How to Build a Lean and Efficient Business Plan Your business plan must be ready to accommodate rapid changes so that your company can follow suit. Here are five ways to make your business plan as lean and effective as possible.

By Tim Berry

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Shutterstock

The concept of the lean startup, developed by entrepreneur Eric Ries, looks at how product development cycles can be shortened and businesses can run more efficiently by continuously measuring progress and feedback. This philosophy is particularly relevant when it comes to thinking about your business plan.

In business, it is the continuous planning process that matters. Your business plan, like your business, is a living, evolving, flexible thing. It requires rapid changes and fact-based decision making. I like the body metaphor implied by the term. Lean doesn't just mean thin; it also means healthy, muscular and efficient. Here five ways to help make your business plan leaner:

1. Make strategy the heart of your plan.
Strategy is focus -- focus on specific target markets using specific products or services. Your strategy is based on some strength or characteristic that links you to your preferred buyers and the solutions you offer them. It defines how you want to set your business apart from the crowd. Strategy isn't text -- it's concepts. You can summarize strategy in bullet points, using charts or even with a series of images.

To test your strategy statement, read it and ask yourself whether it describes your unique business or could be applied to many others. Is it specific enough to be implemented? Does it define a market, product and branding focus? While everything in a business plan is subject to change, the strategy changes more slowly than the rest of the plan in response to changing conditions.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask Before Determining Your Target Market

2. Summarize more, elaborate less.
Your business plan is held up by eight key core concepts: market, product or services, production, marketing, sales, distribution, management and finance. A fat business plan describes each of these key areas in elaborate detail. Lean business planning means using more bullets and less text. It refers to trends and ongoing assumptions as economically as possible, explaining them in detail only where the detail isn't already understood.

3. Track progress and manage course corrections constantly.
Track your progress with lists and tables full of numbers that you can use to course correct. This is lean to the extent that it's specific, concrete and measurable. The most important part of this is a list of milestones. These are scheduled achievements and activities, each of which ought to have dates, budgets, performance measurements, expectations for spending and sales and specific assignments for task responsibilities.

Aside from these milestones, good planning also needs regularly updated projections of sales, costs, expenses and cash. The projections should be just detailed enough to offer good plan-verses-actual analysis for better management. For example, monthly projections are probably essential for at least the next six months, and usually 12 months is better; but monthly projections beyond a year are most often a waste of time. The goal isn't guessing right (which never happens) but rather laying out the probable results and connecting the dots (like expenses to sales) so you can track progress and make useful changes.

Related: What Angel Investors Want Now

4. Dress up your plan with descriptions.
Descriptions you use to dress up your plan depending on the audience might include market details, technical or scientific background, company history, bios of the management team, generic market research, proof of concept and competitive analysis. Like clothes, you make these descriptions appropriate to the occasion. For example, you might need to prove a market to assure investor or to prove financial stability to assure bankers.

5. Be consistent about updates.
Planning for a startup is a lot like diet and exercise. Business planning is a process, not an event. Like diet and exercise, the key to staying lean is regular repetition over a long time to generate real positive benefits. You don't do it once, or even once in a while. You review and revise your plan regularly.

Related: 3 Marketing Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Ron Johnson

Wavy Line
Tim Berry

Entrepreneur, Business Planner and Angel Investor

Tim Berry is the chairman of Eugene, Ore.-Palo Alto Software, which produces business-planning software. He founded Bplans.com and wrote The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, published by Entrepreneur Press. Berry is also a co-founder of HavePresence.com, a leader in a local angel-investment group and a judge of international business-plan competitions.

Editor's Pick

She's Been Coding Since Age 7 and Presented Her Life-Saving App to Tim Cook Last Year. Now 17, She's on Track to Solve Even Bigger Problems.
Lock
I Helped Grow 4 Unicorns Over 10 Years That Generated $18 Billion in Online Revenues. Here's What I've Learned.
Lock
Want to Break Bad Habits and Supercharge Your Business? Use This Technique.
Lock
Don't Have Any Clients But Need Customer Testimonials? Follow These 3 Tricks To Boost Your Rep.
Why Are Some Wines More Expensive Than Others? A Top Winemaker Gives a Full-Bodied Explanation.

Related Topics

Leadership

How to Get Unstuck From Stress and Find Solutions Inside Yourself

Executive coach and author Susan S. Freeman discusses finding a healthy problem-solving mindset in her new book, 'Inner Switch: 7 Timeless Principles to Transform Modern Leadership.'

Growing a Business

Sam Fonseca of Roll-Em-Up Taquitos on Simplicity for Successful Restaurants

Interview with Roll-Em-Up Taquitos COO Sam Fonseca about the power of social media, adjusting for customer expectations, and keeping Mama Karen's legacy alive.

Business News

California Woman Arrested For $60 Million Postal Service Scam

Lijuan "Angela" Chen faces two charges that each carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Business News

A Wegmans Employee Allegedly Stole Over $500,000 from the Company

Alicia Torres pleaded guilty to crimes carried out over nine years while working at Wegmans in Webster, New York.

Starting a Business

Ask Marc | Free Business Advice Session with the Co-Founder of Netflix

Get free business advice during our next Ask Marc, live Q&A, on 6/21/23 at 3 p.m. EDT. You don't want to miss it—send in your questions now.