Create a document that details your business operations, which can be used to attract potential investors, business partners and clients. Depending on the audience, a business plan can be formal and detailed in terms of financial plans and forecasts, marketing strategy, staffing plans, and industry trends that could affect your business, or it can be informal and provide a simple overview of business operations and future goals.
One component of a business plan used to secure financing is forecasting future sales. With established businesses, they can look at past sales data and trends to estimate future revenue. However, a new business with no historical data available has to use a combination of sales data from the product market or industry as a whole, available data from similar businesses, surveys from buyers and sellers in the supply chain, and relevant contextual information such as consumer trends.
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