You have spent considerable time pulling your business plan together, contacting potential business investors, making management presentations and pitching your business plan to prospective business investors. Now you finally have a serious investor who wants to conduct “due diligence” before investing real cash into your business. Great! What’s “due diligence? Due diligence is a thorough examination of available facts, references, books, records, etc. of your business and business plan. And, what exactly should you expect during due diligence? Skepticism... Business investors want to be sure there are no skeletons in the closet and that your venture is not the next Madison Priest "black box technology" -- a revolutionary technology that claimed to allow ordinary phone lines to transmit data into people's homes at rates faster than fiber optics. By staging impressive demonstrations, Priest convinced private business investors and seasoned companies, such as Blockbuster...

It is hard to get a funding from a business plan, even a very good business plan. You can give yourself a much better chance of raising capital if you avoid eight common business plan mistakes. Your business plan may be the first thing investors see, and it is important that your business plan be written professionally and excellently. Investors see thousands of business plans each year, and the ones that get funded are less than 1%. You will greatly improve your chance of getting funded if you avoid these mistakes. 1. Mistakes in Overall Content A well written business plan finds the solutions to problems that customers are looking for and will pay money to solve. The plan dos not need superlatives to say that it is great. If it is great, the readers will come to that conclusion. Also, be sure your plan presents a focused strategy to solve only one problem in the target market. 2. Stating “There is no competition” Every business has competition, either direct or...

This one mistake is so critical that it jeopardizes the immediate survivability of your start up company - even before you get started. What is the second biggest mistake? Many cost-sensitive entrepreneurs depend on number crunchers, bean counters and newly minted MBAs for their projections - just to save a few dollars. New start up CEOs doom their new company by pinching pennies in the wrong place. Instead, what they need are pivotal insights from experienced consultants who can provide the guidance the entrepreneur needs for producing a realistic, genuinely implementable business plan. Your business plan is not some academic document - instead, it is your crucial road map to successful implementation of your vision for your new company. The most important part of any business plan is the detailed financial projections that are the basis for the entire business model of every new start up company. There are four sets of underlying assumptions that drive all the...

It's disturbing to have to reject a business plan, but sometimes it's the best choice for all stakeholders. As a volunteer for a lending committee, I wish we could approve every loan application that hit our table; unfortunately it's not possible. The committee meets as-needed to review business plans and decide whether or not to finance the applicants. We deal with mostly very small businesses seeking small loans, usually under $250,000. Lending to inexperienced, new business owners is one of the riskiest arenas for a lending agency. In spite of this fact, we manage to keep our loss rate to a minimum. Over a period of more than a dozen years, I have observed certain challenges surfacing again and again. The amazing thing about these business plan killers is that they rarely travel alone - they almost always appear in clusters. Here are the top ten business plan killers and what you can do to avoid or fix them: 1. Dreadful Personal Financial Profile What is the likelihood that one...