-conscious buyers. Their revenue is generated through vehicle sales, with an emphasis on volume over high margins. 123 Auto operates in the St. Louis, MO area, serving a similar geographical market as PreLoved Motors. Their primary customer segment includes individuals looking for affordable used cars, particularly first-time buyers and those with limited budgets. The dealership’s key strengths are its competitive pricing and diverse inventory. However, their focus on lower-priced vehicles might affect their perceived quality and limit their appeal to customers with higher budgets.

Competitive Advantages

At PreLoved Motors, we pride ourselves on offering a diverse selection of versatile and practical vehicles that stand out in the market. Our inventory is carefully curated to ensure that each car meets our high standards of condition and reliability, providing our customers with peace of mind in their purchases. Our commitment to affordability further sets us apart, as we strive to offer competitive pricing that makes owning a quality pre-owned vehicle accessible to a wide range of buyers. This combination of quality, variety, and value positions us as a leader in the used car dealership industry, catering to the unique needs and preferences of our clientele in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible.

Beyond our diverse inventory and competitive pricing, our customer service philosophy also serves as a significant competitive advantage. We believe in a transparent, no-pressure sales environment that allows our customers to explore their options comfortably and make informed decisions. Our knowledgeable team is dedicated to providing personalized assistance, ensuring that each customer finds a vehicle that perfectly fits their lifestyle and budget. This customer-centric approach has cultivated a loyal customer base and distinguishes us from competitors who might prioritize sales over service. By combining outstanding vehicles, fair pricing, and exceptional customer service, we not only meet but exceed customer expectations, solidifying our position as a trusted name in the used car market.

Our marketing plan, included below, details our products/services, pricing and promotions plan.

Products and Services

At PreLoved Motors, customers can find a diverse range of quality used vehicles tailored to fulfill various driving needs and preferences. The dealership prides itself on offering an assortment of automotive categories, including sedans, SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles), trucks, coupes and convertibles, as well as vans and minivans. Each category comes with an average selling price, ensuring that prospective buyers can make informed decisions based on their budget and requirements.

Sedans are a staple at PreLoved Motors, known for their practicality and fuel efficiency. Ideal for daily commutes and long-distance travel, these vehicles are offered with an average selling price of around $15,000. This price range allows customers to access a variety of models and trims that cater to both economy and luxury preferences.

SUVs stand out for their versatility and space, making them perfect for families and adventure enthusiasts alike. At PreLoved Motors, customers can explore a wide selection of SUVs with an average selling price of $20,000. This price bracket encompasses a range of sizes from compact to full-size SUVs, each equipped with features that enhance comfort, safety, and off-road capability.

For those requiring robust performance and hauling capacity, trucks are an excellent option. PreLoved Motors offers a collection of used trucks with an average selling price of $25,000. This segment includes both light-duty and heavy-duty trucks, catering to various commercial and personal use cases, ensuring that customers find the right balance between power and efficiency.

Coupes and convertibles at PreLoved Motors appeal to those seeking a blend of style and performance. With an average selling price of $18,000, customers can expect to discover models that offer exhilarating driving experiences without compromising on luxury and technological advancements. These vehicles are perfect for driving enthusiasts looking to enjoy the road to its fullest.

Last but not least, vans and minivans are the go-to options for customers prioritizing space and convenience for family or group travels. With an average selling price of $17,000, PreLoved Motors provides access to a range of vehicles that offer ample seating, cargo space, and advanced safety features, ensuring a comfortable and secure journey.

In summary, PreLoved Motors caters to a wide audience by offering a comprehensive selection of used vehicles across various categories, each with a competitive average selling price. Whether customers are in search of economy, luxury, performance, or practicality, they can expect to find a vehicle that not only meets their needs but also fits their budget.

Promotions Plan

PreLoved Motors embarks on a strategic journey to attract customers through a comprehensive blend of promotional methods. In the heart of these efforts lies online marketing, a cornerstone that enables the dealership to connect with a vast audience. The company leverages social media platforms, search engine optimization (SEO), and email marketing to create a robust online presence. Social media campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter serve as a direct line to potential customers, offering them a glimpse into the quality and variety of vehicles available. By optimizing their website for search engines, PreLoved Motors ensures that when prospective buyers search for used cars in St. Louis, MO, their dealership appears among the top results, significantly increasing visibility.

Email marketing campaigns are meticulously crafted to keep subscribers informed about the latest deals, new inventory arrivals, and exclusive promotions, fostering a sense of community and loyalty among customers. Furthermore, PreLoved Motors embraces the power of content marketing, crafting engaging blog posts and videos that showcase their expertise in the used car market, driving traffic to their website, and establishing trust with their audience.

Beyond the digital realm, PreLoved Motors invests in local community engagement to build brand awareness and cultivate strong relationships with potential customers. Participating in local events, sponsoring community sports teams, or hosting car maintenance workshops exemplify how the dealership embeds itself into the fabric of the St. Louis community. These initiatives not only enhance visibility but also demonstrate PreLoved Motors’ commitment to contributing positively to the community they serve.

Customer referrals play a pivotal role in the promotional strategy. Encouraging satisfied customers to refer friends and family through a referral program with incentives for both the referrer and the referee ensures a continuous pipeline of potential buyers. This word-of-mouth marketing is invaluable, as personal recommendations carry significant weight in purchasing decisions.

To complement these efforts, PreLoved Motors also explores traditional advertising avenues such as radio spots, local newspapers, and billboards strategically placed around St. Louis. This multi-channel approach ensures that the dealership remains top of mind for a diverse demographic, spanning those who are deeply embedded in digital landscapes to those who appreciate more traditional forms of media.

In summary, PreLoved Motors employs a dynamic mix of online marketing, community engagement, customer referral programs, and traditional advertising to create a comprehensive promotional strategy. By connecting with the community both online and offline, the dealership expects to attract a wide range of customers, making it a go-to destination for quality used vehicles in St. Louis, MO.

Our Operations Plan details:

• The key day-to-day processes that our business performs to serve our customers
• The key business milestones that our company expects to accomplish as we grow

Key Operational Processes

To ensure the success of PreLoved Motors, there are several key day-to-day operational processes that we will perform.

• Inventory Management: We constantly monitor and update our inventory to ensure a wide selection of quality used cars. This includes purchasing vehicles at auctions, from private sellers, and accepting trade-ins.
• Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance: Every car undergoes a thorough inspection and any necessary maintenance or repairs before it is listed for sale. This ensures all vehicles meet our high standards for quality and safety.
• Pricing Strategy: We regularly analyze market data to price our vehicles competitively. This involves reviewing local and national sales trends for similar vehicles and adjusting prices to offer the best value to our customers.
• Customer Service: We prioritize excellent customer service, ensuring every visitor receives personal attention. This includes responding promptly to inquiries, offering test drives, and providing transparent information about each vehicle.
• Financing and Insurance Assistance: We assist customers with securing financing and insurance for their vehicle purchases. This involves working with a network of lenders and insurance providers to offer competitive rates and terms.
• Marketing and Advertising: We implement targeted marketing and advertising campaigns to attract potential buyers. This includes online advertising, social media engagement, and local community events.
• Sales Process Management: We streamline the sales process to make purchasing a vehicle as smooth and efficient as possible. This includes negotiating deals, processing paperwork, and offering warranties or service contracts.
• After-Sales Support: We provide ongoing support to our customers after their purchase. This includes follow-up calls to ensure satisfaction, offering maintenance services, and addressing any concerns or issues that may arise.
• Staff Training and Development: We invest in regular training and development for our team to ensure they are knowledgeable about our inventory, finance options, and customer service best practices.
• Compliance and Legal Requirements: We ensure all business operations comply with local, state, and federal regulations, including vehicle sales laws, consumer protection statutes, and environmental standards.

PreLoved Motors expects to complete the following milestones in the coming months in order to ensure its success:

• Securing a Prime Location : Identifying and securing a strategically located dealership space in St. Louis, MO, that is accessible and visible to our target customer base. This involves negotiating a favorable lease that aligns with our financial projections and growth plans.
• Obtaining Necessary Licenses and Permits : Completing all regulatory requirements, including obtaining a used car dealership license, business license, and any other permits required by local, state, and federal laws. This ensures compliance and legal operation within the industry.
• Building Inventory Acquisition Channels : Establishing reliable channels for acquiring a diverse and quality inventory of used cars. This includes forming partnerships with auction houses, rental car companies, and trade-in programs to ensure a steady supply of vehicles that meet our quality standards and customer preferences.
• Developing a Robust Sales and Marketing Strategy : Crafting and implementing a comprehensive sales and marketing plan that includes digital marketing, local advertising, and community engagement activities to build brand awareness and drive traffic to the dealership.
• Setting Up Operational Infrastructure : Creating the operational backbone of the dealership, including the development of sales processes, customer service protocols, financial management systems, and the implementation of a CRM system to manage leads and customer interactions efficiently.
• Hiring and Training a High-Performing Team : Recruiting a team of experienced salespeople, finance experts, and administrative staff. Providing comprehensive training to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to deliver exceptional customer service and drive sales.
• Launch Our Used Car Dealership : Officially opening PreLoved Motors for business with a launch event to generate buzz in the community and attract our first customers.
• Implementing Customer Feedback Mechanisms : Establishing channels for customer feedback to continuously improve our inventory selection, customer service, and overall buying experience based on direct input from our clients.
• Achieving $15,000/Month in Revenue : Reaching this critical financial milestone to demonstrate market acceptance, operational efficiency, and the potential for scalability and long-term profitability.
• Continuous Monitoring and Adjusting of Business Strategy : Regularly reviewing financial performance, market trends, and customer feedback to make informed decisions on inventory, pricing, marketing strategies, and operational adjustments to ensure sustained growth and success.

PreLoved Motors management team, which includes the following members, has the experience and expertise to successfully execute on our business plan:

Ariana Bell, CEO

Ariana Bell, CEO, brings to PreLoved Motors a track record of undeniable success in the automotive industry. With her extensive experience in running a used car dealership, Ariana has shown an exceptional ability to navigate the complexities of the used car market, drive sales, and maintain high customer satisfaction. Her leadership skills, combined with a deep understanding of market trends and consumer behavior, make her uniquely qualified to steer PreLoved Motors towards lasting success. Ariana’s vision for the company is not just about selling cars; it’s about creating a trusted brand in the pre-owned vehicle sector, ensuring that every customer feels valued and confident in their purchase.

To achieve our growth objectives, PreLoved Motors requires significant capital investment. This funding will be allocated towards expanding our vehicle inventory, enhancing our marketing efforts, and upgrading our facilities to improve the customer experience. Our financial plan is designed to ensure we have the resources needed to scale our operations effectively, drive sales growth, and maintain our competitive edge in the market.

Financial Statements

Balance sheet.

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Income Statement

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Cash Flow Statement

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Used Car Dealership Business Plan Example PDF

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