Do you want to start a professional business plan writing company? If YES, here is a 10-step guide on how to become a business plan writer and succeed.
A business plan is an essential part of every business. If properly written with the right details, a business plan can serve as a road map for a business at every point in the life of the business.
While an entrepreneur can comfortably write the business plan for his or her organization (there are business plan templates all over the internet), but if the business is seeking funding from external fronts, then it is in the best interest of the company to hire a professional business plan writer.
What is a Business Plan Writer?
A business plan writer, as the name implies, is one who writes business plans for companies. As a business plan writer, your main aim is to help entrepreneurs, small companies, and even established organizations in turning their business ideas into reality. Writing a solid business plan requires more than just writing skills.
For you to be successful as a business plan writer, you have to be a domain expert in various fields such as Business Analysis, Research, and Management Consulting. You also have to be well versed with the concepts of business forecasting, budgeting & business planning, feasibility study, go-to-market strategy, human resource planning, etc.
As an excellent business plan writer, you don’t just craft an impressive business plan but also create an exceptional design to ensure maximum impact. You should be able to design images, graphs, infographics, and vital insights to increase the visual impact of your business plan.
These graphs help to save potential investors’ time as they can capture the required information at a quick glance. It takes a lot of work to become a professional business plan writer, and if you are nursing this dream, then outlined below are ways you can become a successful business plan writer.
Steps to Become a Professional Business Plan Writer
1. Be a writer at heart
One thing that is certain in this life is that you cannot make a business out of what you are not passionate about. The same goes for business plan writing because this business entails a lot of writing. In fact, before you can complete an acceptable business plan, you must have written and discarded millions of words. So if you want to be a business plan writer, you have to love the art of writing.
2. Hone your research skills
Before you can become a good business plan writer, your research skills have to be top notch. This is because everything in a business plan requires research. You have to carry out market research, feasibility studies, business forecasting and analysis etc. To this end, you need to have above average research skills, especially in business.
3. Get the required educational background
For you to become an exceptional business plan writer, you need to have the right educational background, this is a given. This is because your educational background would help make you appear more professional, and not someone who is just desperate to latch onto the next available business.
For this, you may need to have an academic background in business. You can acquire a degree or diploma in a business related course of your choice like accounting, marketing, business management, etc. Having your qualification behind your name can give you more credibility and as well a leverage in the competitive market.
4. Get trained
It is a fact that the course you studied in school may not be enough to make you an expert business plan writer, so for this reason, you need to get trained. You need to look at for organizations that hold business plan trainings and register with them.
These trainings will help to familiarize you with all aspects of the business plan, and as well as what is acceptable in a business plan as of today. The courses usually cover all the necessary steps such as drafting the original document, recognizing the audience, collecting information, researching and describing product plans.
Writing business plans trainings will provide you a structure to analyze the external environment of the business and craft a state of the art Business Plan. You will also learn how to work with different kinds of business analysis tools to estimate and decide the direction of a company’s ideas.
5. Do a lot of business reading
Having excellent business plan writing skills is hardly possible without doing enough reading. So make your list of business books and start reading it right through. You’ll not only expand your active business vocabulary (which is absolutely important for writing good business plans) – your horizons as an entrepreneur will expand even more.
6. Build up your portfolio
If you have not written any business plans for companies yet, you may need to do so because companies would only access you by your achievements. If you currently do not have a company willing to pay for your skills, you may have to give out a few business plans for free so as to build your portfolio, so as to show that you already have experience in the business.
7. Learn to market yourself
Businesses need you because they need someone to provide them with professional, concise and clear business plans. Show them that you are the best choice for them.
Create a portfolio for selling your skills. Include these business-related samples in your portfolio: articles, books, brochures, booklets, fliers, emails, newsletters, product descriptions, press releases, sales pages, slogans, white papers, company profiles and of course previously written business plans.
8. Create your website
A website is one major way to market yourself as a business plan writer. In it, you can list your skills, achievements, what you offer, and to whom you offer your services. You can also include the price you charge if you feel that confident. If you don’t want to spend the extra cash on a website, use a blog to show off your work.
9. Learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
This is something that all businesses online are seeking. You must have the knowledge in order to optimize articles and web pages in order to bring more visitors to your website. Search Engine Optimization is the skill of inserting particular keywords into web pages and articles in order to get in front of web searchers.
When people type a search into a search engine that is related to business plan writing, they need to see your business listed on the first page of the search results. This is how keywords help. In a 500-word article, put in a keyword at least five times. Of course, you can use more than one keyword to optimize the results.
10. Go freelance
If you are ready to hit the world of business plan writing, you can start off as a freelancer. To be successful in this, you need to sign up to freelance business plan writing websites to apply for projects. Send notifications to businesses online who may need you and send out bulk mail through your post office. You may be surprised at how many follow-up contacts you will receive.