Need general assistance on Business plan writing...

[praise_gibbs]

Hello all,

I am up for potential advancement at work and will be interviewing with the Regional staff on Thursday January 12th. I was instructed to design a business plan. That's it. That's all. There were no details, no assistance, or anything. Just a clear cut business plan. And I have to be honest, my general understanding of a business plan is to entice investors to spend money on your business idea. My guess would be, that I would be more successful on the Action/Marketing plan side rather than a blueprint business plan.

I work in the Rent to Own field and have been heavily involved for the past 4 years. This company is well established and is just opening a new location nearby (hence my confusion on a true business plan idea). They need to fill the Store Manager position and I severely want this job. Has anyone on Extremeskins had any experience in designing such document for a job interview before?

I can understand the desire for such document. As I personally would want any candidate for any position, to have an idea of where they would like to be professionally in the next few years and a thought out path to get there.

My primary focus would be on store growth (customer base) the first few years. Marketing, more or less, to get the knowledge out there, that my store is in the area. After that, it's explosive growth while overseeing the collections portion to protect the company's assets.

I'm already training my potential managers (Sales and Collections) at my location now. So, the rapport is there between us. The general trust and respect is there. We, honestly, would make a strong team. Which is why I am excited about the consideration. But, I need to nail this interview. I can use the huge bump in pay, obviously. But, more importantly, I am excited about the new potential challenge.

Is it a safe bet to design a clear Action/Marketing plan to how I will market (who, what, when, where, why) and how I plan to ensure profitability on the store's PNL?

I've researched article after article and examined every template imaginable and they are quite foreign to my line of work. It seemed like an easy plan until I came home from work to start.. :feedback:

[Corcaigh]

The plan for staffing and marketing is important, including operating procedures.

But they should be looking for financial projections

• what you need to invest to get it started including inventory.
  
• Operating costs and how those will change over time
  
• Revenues, and
  
• weekly/monthly cash flow projections.
  

The favorite question for any investor is, "What are your assumptions, and what is their impact on your business?"

So lay out your financial model is a spreadsheet so you can see the impact of adjusting different parameters, i.e. less or more people, less or more marketing spend, inventory cost being higher or lower, lower revenues, longer DSO or delayed collections/bad debt, etc.

Be able to answer questions such as "what will you do if revenues are X% lower than projected in the first N months".