five year business plan examples

How to Write a Five-Year Business Plan

Noah Parsons

15 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a one-page plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. 

In business, it can sometimes seem hard enough to predict what’s going to happen next month, let alone three or even five years from now. But, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t plan for the long term. After all, your vision for the future is what gets you out of bed in the morning and motivates your team. It’s those aspirations that drive you to keep innovating and figuring out how to grow.

• What is a long-term plan?

A long-term or long-range business plan looks beyond the traditional 3-year planning window, focusing on what a business might look like 5 or even 10 years from now. A traditional 5-year business plan includes financial projections, business strategy, and roadmaps that stretch far into the future.

I’ll be honest with you, though—for most businesses, long-range business plans that stretch 5 and 10 years into the future are a waste of time. Anyone who’s seriously asking you for one doesn’t know what they’re doing and is wasting your time. Sorry if that offends some people, but it’s true.

However, there is still real value in looking at the long term. Just don’t invest the time in creating a lengthy version of your business plan with overly detailed metrics and milestones for the next five-plus years. No one knows the future and, more than likely, anything you write down now could be obsolete in the next year, next month, or even next week. 

That’s where long-term strategic planning comes in. A long-term business plan like this is different from a traditional business plan in that it’s lighter on the details and more focused on your strategic direction. It has less focus on financial forecasting and a greater focus on the big picture. 

Think of your long-term strategic plan as your aspirational vision for your business. It defines the ideal direction you’re aiming for but it’s not influencing your day-to-day or, potentially, even your monthly decision making. 

• Are long-term business plans a waste of time?

No one knows the future. We’re all just taking the information that we have available today and making our best guesses about the future. Sometimes trends in a market are pretty clear and your guesses will be well-founded. Other times, you’re trying to look around a corner and hoping that your intuition about what comes next is correct.

Now, I’m not saying that thinking about the future is a waste of time. Entrepreneurs are always thinking about the future. They have to have some degree of faith and certainty about what customers are going to want in the future. Successful entrepreneurs do actually predict the future — they know what customers are going to want and when they’re going to want it.

Entrepreneurship is unpredictable 

Successful entrepreneurs are also often wrong. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. The difference between successful entrepreneurs and everyone else is that they don’t let mistakes slow them down. They learn from mistakes, adjust and try again. And again. And again. It’s not about being right all the time; it’s about having the perseverance to keep trying until you get it right. For example, James Dyson, inventor of the iconic vacuum cleaner, tried out 5,126 prototypes of his invention before he found a design that worked.

So, if thinking about the future isn’t a waste of time, why are 5-year business plans a waste of time? They’re a waste of time because they typically follow the same format as a traditional business plan, where you are asked to project sales, expenses, and cash flow 5 and 10 years into the future. 

Let’s be real. Sales and expense projections that far into the future are just wild guesses, especially for startups and new businesses. They’re guaranteed to be wrong and can’t be used for anything. You can’t (and shouldn’t) make decisions based on these guesses. They’re just fantasy. You hope you achieve massive year-over-year growth in sales, but there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. And, you shouldn’t make significant spending decisions today based on the hope of massive sales 10 years from now.

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• Why write a long-term business plan?

So, what is the purpose of outlining a long-term plan? Here are a few key reasons why it’s still valuable to consider the future of your business without getting bogged down by the details.

Showcase your vision for investors

First, and especially important if you are raising money from investors, is your vision. Investors will want to know not only where you plan on being in a year, but where the business will be in five years. Do you anticipate launching new products or services? Will you expand internationally? Or will you find new markets to grow into? 

Set long-term goals for your business

Second, you’ll want to establish goals for yourself and your team. What kinds of high-level sales targets do you hope to achieve? How big is your company going to get overtime? These goals can be used to motivate your team and even help in the hiring process as you get up and running.

That said, you don’t want to overinvest in fleshing out all the details of a long-range plan. You don’t need to figure out exactly how your expansion will work years from now or exactly how much you’ll spend on office supplies five years from now. That’s really just a waste of time.

Instead, for long-range planning, think in broad terms. A good planning process means that you’re constantly revising and refining your business plan. You’ll add more specifics as you go, creating a detailed plan for the next 6-12 months and a broader, vague plan for the long term.

You have a long development time

Businesses with extremely long research and development timelines do make spending decisions now based on the hope of results years from now. For example, the pharmaceutical industry and medical device industry have to make these bets all the time. The R&D required to take a concept from idea to proven product with regulatory approval can take years for these industries, so long-range planning in these cases is a must. A handful of other industries also have similar development timelines, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

Your business is well-established and predictable 

Long-term, detailed planning can make more sense for businesses that are extremely well established and have long histories of consistent sales and expenses with predictable growth. But, even for those businesses, predictability means quite the opposite of stability. The chances that you’ll be disrupted in the marketplace by a new company, or the changing needs and desires of your customers, is extremely high. So, most likely, those long-range predictions of sales and profits are pretty useless.

• What a 5-year plan should look like

With the exception of R&D-heavy businesses, most 5-year business plans should be more like vision statements than traditional business plans. They should explain your vision for the future, but skip the details of detailed sales projections and expense budgets. 

Your vision for your business should explain the types of products and services that you hope to offer in the future and the types of customers that you hope to serve. Your plan should outline who you plan to serve now and how you plan to expand if you are successful.

This kind of future vision creates a strategic roadmap. It’s not a fully detailed plan with sales forecasts and expense budgets, but a plan for getting started and then growing over time to reach your final destination.

For example, here’s a short-form version of what a long-term plan for Nike might have looked like if one had been written in the 1960s:

Nike will start by developing high-end track shoes for elite athletes. We’ll start with a focus on the North West of the US, but expand nationally as we develop brand recognition among track and field athletes. We will use sponsored athletes to spread the word about the quality and performance of our shoes. Once we have success in the track & field market segment, we believe that we will be able to successfully expand both beyond the US market and also branch out into other sports, with an initial focus on basketball.

Leadership and brand awareness in a sport such as basketball will enable us to cross over from the athlete market into the consumer market. This will lead to significant business growth in the consumer segment and allow for expansion into additional sports, fashion, and casual markets in addition to building a strong apparel brand.

Interestingly enough, Nike (to my knowledge) never wrote out a long-range business plan. They developed their plans as they grew, building the proverbial airplane as it took off.

But, if you have this kind of vision for your business, it’s useful to articulate it. Your employees will want to know what your vision is and your investors will want to know as well. They want to know that you, as an entrepreneur, are looking beyond tomorrow and into the future months and years ahead.

• How to write a five-year business plan

Writing out your long-term vision for your business is a useful exercise. It can bring a sense of stability and solidify key performance indicators and broad milestones that drive your business. 

Developing a long-range business plan is really just an extension of your regular business planning process. A typical business plan covers the next one to three years, documenting your target market, marketing strategy, and product or service offerings for that time period. 

A five-year plan expands off of that initial strategy and discusses what your business might do in the years to come. However, as I’ve mentioned before, creating a fully detailed five-year business plan will be a waste of time. 

Here’s a quick guide to writing a business plan that looks further into the future without wasting your time:

1. Develop your one-page plan

As with all business planning, we recommend that you start with a one-page business plan. It provides a snapshot of what you’re hoping to achieve in the immediate term by outlining your core business strategy, target market, and business model.

A one-page plan is the foundation of all other planning because it’s the document that you’ll keep the most current. It’s also the easiest to update and share with business partners. You will typically highlight up to three years of revenue and profit goals as well as milestones that you hope to achieve in the near term.

Check out our guide to building your one-page plan and download a free template to get started.

2. Determine if you need a traditional business plan

Unlike a one-page business plan, a traditional business plan is more detailed and is typically written in long-form prose. A traditional business plan is usually 10-20 pages long and contains details about your product or service, summaries of the market research that you’ve conducted, and details about your competition. Read our complete guide to writing a business plan .

Companies that write traditional business plans typically have a “business plan event” where a complete business plan is required. Business plan events are usually part of the fundraising process. During fundraising, lenders and investors may ask to see a detailed plan and it’s important to be ready if that request comes up. 

But there are other good reasons to write a detailed business plan. A detailed plan forces you to think through the details of your business and how, exactly, you’re going to build your business. Detailed plans encourage you to think through your business strategy, your target market, and your competition carefully. A good business plan ensures that your strategy is complete and fleshed out, not just a collection of vague ideas.

A traditional business plan is also a good foundation for a long-term business plan and I recommend that you expand your lean business plan into a complete business plan if you intend to create plans for more than three years into the future.

3. Develop long-term goals and growth targets

As you work on your business plan, you’ll need to think about where you want to be in 5+ years. A good exercise is to envision what your business will look like. How many employees will you have? How many locations will you serve? Will you introduce new products and services? 

When you’ve envisioned where you want your business to be, it’s time to turn that vision into a set of goals that you’ll document in your business plan. Each section of your business plan will be expanded to highlight where you want to be in the future. For example, in your target market section, you will start by describing your initial target market. Then you’ll proceed to describe the markets that you hope to reach in 3-5 years.

To accompany your long-term goals, you’ll also need to establish revenue targets that you think you’ll need to meet to achieve your goals. It’s important to also think about the expenses you’re going to incur in order to grow your business. 

For long-range planning, I recommend thinking about your expenses in broad buckets such as “marketing” and “product development” without getting bogged down in too much detail. Think about what percentage of your sales you’ll spend on each of these broad buckets. For example, marketing spending might be 20% of sales. 

4. Develop a 3-5 year strategic plan

Your goals and growth targets are “what” you want to achieve. Your strategy is “how” you’re going to achieve it.

Use your business plan to document your strategy for growth. You might be expanding your product offering, expanding your market, or some combination of the two. You’ll need to think about exactly how this process will happen over the next 3-5 years. 

A good way to document your strategy is to use milestones. These are interim goals that you’ll set to mark your progress along the way to your larger goal. For example, you may have a goal to expand your business nationally from your initial regional presence. You probably won’t expand across the country all at once, though. Most likely, you’ll expand into certain regions one at a time and grow to have a national presence over time. Your strategy will be the order of the regions that you plan on expanding into and why you pick certain regions over others.

Your 3-5 year strategy may also include what’s called an “exit strategy”. This part of a business plan is often required if you’re raising money from investors. They’ll want to know how they’ll eventually get their money back. An “exit” can be the sale of your business or potentially going public. A typical exit strategy will identify potential acquirers for your business and will show that you’ve thought about how your business might be an attractive purchase.

5. Tie your long-term plan to your one-page plan

As your business grows, you can use your long-term business plan as your north star. Your guide for where you want to end up. Use those goals to steer your business in the right direction, making small course corrections as you need to. 

You’ll reflect those smaller course corrections in your one-page plan. Because it is a simple document and looks at the shorter term, it’s easier to update. The best way to do this is to set aside a small amount of time to review your plan once a month. You’ll review your financial forecast, your milestones, and your overall strategy. If things need to change, you can make those adjustments. Nothing ever goes exactly to plan, so it’s OK to make corrections as you go.

You may find that your long-term plan may also need corrections as you grow your business. You may learn things about your market that change your initial assumptions and impacts your long-range plan. This is perfectly normal. Once a quarter or so, zoom out and review your long-range plan. If you need to make corrections to your strategy and goals, that’s fine. Just keep your plan alive so that it gives you the guidance that you need over time. 

• Vision setting is the purpose of long-term planning

Part of what makes entrepreneurs special is that they have a vision. They have dreams for where they want their business to go. A 5-year business plan should be about documenting that vision for the future and how your business will capitalize on that vision.

So, if someone asks you for your 5-year business plan. Don’t scramble to put together a sales forecast and budget for 5 years from now. Your best guess today will be obsolete tomorrow. Instead, focus on your vision and communicate that. 

Explain where you think your business is going and what you think the market is going to be like 5 years from now. Explain what you think customers are going to want and where trends are headed and how you’re going to be there to sell the solution to the problems that exist in 5 and 10 years. Just skip the invented forecasts and fantasy budgets.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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5 Year Business Plan Template

The following detailed overview of a five-year business plan is designed to assist your efforts in creating the structure your business requires. In the business plan template outlined below, you’ll find the essential components of every 5 year business plan template – a company overview, analyses of competitors, industry data and target market demographics. Also included are a financial plan, a marketing plan and an operations plan. The 5 year business plan will provide the strategic roadmap required for ultimate success. Let’s get your five-year business plan started.

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Five Year Business Plan Template

Executive summary.

The first step to creating a business plan is, oddly, the ending of it. An executive summary is placed in the front of the business plan; however, it cannot be completed until the fully detailed business plan is in place. At that time, it is used as a specific overview of the business plan. The executive summary allows busy executives to quickly grasp the main ideas and make informed decisions about the business concepts and plans; as such, present succinct, clear details in readable sentences that are defined and positive in tone.

Although placed in the business plan at the end of the process, the executive summary helps drive the project forward. Within the executive summary, an overview of the business, including its mission, goals, and the problem it solves will be highlighted. The competitive advantage, target market, and financial projections will be detailed, as well.

Company Overview

After the executive summary, a full company overview is added into the business plan. Include the basic information about the company, detailing the location, name, mission statement, and the legal structure for the business. Outline the jurisdiction in which the company is registered and add the names of the founders and management team. List the founders and key members of the management team again, highlighting their backgrounds, expertise, and roles within the company. Their background information adds depth of experience to that of yours and reflects well with interested lenders or investors. These facts also offer an informed decision base for those considering working for the business. Finally, the unique selling proposition and competitive advantage of the products or services produced by the business will be detailed.

Industry Analysis

In the next segment of the business plan, an industry analysis is compiled, provided as market research data and analyzed in relation to the business. The outcome of the analysis is included in the business plan. It offers a detailed look at the current state and future prospects of the industry sector, market trends, competitive targets, customer preferences and regulatory influences. The analysis within the business plan is suggestive of positive growth, flexibility, and data-driven outcomes that serve the business. The industry analysis also helps identify growth potential, possible risks, and key challenges that may lie ahead. If needed after reading the industry analysis, a business executive may choose to pivot and reposition plans to make informed choices with better outcomes.

Customer Analysis

In the customer analysis section of the business plan, the vital component of the business strategy is revealed: that of the customers who drive the profit margins. The demographics of customers is highly valuable, as the more an understanding of customers’ preferences, likes, dislikes, habits, purchasing choices, and delivery of products is understood and used in business decisions, the better and stronger the positive outcomes. With all of the input and market research data, an important, deeper understanding of the target market is gained, which enables the business to better tailor products, services and the initial marketing efforts accordingly. The market analysis is not only valuable; it is dependable.

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Competitive Analysis

At this juncture, the competitive analysis and data-driven results are obtained to round out the analyses sections of the business plan. The competitive analysis provides valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of key competitors operating in the same market. By evaluating and understanding the competitive landscape, businesses can identify opportunities for differentiation to gain that much-desired competitive edge over competitors. The competitive analysis should also reveal everything available about competitors, including brand reputation, customer loyalty, distribution channels and the financial resources they hold. Because the goal of the business is to capitalize on market opportunities, take note of the environment of every competitor directly in competition with the business and make changes where needed in the unique value propositions offered to customers.

Marketing Plan

Strategic marketing naturally follows the analyses of the business landscape and those who compete within it. Use tools to create a dynamic and strategic marketing plan in this section of the business plan. A strategic marketing analysis is one that utilizes every scrap of data available to form the best message for the target audience. Gathered and pressed into service, the data will inform best practices for marketing methods, and best means of sending those messages to the target audience. Marketing plans will naturally follow well-designed and specific data analysis. Use a variety of means to deliver the marketing messages, according to the strengths of the business and the consumer preferences involved. In short, your marketing strategy will encompass various elements, such as branding, advertising, digital marketing, public relations, and social media to create a cohesive and impactful marketing campaign. The ultimate objective of the marketing plan is to achieve your desired business outcomes. As it should.

Operations Plan

A business plan is not complete without a detailed operations plan. A five-year plan will typically outline the first year and then follow with successively more speculative plans for organization as the years progress; however, some facts relating to manufacturing processes will remain stable and the same throughout. These types of operations can always be included in trend discussions and help stabilize the business overall. Plan the operations functions to align the activities of the various departments or teams with broader organizational objectives. Processes and procedures are the highlights of the operations plan, along with the timelines and scheduling of the implementation of those objectives. Knowing how well the business will actually conduct business five years in the future is the perfect starting place for success right now.

Management Team

Comprised of experienced professionals, the management team is highlighted in detail as the operations plans are revealed. The present key leaders understand the collaboration and strong leadership skills needed to effectively manage and operate the entire team and they will be guided by a customer-centric approach. A detailed description of the skills of team leaders, business partners and executives, along with the relevant professional backgrounds will complete this section of the business plan. You should also detail the operational structure of the company here.

Financial Plan

In the final portion of the business plan, the financial plan is fully extended and specifically detailed to offer an informed snapshot of the health of the business in the present, as well as in the five-year period of sustained growth that is anticipated ahead. It is the overlook of the financial goals, along with the strategies and actions needed to achieve them. The five-year financial projections outlines the financial stability, growth, and long-term sustainability of the business.

The 5 year plan encompasses various key areas that are crucial for success, including revenue generation, expense management, investment strategies, risk assessment, and financial performance monitoring for the business during the years ahead. It also outlines key aspects, such as budgeting, savings, investment plans, and debt management that can adapt to changing circumstances and it maximizes the financial stability and growth projections of the five-year plan. Ultimately, the financial plan serves as a roadmap for informed decision-making and the long-term financial success that extends well beyond the five-year period under discussion.

Crafting a well-thought-out, traditional business plan is the first step in the business planning process and it is vital for any business owner. With our 5 year business plan pdf provided here, a vital and simply inviting business plan can be created for your own purposes and those potential stakeholders who will want to review them. We trust the creation of your business plan will lead to new beginnings, exciting and fulfilling directions and sustained long-term growth in successful years of business ahead.

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Going somewhere? Write the 5-year plan you need to achieve it

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What is a 5 year plan?

The benefits of creating a 5 year plan, how to create a 5 year plan in 6 easy steps, 5 year plan examples.

You may have heard of SMART goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals), but have you ever heard of HARD goal setting?

Society has been pushing SMART goals since the early ’80s, but a 2020 study found that people who set SMART goals are much less likely to love their jobs , while people who set HARD goals are 53% more likely to love their jobs. 

But, what are HARD goals? HARD goals are defined as: 

• Heartfelt 
• Animated 
• Required 
• Difficult 

They are goals for which you have an emotional connection, strong visualization, great urgency, and difficulty. 

While there are laudable aspects of SMART goals, the study shows serious problems regarding the ‘achievable’ and realistic’ aspects of SMART goal-setting. 

Methodologies that emphasize creating difficult goals are far more likely to be successful and generate higher employee engagement.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use HARD goals to make a 5 year plan, as well as show you two 5 year plan examples.

A 5 year plan is a personal and/or professional list of goals that you want to achieve in the next 5 years. 

Oftentimes, 5 year plans include smaller, concrete goals, to help you achieve the larger goals on your list. 

For example, if a long-term goal is to buy a bigger house, then a smaller goal might include setting aside a certain amount of money each month to go toward a deposit on a home loan. 

Or, if one of your long-term goals is to be a certified nurse, then a smaller goal might include finding the best nursing program in your area or applying for a student loan.

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One of the best things about a 5 year plan is that it can significantly motivate you to create the life you want to live. Notice we said “create the life “ not just “achieve the goal.” A 5 year plan that works for you will be more effective if you think of your life holistically — how do you want to feel? What values will you be living? — as you create it. 

Whatever the specific goals you have in mind — whether it’s starting a business, becoming certified or developing expertise, competing in an event, having a child, or taking a big trip — a 5 year plan can help you move from dreaming into doing, wish into a reality. 

Here are some other benefits of creating a 5 year plan:

• It creates a starting point for a career, start-up idea, or personal goal . If you have a goal without a plan, it may not ever happen. But, if you know you want to be a real estate broker by 2026, you’re in a better position to start the process and take actionable steps to achieve that.
• It helps you stay focused and aligned with your ambitions, rather than your dreams constantly hanging out in the back seat. 
• It’s a consistent reminder of what you’re aiming toward, and what you need to do to get there. 

The trick is: keep your plan as visible as possible, make sure it’s what you deeply desire, and make sure your goals are specific, measurable, time-bound, and HARD. 

What should be included in a 5 year plan? 

Grab a pen and a piece of paper. Visualize your life 5 years from now, and write down everything you see without thinking or judging . If any fears, doubts, or negative emotions come up, that’s normal. The key is to ignore them and not attribute any meaning to them.

Use the following categories to help you write your complete brainstorm. 

How do you want your nutritional health , mental fitness , physical health , and mental health to look in 5 years?

Are you interested in being vegan? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to start a yoga practice ? Would you like to regularly meet with a therapist? 

Relationships

Imagine your future professional relationships, friendships, and familial relationships. What do you want them to look like?

Do you want to join a networking group? Are you interested in starting a book club? Do you want to adopt a child? Do you want to take more trips with your partner?

Visualize your financial goals in these buckets: 

• Bills 
• Everyday expenses (i.e. groceries) 
• Flexible spending (i.e. entertainment) 
• Emergency savings 
• Goal savings 
• Investments 

What do you see?

Will you be contributing higher amounts to your 401(k)? Are you planning on saving for higher education? What do you want your emergency savings to look like? Do you want to save for a big trip?

Career/business

What are your career and business aspirations?

Do you picture yourself leading a huge team or an entire corporation? Do you want to be a digital nomad? Are you planning on starting a blog? 

The truth is, the world of business and how people buy and use goods and services is constantly changing — and fast. Don’t get hung up on roles and titles. Especially if you’re early in your career, you will discover career aspirations and opportunities that don’t even exist today. That being said, spend time thinking about what types of activities interest you, what type of environment you enjoy, what type of impact you want to make day-to-day.

If you’re feeling stuck about your career goals, consider:

• Taking career assessments
• Making a list of various career paths
• Finding the overlap between things you like and what companies are hiring for
• Working with mentors
• Building your network
• Creating your own job or business that lines up with your interests
• Listing your passions, values, skills, and interests, then finding or creating jobs that match some parts of the list

If you’re still unsure about your dream job, don’t worry. Go after jobs you’re interested in, learn from them, and eventually, you’ll come across pursuits you’re excited about. Many people also worry if they don’t have a passion. The reality is that pursuing interests and immersing yourself in the work is a good way to discover and develop passion . It’s also okay if you’re multi-passionate and interested in several jobs. 

Personal/spiritual/religious development

How do you want to grow personally and/or spiritually?

Are you interested in starting a home church? Do you want to work with a life coach or career coach? Do you want to meditate more? Would you like to start a gratitude or prayer practice? Do you want to build resilience ? 

Environment/organization/space/home

How do you picture your future environment?

Are you living in a tropical bungalow in Bali? Are you in a newly decorated and renovated home? Do you have a custom pool in your backyard? Are you living with your family to save money? Are you embracing minimalism?

Recreation/fun

What kinds of hobbies will you have in the future?

Will you be snowboarding every winter and surfing every summer? Are you interested in joining a soccer league? Do you want to take up cooking or art classes? 

Service/contribution

What kind of meaningful contribution would you like to be a part of?

Are you interested in volunteering for a vegetable co-op? Will you be tutoring kids on the weekends? Being a mentor ? Do you want to buy monthly groceries for one of your friends in need until they get back on their feet?

• Focus your plan
• Consider potential goals
• Determine your 'why?'
• Identify annual goals and create monthly goals
• Research how to reach your goals
• Adjust and revisit as needed

Here’s how to use your notes to create your plan:

1. Focus your plan

Take a look at your notes and decide which specific areas to focus on. 

You might decide that you’d rather focus on a few areas, like your health and career, or you might decide that you want to focus on all areas. 

Once you decide, grab a piece of paper for every area you plan to focus on and write the area of growth at the top of each. 

For example, if you decide just to focus on health and money, you’ll write ‘health’ at the top of your first paper and ‘money’ at the top of your second paper. 

2. Consider potential goals

Next, divide each paper into two columns. The left column will be for ‘goals,’ and the right column will be for ‘action steps’ or ‘skills.’ 

Then, decide which goals you want to achieve for each category. Remember that ‘specific’, ‘measurable’, and ‘time-bound’ are positive aspects of SMART goals. That said, the ‘achievable’ and ‘realistic’ aspects of SMART goals can deter you from going after more audacious goals. 

Challenge yourself to leave your comfort zone with HARD goals. 

This doesn’t mean setting goals with no chance of success. But, setting goals with, let’s say, a 50/50 chance of success is difficult and ambitious enough to give you a real sense of accomplishment when you succeed.

For example, on your ‘health’ paper, let’s say you decide to write the following in the ‘goals’ column: 

• Be more active
• Increase nutrients 

Then, you might write the following in the ‘action steps’ or ‘skills’ column: 

• Eat raw and organic fruits and vegetables three times a day 
• Walk for two hours a day
• Take a daily multivitamin and add superfoods to morning smoothies 

Next, decide between long-term and short term goals:

Review your list of goals. Decide which are better suited for short-term goals and which are better suited for long-term goals. 

For example, you might decide that being a teacher in Peru is a long-term goal while researching places to live in Peru is a short-term goal. You might start outlining your short- and long-term goals with a 30-60-90 day plan . 

3. Determine your ‘why?’

What’s your big ‘why?’ Why do you want to be a Teaching English Foreign Language (TEFL) teacher in Peru? 

Write your reason down and hang it in a place where you’ll see it daily. 

For example, “I want to be a TEFL teacher in Peru, so I can learn Spanish, help students develop their English skills, and fulfill my dream of exploring South America.”

4. Identify annual goals and create monthly goals

First, establish annual goals that will help you reach your 5 year goals. 

For example, if one of your 5 year goals is to adopt a child, then your first annual goal will probably consist of setting interviews with adoption agencies.

Next, break down your annual goals into monthly goals. 

For example, if your annual goal is becoming a TEFL teacher in Peru, your monthly breakdown could look like this:

• Month 1: Research reputable TEFL programs and set online appointments with TEFL advisors to decide which program you like best
• Months 2-3: Take your TEFL course, study for exams, and write essays
• Month 4: Take your final TEFL exam and wait for your certificate 
• Months 5: Edit your resume and look for a short TEFL internship
• Month 6: Intern with a TEFL academy and ask for feedback from your mentors
• Month 7: Create a lesson plan portfolio and start looking for jobs
• Month 8: Set up job interviews 
• Month 9-10: Land a job from one of your interviews and buy your plane tickets
• Month 11: Move to Peru, find a furnished apartment, and get to know your neighborhood
• Month 12: Start work at your new job as a TEFL teacher 

5. Research how to reach your goals

Next, research the best ways to reach your goals. 

If you plan on moving to Peru, are there some YouTube channels you can check out with tips on how to move? If you plan on creating a start-up, can you meet with some start-up experts that can mentor you? If you plan on learning how to bake macarons, is there a French macaron cookbook you can buy?

6. Adjust and revisit as needed

Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. While the 5 year plan is designed to help you stay focused and persist despite bumps and detours, sometimes the unexpected is you.

As you start working on your goals, you may realize that your interests and passions don't quite align. This is where self-directed learning can help.

Plan for periodic review, reflection, and adjustment as part of life. If your long-range plan still feels right, zoom in to your monthly goals. Decide if your monthly goals are working or if you need to adjust them.

For example, you might find that trying to conduct online interviews with a Peruvian academy is impossible. So you could decide to fly out early to meet directors in person instead. 

You may also decide that creating weekly or even daily goals is essential to hitting your monthly goals.

Revisit and revise your plan as often as needed (at least once a year). You might be surprised at how fast you reach some goals while other goals might take a bit longer than expected.

Here's an example of a 5 year plan for a student interested in being a Certified Public Accountant (CPA):

Here’s a personal 5 year plan example for someone interested in becoming fluent in Spanish:

Creating a 5 year plan is one of the best ways to see your dreams come to life. 

At BetterUp, we love seeing individuals reach their fullest potential and achieve their dreams. Request a demo today to find out more.

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Maggie Wooll, MBA

Maggie Wooll is a researcher, author, and speaker focused on the evolving future of work. Formerly the lead researcher at the Deloitte Center for the Edge, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Maggie is passionate about creating better work and greater opportunities for all.

The 3 year plan: Build a roadmap to success

Why take a gap year 12 reasons and planning tips, how to write a 10 year plan (with examples) and reach your goals, measuring the impact of coaching for frontline healthcare workers and educators, the 3 big well-being drops (and recoveries) of 2020, looking back, leaping forward: betterup coaches offer advice for this new year, 20 books for personal growth in 2024, why you need a self-care plan (and 5 ways to get started), how to get your life together in 10 simple steps, similar articles, top 15 professional goals and how to achieve them, create a networking plan in 7 easy steps, online yoga classes: starting now in a living room near you, how to make an action plan to achieve your goals and follow it, what is a short-term goal 44 examples to jump-start your year, 15 leadership challenges you need to take this year, what is a career statement, and should you write one, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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How to Create a 5-Year Business Plan in 8 Easy Steps

• March 11, 2024

12 Min Read

As an entrepreneur or a business owner, you know it can be challenging enough to predict business growth for the long term. And the business decisions you make today will shape your company’s future.

Well, having a strategic plan for the next three or even five years will guide you toward long-term business goals and increase the potential for success.

So, why take a chance? Keep a solid five-year business plan with you!

Need help writing a business plan from scratch? Don’t worry;  we’re here to support you with our 5-year business plan template .

This will help you learn more about the business plan for 5 years and what components you should include in it. Also, it allows you to organize ideas, set realistic growth targets, and refine your business strategy that will attract investors.

Sounds good, right? Let’s get started.

What is a 5 Year Business Plan?

A 5-year business plan is a professional document that serves as a strategic roadmap for your company’s future. It outlines business goals, strategies, financial projections, and growth plans for the next five years. 

It helps you set clear objectives, define target customers, allocate resources effectively, mitigate risks, adapt to changing market conditions, and make informed decisions.

Ultimately, a well-developed 5-year plan keeps you on track and drives sustainable growth and profitability over the specified timeframe.

Why do you need a 5 year business plan?

Writing a solid business plan is one of the most important aspects of your entrepreneurial journey.

A 5-year business plan gives you a structural framework to think strategically about your company’s plans over the next few years. It helps you organize your business idea and guide your strategic decision-making.

The following are a few key reasons why it’s valuable to have a 5-year business plan:

Highlight your long-term vision

A 5-year plan helps you articulate your long-term vision and define a set of strategic goals for your business over the next five years. This will allow you to stay focused on your objectives and make smart decisions to navigate the complexities of your business environment.

Build investor confidence

If you’re looking for investors or stakeholders to fund your business expansion, a well-written 5-year plan is necessary. It demonstrates your commitment to long-term growth and assures investors that your business will make profits. So, this will increase their confidence and belief in your long-term strategy.

Mitigate potential risks

Analyzing and identifying potential risks is the key aspect of any business. So, an actionable plan helps you develop strategies to mitigate those risks and ensure your business continuity. If there is economic volatility, regulatory transitions, or technical disruptions, a 5-year business plan helps you anticipate and prepare for business challenges.

Promote strategic planning

A good 5-year business plan enables you to think about the business and how to attain sustainable growth and success over the next few years. It also helps you make strategic hiring decisions and anticipate future staffing needs. By identifying market trends, competitors, and internal capabilities, you can enhance strategies to capitalize on opportunities and reduce potential risks.

Now that you know why a business plan is necessary, it’s time to understand what to include in a detailed 5-year plan.

What to include in your detailed five-year business plan

1. executive summary.

An executive summary is a brief introduction to your 5-year business plan and summarizes each component you mentioned in the document.

Though it is the first section, it is written in the last, since it provides a high-level overview of the complete business plan.

The executive summary is the introductory section of the plan, so its primary goal is to quickly attract readers and convince them to delve further into the rest of the plan.

Here are a few details you may consider including in your executive summary:

• A quick overview of your business idea and objectives
• Your company’s mission and vision statements
• Industry analysis and market research
• Sales and marketing plan
• Key performance indicators
• Introduction of your management team
• Financial forecasts for the next five years

Remember that you keep your summary simple, concise, and compelling enough to build investors or readers trust.

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2. Business Overview

As its name indicates, the business overview section provides a detailed description of your company. It covers all the essential information, from a business idea to its long-term goals.

Since you’ll give a brief company description in the executive summary, this chapter would be an expansion on it, providing an in-depth understanding of your business.

So, this section makes it easier for readers or potential business partners to quickly understand and confirm the nature of your business, such as what your company does, who the potential customers are, and how you plan to reach your objectives.

You may include all the following crucial elements in this section:

• The type of small business you operate
• A brief history or background details of your business
• Achievements or milestones you’ve achieved
• Business legal structure(s-corp, LLC, sole proprietorship, etc.)
• Mission statement
• Short-term goals and long-term objectives

3. Market Analysis

Industry analysis and market research is a detailed breakdown of the external business environment. It provides a thorough understanding of the specific industry or sector in which your business will operate.

This section helps your readers or potential investors to easily understand the broader industry, target customers, emerging trends, and market demands.

Apart from that, it helps you and your team to analyze and identify the untapped key areas in the market and develop strategies to stand out from the competitors.

Here are some specific details you may include:

• Market size and growth potential
• Target market
• Ideal customers, along with their preferences and buying habits
• Competitors’ research and SWOT analysis
• Industry trends
• Regulatory environment

4. Product and Services

In the product and services section, you may provide details of your product or service range, main features, pricing, and more. It helps you demonstrate the current capabilities of your business and highlight the USPs.

So, you may consider adding the below points in this section:

• Product/service description
• Pricing details
• Quality standards
• Future product development plan

While you’re planning how to start your own business, you have to explore the market and determine how your offerings will encounter customer problems and satisfy their needs better than competitors.

5. Sales and Marketing Strategies

Your sales and marketing plan outlines the strategies you’ll use to reach the target audience and how you’ll bring more customers by promoting your products/services to them.

A well-written marketing plan will encourage you to create effective campaigns and simplify your marketing efforts while maintaining the marketing budget and maximizing return on investment.

Thus, you may describe a list of sales strategies and promotional tactics to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

Here’s a list of key components you may include in this section:

• Target audience
• Marketing strategy
• Sales approach
• Sales and marketing goals
• Customer retention program

6. Operations Plan

As you’ve mentioned your business goals in the previous sections, now it’s time to define how you’ll meet those goals.

In your operations plan, you’ll need to outline all the details of everyday business operations and activities. This will help you and your team to define responsibilities, daily tasks, and short-term goals you plan to achieve, keeping track of your future goals.

Well, here is some distinct information you should include in the operations plan:

• Staffing and training
• Operational process
• Supply chain & Inventory management
• Facilities and equipment

Note that your operations plan is a living document, you may adjust and update it as needed.

7. Management Team

A well-trained and experienced management team is crucial for driving your business ahead.

So, highlight your business owners and key executives in this section, along with their roles & responsibilities, educational qualifications, industry experience, and how you plan to compensate them.

It allows readers to easily understand your management team’s background, skills, and expertise that help you grow your company and make informed business decisions.

The following information you may consider including in the management team section:

• Company owner profile
• Resume-styled summary of key members
• Organizational structure
• Compensation plan
• Advisory board members

8. 5-year Financial Projections

A financial plan is the most crucial aspect of your five-year business plan, as potential investors or lenders want to know more about your business profit margins.

It provides a detailed blueprint of your business’s 5-year financial reports broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year of operation and then annually.

While creating an in-depth financial plan for the next 5-years, you’ll need to highlight all the below factors:

• Revenue forecast
• Cost estimates
• Profitability analysis
• Cash flow projections
• Break-even analysis
• Business ratios

In addition to that, if you’re seeking funding or investors, you will need to summarize exactly how much money you need, how you plan to use these funds, and how you pay it back.

Well, having realistic financial forecasts at your hand can help you evaluate your business’s financial health and growth potential in the long run.

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Tips for creating a five-year business plan

Now that you understand what to include in a business plan, it’s time to consider how you’ll actually create the document. Here are some tips for drafting a comprehensive five-year business plan.

This will help you prepare a business plan that serves its purpose and can be an easy reference for the years ahead.

Conduct thorough analysis

Conduct a thorough analysis of the market, competition, internal capabilities, and the current financial situation of your business before you finalize your five-year plan. Also, identify your strengths and address weaknesses. This helps you pinpoint potential risks and opportunities that impact your business and strategic decisions for the next few years.

Set realistic financial goals

While setting your business objectives, it’s important to define specific, measurable, and achievable goals that you can accomplish in the years ahead. Try to consider a few factors, such as marker conditions, emerging trends, and your business capabilities when setting revenue targets, profit margins, and other financial milestones. This will help you stay focused and motivated.

Demonstrate the potential for ROI

A 5-year plan should effectively show the investors and stakeholders that your business has the potential for return on investment(ROI). It will help you outline how your strategic initiatives will generate revenue and profitability over the next five years. So you can provide a clear opportunity for investment and support.

Develop contingency plans

Developing a contingency plan is crucial for the potential challenges that may arise over the next few years. You can consider several factors like economic downturns, supply chain disruptions, regulatory changes, or other unforeseen events. This will mitigate the impact of these risks and ensure that your business runs smoothly even in challenging circumstances.

Ensure clear communicate

A detailed five-year plan allows entrepreneurs and business owners to clearly communicate their business goals, milestones, and strategies. So this will be easy to understand for all the stakeholders, including potential partners, investors, and employees. You can also use charts, graphs, and visuals to share intricate details and make your plan more compelling.

Review and update regularly

Once you have crafted your entire business plan, you should regularly schedule reviews to assess progress, update assumptions, and update strategies as needed. Since the business plan is a living document, it evolves over time based on new facts or varying business environments. By revising and updating your plan, you make sure that it will remain relevant and effective.

So, try to keep in mind these few factors while creating a 5-year plan. Now, let’s move forward and explore several types of business plan templates.

Examples of 5-year business plan templates

As there are several types of 5-year business plan templates available, no two business owners build the same 5-year plans.

This is so because the business plan template that works best for your company depends on the age of your business, objectives, and the purpose behind using the plan.

Here are a few examples that are tailored to different aspects of business planning:

Traditional 5-year business plan template

This kind of business plan template follows the standard format as you establish a new business or startup, define the target audience, and market your products/services. It includes lengthy sections about company overview, market analysis, marketing and sales strategies, or financial forecasting. So, this will provide a detailed plan for your business over the next 5 years.

Strategic plan for growth and expansion

When you’ve been running the business for a few years and thinking about expansion or growth, a strategic growth plan might be your choice. It will help you approach your growth strategically and provide the best opportunities to identify risks and techniques to mitigate them. So, this type of template helps align your business activities with long-term objectives.

Simple one-page plan

As the name suggests, it is a single-page business plan that helps you provide a high-level overview of your business to the partners, investors, or suppliers. Since it is shorter in length, it highlights the most crucial points, and even writing a one-page business plan can be much simpler and quicker compared to the traditional business plan.

Start preparing your business plan

Finally, with the help of details and resources provided in this guide, you’re well-equipped to start an exciting journey of preparing a successful 5-year business plan.

Whether you’re an experienced entrepreneur or a new business owner, you can consider using a business plan app like Upmetrics to streamline your business planning approach.

Upmetrics is a user-friendly platform that provides easy-to-follow guides, 400+ business plan examples, and AI support to create an actionable plan in manageable steps. It also helps you develop realistic financial projections if needed or when you feel stuck with a financial plan.

So, start writing your plan today and bring your vision to life!

Make your plan in half the time & twice the impact with Upmetrics

Fill-in-the-blanks, AI-assistance, and automatic financials make it easy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it good to make a 5 year plan.

Creating a 5-year or long-term plan is highly beneficial for your businesses. It helps you set clear goals, anticipate potential risks & challenges, develop realistic financial outlook, demonstrate growth potential to investors, and build their confidence. So, it guides you in the right direction to attain sustainable growth and success over the long term. 

How much detail should I include in the financial projections?

The following are a few key elements that you need to include in your financial projections:

• Sales forecast
• Expenses budget
• Cash flow statement
• Profit and loss statement (Income statement)
• Balance sheet

How long should my 5-year business plan be?

The length of a 5-year business plan typically ranges from 15-35 pages and beyond as it depends on your purpose, business concept, objectives, resources you plan to use, and the strategies you will need to achieve your business goals.

Can I write a business plan myself?

Of course, you can write your business plan by yourself. If you are new to the planning process, you may get help from various resources available. You may consider including business plan software, online guides, templates, strategic planning sessions, and professional writers.

What's the best way to format my 5-year plan?

The best way to format your 5-year plan depends on your specific needs, target market, and business strategy. You may follow the below guidelines to create a professional-looking business plan:

• Write a compelling executive summary
• Provide a detailed company overview
• Conduct thorough market and industry analysis
• Describe the products and services
• Outline sales and marketing strategy
• Summarize operations plan
• Introduce your management team
• Present 5-year financial forecast

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

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How to Write a 5-Year Business Plan: A Guide to Creating a Good Business Future

Learning how to write an effective five-year business plan helps you manage, and optimize your business operations for the better.

Jenna Bunnell

Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted multi line phone system for small business that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives.

To run and grow a successful business, planning is crucial. 

A typical business plan covers the next one to three years and details your target audience, marketing strategy, and products or services for that time period. A five-year business plan expands on this premise, and predicts what your business might do in the next five years. 

Learning how to write an effective five-year business plan helps you manage, and optimize your business operations for the better. Without a firm business plan, you risk straying from your intended course. 

Establishing a long-term plan determines your business’s priorities and aspirations, including several important milestones. A long-term business ensures you are improving business time management skills. 

To get cracking with developing your ideal five-year business plan, follow this simple guide to success.  ​​​​​​​

Why Create a 5-Year Business Plan?

Suppose you implement a robust five-year business plan at some point in your business’s lifetime. In that case, it will provide valuable insight into how your business is likely to fare over the coming years. 

In addition to long-term business insights, your business plan helps with:

An important part of your business plan is thorough market research, and measuring what your competitors are doing. Conducting this analysis allows you to make strategic decisions about moving your business forward. 

Strategic Planning

The creation of your five-year business plan solidifies the ideas you have for your business, and what you need in place to see those ideas come to fruition. 

Partnerships

If you can envision future collaboration opportunities, your five-year business plan is a great resource for other companies to learn about your business, and decide if they want to go into partnership with you. 

A strategic five-year business plan helps you encourage data-driven business growth in the long-term, and assists with decisions about the company’s future. Businesses that create long-term business plans are good at strategic thinking and prepared for potential obstacles their companies may face. 

What Should a 5-Year Business Plan Include?

A traditional five-year business plan should include business strategies, financial projections, competitive analysis, SWOT analysis, and future roadmaps. In essence, your five-year business plan should detail your business's direction, what you think your industry will look like in five years, trend predictions, and how your business will solve your target audience’s problems.   

Your five-year business plan will probably include the following aspects; however, it may vary slightly from this outline:

• Executive Summary. A brief description of your business, and its goals. 
• Business Description. Where does your business operate, and what does it do?
• Management Team. The people who run your business.
• Products and Services. A description of your business’s offerings.  
• SWOT Analysis. Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats concerning your business. 
• Target Audience. Who buys from your business, and are there potential new audiences you want to reach?
• Competitive Analysis. Who are your competitors, and how does your business compare to them?
• Market Analysis. How does your business meet the needs of its customers?
• Marketing and Sales Plan. Plans for brand awareness, and increasing sales. 
• Financials. Profit and loss statements, and future financial projections. 
• Conclusion. An overall summary of your five-year business plan. 

How to Write a 5-Year Business Plan

Let’s look at the outline above in detail, to uncover what to include in each section. 

Executive Summary 

Write your executive summary with your business’s overview, and mission statement. Concise mission statements that reflect your business’s goals and objectives are ideal, such as these from famous brands:

“To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive, and successful.” LinkedIn “To help people worldwide plan and have the perfect trip.” Trip Advisor 

Consider writing your business’s executive summary after completing the other sections, as this element of your plan should be a complete rundown of your business. 

Business Description

This section contains all the essential information about your business, including your goals, target customers, business structure, and future restructuring plans to align with objectives. Consider why your business exists, your hopes for your business’s future, and its values to fill out this section. 

Management Team

Include a brief description of your management team’s job responsibilities, skills, and how they fit into your business. Your team can act as your business’s USP, especially if they bring unique talents to the table. 

Products and Services

A detailed description of your business’s products and services, including benefits, features, and supplier information if relevant. List potential new services or products in the early planning stages, how much revenue you plan to make from them, and how they will serve your target audience. 

SWOT Analysis

Focus on your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats. For example, strengths may include your business’s exemplary customer service. A weakness might be that you need to optimize resource scheduling . Opportunities are areas your business can explore to scale up, and threats can include opposition problems or changes in your industry. 

Target Audience

Describe your current target audience, and any potential new audiences your business plans to expand to reach. Segment your customers into demographics, behavior patterns, values, and level of education if appropriate to your business. Doing this helps readers of your five-year business plan further understand how your business plans to grow.  

Competitive Analysis

Your business plan should include information about who your competitors are, and, where your business sits compared to them. For example, SaaS businesses would conduct cloud call center software comparison research to understand the competitive landscape. Finish off with details about your competitors’ strengths, and weaknesses in this section. Competitive analysis helps you understand areas your business can win over your competitors. If their social media platforms show that their overall customer service is underperforming, you can make strides to elevate your customer service efforts, and overtake them in this area. 

Market Analysis

Research your market and write your findings, incorporating statistics, and relevant data. This area of your business plan should focus on where your business is positioned currently in the market, and your predictions for future market changes regarding your business’s strategies. Think about how big the current market is for your products or services, and this should create ideas for future product developments. 

Marketing and Sales Plan 

You need an overall plan for marketing your business’s offerings to your target audience. Include information about digital marketing plans, and opportunities to increase your brand’s reach. If you plan to explore the benefits of local phone numbers to level up your sales team’s capabilities, add this information as part of your marketing plan. 

Include details about your sales strategy, involving future staff required to meet your business’s goals. Information about sales targets is helpful in this section of your business plan.  

Financials 

Prepare a financial report demonstrating your business’s financial projections over the next five years. Your report must include anticipated revenue based on market, and competitor research. 

Conclusion 

Illustrate the key points within your five-year business plan in a neat summary. This section should reassure potential investors that your business is viable, and has solid plans for growth. 

Develop Long-term Growth Targets

While creating your five-year business plan, always have in mind where you envision your business in five years.

When writing your long-term business plan, the following questions are helpful:

• How many customers do you predict to gain in the next five years?
• What do you need to put in place to achieve that customer number?
• Do you need to consider shopify alternatives ?
• How much does your business need to earn in year three to be on track?
• Do you need to hire new staff members? If so, how many?
• Will you change your business location?
• Will you need to open up different locations for your business operations?
• Will you introduce new products or services?

Consider setting milestones for the course of your five-year business plan, as this approach is often easier to manage. 

Say your business plans to dabble in the affiliate marketing world. Investigate drop shipping vs affiliate marketing approaches to ascertain which marketing method is most beneficial for your business. Then set a milestone to join a set number of affiliate marketing programs by a specific date, review your results, and move upwards from there.  

Making a Good Business Future 

Your five-year business plan will require amendments over time. And that’s perfectly normal. As your business grows and changes, you’ll learn new things about your business’s industry, and need to alter your roadmap accordingly. 

An effective five-year business plan serves to convince investors that your business is worth investing in. It also ensures that your business moves in the right, and planned direction. 

By creating a five-year business plan now, your business stands the best chance of success for the next five years, and the future. 

About the author

Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted multi line phone system for small business that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways. Jenna Bunnell also published articles for domains such as Attention Insight and Traffit . Check out her LinkedIn profile.

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Free 5-year plan template to organize the planning process

As a business leader, you know the decisions you make today can shape the future of the company. If you want to control that trajectory, a 5-year plan template can be a useful tool. The right template helps you organize ideas, analyze data, and prioritize the goals you want to achieve — that way, you can create a framework that informs strategic decisions and guides your company toward its ultimate growth goals.

In this article, we’ll explore the parts of a 5-year plan template and discuss how to use it in your business. Then, we’ll dive into the ways you can integrate a 5-year plan into the monday.com Work OS to create a more efficient and powerful workflow.

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What is a 5-year plan template?

A 5-year plan template is a model document that helps you map out company goals and strategies for the next 5 years. Many templates contain a variety of common sections that you can edit to reflect the goals and needs of your business:

• Executive summary: Top-level overview of your objectives and strategies
• Business description:  Mission statement, description of your products and services, and an introduction to your management or leadership team
• Market analysis: Data about your industry and target audience, trends, opportunities, and competitors
• Financial information: Historical revenue, expense data, and financial projections
• Plans and objectives: Goes into detail about your short and long-term goals and sets company priorities, discusses the goals you want to achieve, and explains the strategies and methods you’ll use

The right structure for your 5-year plan template depends on your company’s specific goals. If you’re going after investors, for example, a traditional structure can help you meet expectations. If the plan is mostly for internal use, you can be more flexible and still reap the benefits of the template.

Why use a 5-year plan template?

A 5-year business plan provides a structure to help you think strategically about your company’s plans for the next few years. Use the preexisting headers to guide your discussions and spark new ideas; you can also add new sections to tailor the content to your business. When it’s time to write, the template helps you organize ideas and format them into a usable document that can provide a slew of benefits for your business.

Guide business decisions

A 5-year plan clarifies your company’s priorities, creating a set of strategic objectives that serves as a reference point when it’s time to make decisions or evaluate opportunities. If your priority is to build brand awareness among Gen Z customers, for example, you might jump at the chance to establish a presence on the hottest new social media platform. If you’re laser-focused on building the best management team in the industry, however, it would be easy to see that your resources are better spent elsewhere.

In addition to serving as a guidepost for major strategic initiatives, your 5-year plan can inform business decisions of all sizes. Look to it when you’re:

• Making a budget
• Assessing the organizational structure
• Designing a marketing plan
• Adding or removing products and services
• Writing business policies
• Setting up a technology infrastructure

Enable strategic hiring and training

A solid 5-year plan makes it easier to anticipate upcoming personnel needs, so you can make strategic hiring decisions. If you have limited resources, the plan can also help you figure out which tasks require a full-time employee and which ones you can outsource.

Are you thinking about training your existing employees? To determine the courses and topics with the highest ROI, compare the skills and abilities of your workforce against the practical needs outlined in the 5-year plan. This process highlights skill gaps and exposes the most urgent training opportunities.

Stay focused on goals

A lot can happen in 5 years — managers come and go, market conditions shift, and unexpected events can arise out of nowhere. In the midst of all that change, a well-written 5-year plan is a constant. It keeps your team focused on the same long-term goals, regardless of turnover. This unified approach can ensure that you’re always making progress in the right direction.

Prepare for challenges

Writing a 5-year plan requires you to analyze the business and the industry. As you dig into available data, you gain a deeper understanding of your customers, operations, competitors, and the market itself. With that knowledge, you’re better positioned to anticipate potential challenges and roadblocks. Awareness is everything; it helps you spot early warning signs, so you can start preparing the company to adjust short-term goals and adapt quickly.

Build confidence among investors

If you’re thinking about seeking investments to fund business expansion, a 5-year plan is essential. A thorough, well-written document reassures investors that you’ve done your due diligence and demonstrates that your company is positioned to make a profit. A template can help you examine and analyze each part of the business systematically to ensure the plan addresses investors’ top concerns.

When you’re ready to grow, a professional 5-year plan template can help you woo investors.

What are some examples of 5-year plan templates?

No two companies have identical 5-year plans; the template that works best for your organization depends on the age of the business, the nature of your goal, and how you’re planning to utilize the plan.

Startup plan

A 5-year plan creates a roadmap to follow as you establish a startup, build an audience, and stake out a place in the industry. This type of template often contains lengthy sections about marketing, sales, and product or service development; it also tends to be heavy on research and analysis.

Growth and expansion plan

When your company has been in business for a few years, you might start to think about expanding. A 5-year plan helps you approach growth strategically; it’s a good way to identify the best opportunities and find ways to minimize risk. These plans often analyze competitors and discuss the costs and benefits of different growth options.

One-page plan

Whether you’re growing a startup or expanding an established business, a traditional 5-year plan contains a high level of detail. The one-page business plan  version provides a quick overview — it highlights the most important points of each section. Instead of explaining your market research and explaining how they inform each goal, for example, you could note the key findings and include a prioritized list of goals.

5-year plan template on monday.com

Whether you’re creating a plan for an arts nonprofit or an engineering firm, the 5-Year Plan Template on monday.com can help you navigate the process. A color-coded header system enables you to organize and identify top-level sections. Within each one, you can add descriptions and build out a list of objectives, goals, manager profiles, financial projections, and other details.

The monday.com template adds an extra level of detail and functionality to your 5-year plan. For each item in a section, you can add a variety of columns that track the status of a project, identify relevant team members, designate a timeline, or set a budget. You can even add a column that links critical files to ensure easy access for all of your stakeholders. When you start working toward the goals in your plan, monday.com offers different Board Views , project management tools, and automations to streamline your workflow. Your template also integrates seamlessly with Work OS, an open platform that enables you to create and customize the tools you need to monitor and run your business.

A 5-year plan is just one of the documents you need to map out and execute a long-term business strategy. The template library at monday.com includes a variety of options to help manage your company’s growth and development.

Related templates on monday.com

Marketing plan.

If marketing plays a role in your 5-year plan, consider integrating the Marketing Plan Template  into your strategic planning sessions. With sections for different projects and columns that enable you to assign tasks and monitor progress, it can also serve as a project management tool.

Recruitment process

Manage the hiring goals in your 5-year plan with the help of the Recruitment Process Template . It tracks each applicant through the different stages of the process and enables you to track referral sources to inform your job-posting strategy. Status reports for interviews and hiring decisions ensure efficient communication between departments.

Frequently asked questions

What is a 5-year plan.

A 5-year plan is a document that outlines your company’s goals and strategies for the upcoming years. It also provides information to support the plan, such as a market analysis and financial projections.

What should I include in a 5-year plan?

When you’re writing a 5-year plan, include an executive summary, a description of the business, and an analysis of the market, company finances , competitors, and customers. Follow that up with a section that lays out the goals, objectives, and strategies your company will pursue over the next 5 years.

What are 5-year goals examples?

Examples of 5-year goals might include developing new products, expanding to a new location, or reaching new audience segments. You might also set internal goals, such as improving the company culture or building the most talented workforce in the industry.

Using the 5-year plan template for sustainable growth

As you navigate the strategic-planning process, a 5-year plan template can help organize your ideas and set thoughtful, research-backed goals. You’ll emerge with a document that guides business decisions and unites employees around a common purpose. With monday.com, you can incorporate the 5-year plan template into your Work OS to manage projects, set smaller goals, and track progress toward your high-level objectives.

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24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

Published: February 06, 2024

I believe that reading sample business plans is essential when writing your own.

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As you explore business plan examples from real companies and brands, it’s easier for you to learn how to write a good one.

But what does a good business plan look like? And how do you write one that’s both viable and convincing. I’ll walk you through the ideal business plan format along with some examples to help you get started.

Table of Contents

Business Plan Format

Business plan types, sample business plan templates, top business plan examples.

Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game. To me, the same logic applies to business.

If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare for battle before breaking into a market.

Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.

With so much at stake, I’m sure you’re wondering where to begin.

Free Business Plan Template

The essential document for starting a business -- custom built for your needs.

• Outline your idea.
• Pitch to investors.
• Secure funding.
• Get to work!

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Fill out the form to get your free template.

First, you’ll want to nail down your formatting. Most business plans include the following sections.

1. Executive Summary

I’d say the executive summary is the most important section of the entire business plan. 

Why? Essentially, it's the overview or introduction, written in a way to grab readers' attention and guide them through the rest of the business plan. This is important, because a business plan can be dozens or hundreds of pages long.

There are two main elements I’d recommend including in your executive summary:

Company Description

This is the perfect space to highlight your company’s mission statement and goals, a brief overview of your history and leadership, and your top accomplishments as a business.

Tell potential investors who you are and why what you do matters. Naturally, they’re going to want to know who they’re getting into business with up front, and this is a great opportunity to showcase your impact.

Need some extra help firming up those business goals? Check out HubSpot Academy’s free course to help you set goals that matter — I’d highly recommend it

Products and Services

To piggyback off of the company description, be sure to incorporate an overview of your offerings. This doesn’t have to be extensive — just another chance to introduce your industry and overall purpose as a business.

In addition to the items above, I recommend including some information about your financial projections and competitive advantage here too.:

Keep in mind you'll cover many of these topics in more detail later on in the business plan. So, keep the executive summary clear and brief, and only include the most important takeaways.

Executive Summary Business Plan Examples

This example was created with HubSpot’s business plan template:

This executive summary is so good to me because it tells potential investors a short story while still covering all of the most important details.

Image Source

Tips for Writing Your Executive Summary

• Start with a strong introduction of your company, showcase your mission and impact, and outline the products and services you provide.
• Clearly define a problem, and explain how your product solves that problem, and show why the market needs your business.
• Be sure to highlight your value proposition, market opportunity, and growth potential.
• Keep it concise and support ideas with data.
• Customize your summary to your audience. For example, emphasize finances and return on investment for venture capitalists.

Check out our tips for writing an effective executive summary for more guidance.

2. Market Opportunity

This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market.

The main question I’d ask myself here is this: Where is the gap in the current industry, and how will my product fill that gap?

More specifically, here’s what I’d include in this section:

• The size of the market
• Current or potential market share
• Trends in the industry and consumer behavior
• Where the gap is
• What caused the gap
• How you intend to fill it

To get a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, you'll want to conduct a TAM, SAM, and SOM analysis and perform market research on your industry.

You may also benefit from creating a SWOT analysis to get some of the insights for this section.

Market Opportunity Business Plan Example

I like this example because it uses critical data to underline the size of the potential market and what part of that market this service hopes to capture.

Tips for Writing Your Market Opportunity Section

• Focus on demand and potential for growth.
• Use market research, surveys, and industry trend data to support your market forecast and projections.
• Add a review of regulation shifts, tech advances, and consumer behavior changes.
• Refer to reliable sources.
• Showcase how your business can make the most of this opportunity.

3. Competitive Landscape

Since we’re already speaking of market share, you'll also need to create a section that shares details on who the top competitors are.

After all, your customers likely have more than one brand to choose from, and you'll want to understand exactly why they might choose one over another.

My favorite part of performing a competitive analysis is that it can help you uncover:

• Industry trends that other brands may not be utilizing
• Strengths in your competition that may be obstacles to handle
• Weaknesses in your competition that may help you develop selling points
• The unique proposition you bring to the market that may resonate with customers

Competitive Landscape Business Plan Example

I like how the competitive landscape section of this business plan below shows a clear outline of who the top competitors are.

It also highlights specific industry knowledge and the importance of location, which shows useful experience in this specific industry. 

This can help build trust in your ability to execute your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Competitive Landscape

• Complete in-depth research, then emphasize your most important findings.
• Compare your unique selling proposition (USP) to your direct and indirect competitors.
• Show a clear and realistic plan for product and brand differentiation.
• Look for specific advantages and barriers in the competitive landscape. Then, highlight how that information could impact your business.
• Outline growth opportunities from a competitive perspective.
• Add customer feedback and insights to support your competitive analysis.

4. Target Audience

Use this section to describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience?

If your immediate answer is "everyone," you'll need to dig deeper. Here are some questions I’d ask myself here:

• What demographics will most likely need/buy your product or service?
• What are the psychographics of this audience? (Desires, triggering events, etc.)
• Why are your offerings valuable to them?

I’d also recommend building a buyer persona to get in the mindset of your ideal customers and be clear on why you're targeting them.

Target Audience Business Plan Example

I like the example below because it uses in-depth research to draw conclusions about audience priorities. It also analyzes how to create the right content for this audience.

Tips for Writing Your Target Audience Section

• Include details on the size and growth potential of your target audience.
• Figure out and refine the pain points for your target audience , then show why your product is a useful solution.
• Describe your targeted customer acquisition strategy in detail.
• Share anticipated challenges your business may face in acquiring customers and how you plan to address them.
• Add case studies, testimonials, and other data to support your target audience ideas.
• Remember to consider niche audiences and segments of your target audience in your business plan.

5. Marketing Strategy

Here, you'll discuss how you'll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy. I’d suggest including information:

• Your brand positioning vision and how you'll cultivate it
• The goal targets you aim to achieve
• The metrics you'll use to measure success
• The channels and distribution tactics you'll use

I think it’s helpful to have a marketing plan built out in advance to make this part of your business plan easier.

Marketing Strategy Business Plan Example

This business plan example includes the marketing strategy for the town of Gawler.

In my opinion, it really works because it offers a comprehensive picture of how they plan to use digital marketing to promote the community.

Tips for Writing Your Marketing Strategy

• Include a section about how you believe your brand vision will appeal to customers.
• Add the budget and resources you'll need to put your plan in place.
• Outline strategies for specific marketing segments.
• Connect strategies to earlier sections like target audience and competitive analysis.
• Review how your marketing strategy will scale with the growth of your business.
• Cover a range of channels and tactics to highlight your ability to adapt your plan in the face of change.

6. Key Features and Benefits

At some point in your business plan, you'll need to review the key features and benefits of your products and/or services.

Laying these out can give readers an idea of how you're positioning yourself in the market and the messaging you're likely to use. It can even help them gain better insight into your business model.

Key Features and Benefits Business Plan Example

In my opinion, the example below does a great job outlining products and services for this business, along with why these qualities will attract the audience.

Tips for Writing Your Key Features and Benefits

• Emphasize why and how your product or service offers value to customers.
• Use metrics and testimonials to support the ideas in this section.
• Talk about how your products and services have the potential to scale.
• Think about including a product roadmap.
• Focus on customer needs, and how the features and benefits you are sharing meet those needs.
• Offer proof of concept for your ideas, like case studies or pilot program feedback.
• Proofread this section carefully, and remove any jargon or complex language.

7. Pricing and Revenue

This is where you'll discuss your cost structure and various revenue streams. Your pricing strategy must be solid enough to turn a profit while staying competitive in the industry. 

For this reason, here’s what I’d might outline in this section:

• The specific pricing breakdowns per product or service
• Why your pricing is higher or lower than your competition's
• (If higher) Why customers would be willing to pay more
• (If lower) How you're able to offer your products or services at a lower cost
• When you expect to break even, what margins do you expect, etc?

Pricing and Revenue Business Plan Example

I like how this business plan example begins with an overview of the business revenue model, then shows proposed pricing for key products.

Tips for Writing Your Pricing and Revenue Section

• Get specific about your pricing strategy. Specifically, how you connect that strategy to customer needs and product value.
• If you are asking a premium price, share unique features or innovations that justify that price point.
• Show how you plan to communicate pricing to customers.
• Create an overview of every revenue stream for your business and how each stream adds to your business model as a whole.
• Share plans to develop new revenue streams in the future.
• Show how and whether pricing will vary by customer segment and how pricing aligns with marketing strategies.
• Restate your value proposition and explain how it aligns with your revenue model.

8. Financials

To me, this section is particularly informative for investors and leadership teams to figure out funding strategies, investment opportunities, and more.

 According to Forbes , you'll want to include three main things:

• Profit/Loss Statement - This answers the question of whether your business is currently profitable.
• Cash Flow Statement - This details exactly how much cash is incoming and outgoing to give insight into how much cash a business has on hand.
• Balance Sheet - This outlines assets, liabilities, and equity, which gives insight into how much a business is worth.

While some business plans might include more or less information, these are the key details I’d include in this section.

Financials Business Plan Example

This balance sheet is a great example of level of detail you’ll need to include in the financials section of your business plan.

Tips for Writing Your Financials Section

• Growth potential is important in this section too. Using your data, create a forecast of financial performance in the next three to five years.
• Include any data that supports your projections to assure investors of the credibility of your proposal.
• Add a break-even analysis to show that your business plan is financially practical. This information can also help you pivot quickly as your business grows.
• Consider adding a section that reviews potential risks and how sensitive your plan is to changes in the market.
• Triple-check all financial information in your plan for accuracy.
• Show how any proposed funding needs align with your plans for growth.

As you create your business plan, keep in mind that each of these sections will be formatted differently. Some may be in paragraph format, while others could be charts or graphs.

The formats above apply to most types of business plans. That said, the format and structure of your plan will vary by your goals for that plan. 

So, I’ve added a quick review of different business plan types. For a more detailed overview, check out this post .

1. Startups

Startup business plans are for proposing new business ideas.

If you’re planning to start a small business, preparing a business plan is crucial. The plan should include all the major factors of your business.

You can check out this guide for more detailed business plan inspiration .

2. Feasibility Studies

Feasibility business plans focus on that business's product or service. Feasibility plans are sometimes added to startup business plans. They can also be a new business plan for an already thriving organization.

3. Internal Use

You can use internal business plans to share goals, strategies, or performance updates with stakeholders. In my opinion, internal business plans are useful for alignment and building support for ambitious goals.

4. Strategic Initiatives

Another business plan that's often for sharing internally is a strategic business plan. This plan covers long-term business objectives that might not have been included in the startup business plan.

5. Business Acquisition or Repositioning

When a business is moving forward with an acquisition or repositioning, it may need extra structure and support. These types of business plans expand on a company's acquisition or repositioning strategy.

Growth sometimes just happens as a business continues operations. But more often, a business needs to create a structure with specific targets to meet set goals for expansion. This business plan type can help a business focus on short-term growth goals and align resources with those goals.

Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some of my favorite templates.

1. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan

Download a free, editable one-page business plan template..

The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot and is perfect for businesses of any size — no matter how many strategies we still have to develop.

Fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline give this one-page business plan a framework for how to build your brand and what tasks to keep track of as you grow.

Then, as the business matures, you can expand on your original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.

Why I Like It

This one-page business plan is a fantastic choice for the new business owner who doesn’t have the time or resources to draft a full-blown business plan. It includes all the essential sections in an accessible, bullet-point-friendly format. That way, you can get the broad strokes down before honing in on the details.

2. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

We also created a business plan template for entrepreneurs.

The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business. You’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it.

There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.

Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a workable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.

This business plan kit is essential for the budding entrepreneur who needs a more extensive document to share with investors and other stakeholders.

It not only includes sections for your executive summary, product line, market analysis, marketing plan, and sales plan, but it also offers hands-on guidance for filling out those sections.

3. LiveFlow’s Financial Planning Template with built-in automation

This free template from LiveFlow aims to make it easy for businesses to create a financial plan and track their progress on a monthly basis.

The P&L Budget versus Actual format allows users to track their revenue, cost of sales, operating expenses, operating profit margin, net profit, and more.

The summary dashboard aggregates all of the data put into the financial plan sheet and will automatically update when changes are made.

Instead of wasting hours manually importing your data to your spreadsheet, LiveFlow can also help you to automatically connect your accounting and banking data directly to your spreadsheet, so your numbers are always up-to-date.

With the dashboard, you can view your runway, cash balance, burn rate, gross margins, and other metrics. Having a simple way to track everything in one place will make it easier to complete the financials section of your business plan.

This is a fantastic template to track performance and alignment internally and to create a dependable process for documenting financial information across the business. It’s highly versatile and beginner-friendly.

It’s especially useful if you don’t have an accountant on the team. (I always recommend you do, but for new businesses, having one might not be possible.)

4. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’s financial plan and financial statements.

After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.

I absolutely love this business plan template because of its ease-of-use and hands-on instructions (in addition to its finance-centric components). If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of writing an entire business plan, consider using this template to help you with the process.

6. Harvard Business Review’s "How to Write a Winning Business Plan"

Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level — it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.

With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of " Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum ", you'll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service.

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

7. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business.

Fortunately, with HubSpot's comprehensive guide to starting a business, you'll learn how to map out all the details by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.

If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot's guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, and fund your business. It will also give small business tax information and includes marketing, sales, and service tips.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of starting a business, in addition to writing your business plan, with a high level of exactitude and detail. So if you’re in the midst of starting your business, this is an excellent guide for you.

It also offers other resources you might need, such as market analysis templates.

8. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

PandaDoc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty-gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to its success.

This template has two things I love: comprehensiveness and in-depth instructions. Plus, it’s synced with PandaDoc’s e-signature software so that you and other stakeholders can sign it with ease. For that reason, I especially love it for those starting a business with a partner or with a board of directors.

9. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan.

Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need — a traditional or lean start-up plan.

Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.

We love both of the SBA’s templates because of their versatility. You can choose between two options and use the existing content in the templates to flesh out your own plan. Plus, if needed, you can get a free business counselor to help you along the way.

I’ve compiled some completed business plan samples to help you get an idea of how to customize a plan for your business.

I chose different types of business plan ideas to expand your imagination. Some are extensive, while others are fairly simple.

Let’s take a look.

1. LiveFlow

One of the major business expenses is marketing. How you handle your marketing reflects your company’s revenue.

I included this business plan to show you how you can ensure your marketing team is aligned with your overall business plan to get results. The plan also shows you how to track even the smallest metrics of your campaigns, like ROI and payback periods instead of just focusing on big metrics like gross and revenue.

Fintech startup, LiveFlow, allows users to sync real-time data from its accounting services, payment platforms, and banks into custom reports. This eliminates the task of pulling reports together manually, saving teams time and helping automate workflows.

"Using this framework over a traditional marketing plan will help you set a profitable marketing strategy taking things like CAC, LTV, Payback period, and P&L into consideration," explains LiveFlow co-founder, Lasse Kalkar .

When it came to including marketing strategy in its business plan, LiveFlow created a separate marketing profit and loss statement (P&L) to track how well the company was doing with its marketing initiatives.

This is a great approach, allowing businesses to focus on where their marketing dollars are making the most impact. Having this information handy will enable you to build out your business plan’s marketing section with confidence. LiveFlow has shared the template here . You can test it for yourself.

2. Lula Body

Sometimes all you need is a solid mission statement and core values to guide you on how to go about everything. You do this by creating a business plan revolving around how to fulfill your statement best.

For example, Patagonia is an eco-friendly company, so their plan discusses how to make the best environmentally friendly products without causing harm.

A good mission statement  should not only resonate with consumers but should also serve as a core value compass for employees as well.

Patagonia has one of the most compelling mission statements I’ve seen:

"Together, let’s prioritise purpose over profit and protect this wondrous planet, our only home."

It reels you in from the start, and the environmentally friendly theme continues throughout the rest of the statement.

This mission goes on to explain that they are out to "Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature."

Their mission statement is compelling and detailed, with each section outlining how they will accomplish their goal.

4. Vesta Home Automation

This executive summary for a smart home device startup is part of a business plan created by students at Mount Royal University .

While it lacks some of the sleek visuals of the templates above, its executive summary does a great job of demonstrating how invested they are in the business.

Right away, they mention they’ve invested $200,000 into the company already, which shows investors they have skin in the game and aren’t just looking for someone else to foot the bill.

This is the kind of business plan you need when applying for business funds. It clearly illustrates the expected future of the company and how the business has been coming along over the years.

5. NALB Creative Center

This fictional business plan for an art supply store includes everything one might need in a business plan: an executive summary, a company summary, a list of services, a market analysis summary, and more.

One of its most notable sections is its market analysis summary, which includes an overview of the population growth in the business’ target geographical area, as well as a breakdown of the types of potential customers they expect to welcome at the store. 

This sort of granular insight is essential for understanding and communicating your business’s growth potential. Plus, it lays a strong foundation for creating relevant and useful buyer personas .

It’s essential to keep this information up-to-date as your market and target buyer changes. For that reason, you should carry out market research as often as possible to ensure that you’re targeting the correct audience and sharing accurate information with your investors.

Due to its comprehensiveness, it’s an excellent example to follow if you’re opening a brick-and-mortar store and need to get external funding to start your business .

6. Curriculum Companion Suites (CSS)

If you’re looking for a SaaS business plan example, look no further than this business plan for a fictional educational software company called Curriculum Companion Suites. 

Like the business plan for the NALB Creative Center, it includes plenty of information for prospective investors and other key stakeholders in the business.

One of the most notable features of this business plan is the executive summary, which includes an overview of the product, market, and mission.

The first two are essential for software companies because the product offering is so often at the forefront of the company’s strategy. Without that information being immediately available to investors and executives, then you risk writing an unfocused business plan.

It’s essential to front-load your company’s mission if it explains your "Why?" and this example does just that. In other words, why do you do what you do, and why should stakeholders care? This is an important section to include if you feel that your mission will drive interest in the business and its offerings.

7. Culina Sample Business Plan

Culina's sample business plan is an excellent example of how to lay out your business plan so that it flows naturally, engages readers, and provides the critical information investors and stakeholders need. 

You can use this template as a guide while you're gathering important information for your own business plan. You'll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do since Culina’s plan outlines these details so flawlessly for inspiration.

8. Plum Sample Business Plan

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How to Write a 5-Year Business Plan

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6 types of business plans, effective communication skills used in public relations & marketing.

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• How to Write a 3-Year Business Forecast

A 5-year business plan will help you manage your company and seek loans or investment money. This term is familiar to most commercial loan officers and small business investors. Learning how to write an effective five year business plan helps you manage better and improves your chances of receiving the loans or investment dollars you need to succeed.

You should thoroughly understand business plan components and your company to complete a winning blueprint for success. Below are several points to consider when writing an effective 5-year business plan.

Design Your Strategic Plan

Design your strategic plan. Combine your goals with your vision for your company. Decide on the best strategies – e-commerce, retail locations, business-to-business, business-to-consumers or combinations thereof – to reach your business objectives. These will be the benchmarks for your five-year business plan

Prepare an Executive Summary

Prepare an executive summary. This section outlines your goals, objectives, strategies and your expertise in achieving the results you project. When seeking loans or investment, this is the most critical section of your business plan. You have limited time to impress a loan officer or investor, both of whom read many business plans daily. Make it brief, "hard hitting" and highly focused on achievement.

Introduce Your Management Team

Display the talent of your management team. Like a resume – only more interesting – management team biographies increase the credibility of your executive summary and all projections that follow. If you are a one-person management team, be sure to emphasize all your skills.

For example, if you are strong in technology and accounting, be sure to mention your marketing, customer relations and operations skills. If you're going to "outsource" these functions, explain how you plan to use other experts and whom you're considering.

Describe Products or Services

Describe the products or services you offer, in detail. In a five-year business plan, you should convince the reader that your products/services are marketable now and will continue to be popular in the coming years. Clearly state sound reasons that your products are currently viable and how you will react to future challenges in the market.

Create Financial Projections

Create financial projections for the next five years. Include income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow estimates. For years one and two, show Income and cash flow Statements on a monthly basis. You can use quarterly projections for years three through five. If your starting a small business, you can estimate your balance sheet on a semi-annual basis because you probably expect few major changes.

Things You Will Need

Valid business idea

Popular product or service

Calculator or PC

Accounting statement knowledge

Write a detailed "narrative" to explain and support your financial projections. Keep your plan thorough, but clear. Exotic, colorful graphs or other additions are unnecessary in most cases. Anticipate and prepare answers for questions that may come from readers. Spend more time researching and studying your market than writing the plan.

Don't fill your plan with unnecessary or subjective text or numbers. Readers want you to stay "on point" and focused. Never exaggerate or dramatically overestimate financial results. Your plan quickly loses credibility.

• Planware.org: Characteristics of Business Plans
• Forbes: trategic Plan Template: What To Include In Yours
• Stirling.gov.uk: Stirling Council Five-year Business Plan
• Business Plan Checklist
• Write a detailed "narrative" to explain and support your financial projections.
• Keep your plan thorough, but clear. Exotic, colorful graphs or other additions are unnecessary in most cases.
• Anticipate and prepare answers for questions that may come from readers.
• Spend more time researching and studying your market than writing the plan.
• Don't fill your plan with unnecessary or subjective text or numbers. Readers want you to stay "on point" and focused.
• Never exaggerate or dramatically overestimate financial results. Your plan quickly loses credibility.

Related Articles

How to write the perfect business plan, example of a business plan for a small business, how to project sales numbers, how to plan daily work activities for leadership, how to write a resume for a business loan, the definition of forecasting skills, what content is included in the finance section of a marketing plan, how to make a business plan presentation, examples for a business proposal presentation, most popular.

• 1 How to Write the Perfect Business Plan
• 2 Example of a Business Plan for a Small Business
• 3 How to Project Sales Numbers
• 4 How to Plan Daily Work Activities for Leadership

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Business plan template

If you’re looking for a way to start your business off on the right foot, a business plan template can help you establish the foundation for your strategy. Get started in a few clicks with Asana’s free business plan template.

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You’re pumped—you just thought of the greatest business idea ever. You want to get started, but you don’t have a plan laid out. You need a loan to get your idea off the ground, and the bank wants to see an in-depth business plan. We’re here to help.

What is a business plan template?

A business plan template is a framework that helps you solidify your ideas in an organized format. Our free business plan template walks you through how to create a new business from scratch, or re-imagine your existing business in a new market.

What components are included in a business plan template?

Our business plan template covers what an organization wants to achieve within three to five years. By using our template, you’ll have a place to capture all of the major information you need in order to complete your business plan. That includes:

Company description : Information like your executive summary , your company’s mission statement and vision, and your founder’s bio. 

Product and services: A high-level overview of what your company provides, including core products or services. This may also include how your product is developed, any potential screenshots or prototypes of your product, and pricing plans.

Marketing plan: How you plan to bring your product into market at a high level. You can add information like a SWOT analysis , target market research, and brand positioning in this section.

Financial plan: Important financial information such as balance sheets, a break-even analysis, and your cash flow projections. 

Management and organization information: Information on your company’s founders, executive team, and the board of directors.

How to use our free business plan template

Using Asana’s free business plan template is simple. Start by creating a new project with our free template. From there, add relevant information for your specific business plan in the sections provided in our template. If there’s more information you want to include in your business plan, you’re free to add sections, custom fields, or additional tasks to make this template fit your needs.

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Reporting . Reporting in Asana translates project data into visual charts and digestible graphs. By reporting on work where work lives, you can reduce duplicative work and cut down on unnecessary app switching. And, because all of your team’s work is already in Asana, you can pull data from any project or team to get an accurate picture of what’s happening in one place.

Milestones . Milestones represent important project checkpoints. By setting milestones throughout your project, you can let your team members and project stakeholders know how you’re pacing towards your goal. Use milestones as a chance to celebrate the little wins on the path towards the big project goal. 

Project Overview . Project Overview is your one-stop-shop for all important project context. Give your team a bird’s-eye view of the what, why, and how of your project work. Add a project description to set the tone for how you’ll work together in Asana. Then, share any important resources and context—like meeting details, communication channels, and project briefs—in one place.

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Google Workplace . Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Google Workplace file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane. Easily attach any My Drive file with just a few clicks.

Gmail . With the Asana for Gmail integration, you can create Asana tasks directly from your Gmail inbox. Any tasks you create from Gmail will automatically include the context from your email, so you never miss a beat. Need to refer to an Asana task while composing an email? Instead of opening Asana, use the Asana for Gmail add-on to simply search for that task directly from your Gmail inbox. 

How do I create a business plan template? .css-i4fobf{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform 200ms ease-in-out;transition:transform 200ms ease-in-out;-webkit-transform:rotateZ(0);-moz-transform:rotateZ(0);-ms-transform:rotateZ(0);transform:rotateZ(0);}

Instead of taking the time to create a business plan from scratch, start the process off with Asana’s free template.To further customize your template, add evergreen information about your specific business, such as your business model, company name, address, mission statement, value proposition, or target audience. Adding these details to your template lets you avoid documenting this information from scratch every time you create a new business plan.

What components should I include in a business plan template?

Business plan templates typically contain five main sections: a company description, products and services, a marketing plan, basic management and organization information, and your current financial plan.

How long should my business plan be?

Short answer—as long as you need it to be. The long answer is that your business plan should have the answers to specific questions on how your business is run, from the perspective of an investor. The goal of a business plan is to highlight your business strategy for the next three to five years. This means any important operational, financial, and strategic information should be included. 

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7+ SAMPLE 5 Year Business Plan in PDF

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5 Year Business Budget Plan

5 Year Strategic Business Plan

Sample 5 Year Business Plan

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Standard 5 year Business Plan

5 Year Business Financial Plan

Basic 5 Year Business Plan

1. it provides you with the opportunity to make positive changes in your life, 2. it has a significant impact on your ability to concentrate, 3. it contributes to your development, 1. it assists you in discovering more about yourself, 2. it aids in the development of long-term objectives, step 1: consider your professional objectives and make a list of them, step 2: make a list of your abilities that will assist you in achieving your career objectives, step 3: break down your ambitions into smaller, more manageable chunks of time, step 4: look for opportunities on a regular basis, step 5: continue to refer to your five-year strategy, share this post on your network, file formats, word templates, google docs templates, excel templates, powerpoint templates, google sheets templates, google slides templates, pdf templates, publisher templates, psd templates, indesign templates, illustrator templates, pages templates, keynote templates, numbers templates, outlook templates, you may also like these articles, 5+ sample investment company business plan in pdf.

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Top 7 5-Year Plan Templates with Examples and Samples

Gaganjyot Kaur

Data indicates that companies with well-structured 5-year plans exhibit higher growth rates and resilience. These strategic roadmaps provide a holistic vision and direction, facilitating informed decisions and adaptability amidst an ever-evolving business landscape.

For instance, a technology start-up aiming to disrupt the electric vehicle market. Without a 5-year plan, the company might lack a cohesive direction and struggle to allocate resources effectively. However, with a well-crafted plan, they can chart their course more confidently.

Moreover, a 5-year plan aids in attracting investors. Demonstrating a comprehensive roadmap can instil confidence in stakeholders as they see a well-thought-out strategy for growth and profitability.

5-Year Plan Templates for Strategic Growth

So, the question is are you ready to seize opportunities, tackle challenges, and achieve sustainable success? SlideTeam brings you its content-ready and custom-made PPT templates to offer a clear sense of direction and purpose, helping employees understand their roles in achieving those objectives. Grab these PPT slides to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards the same outcomes.

Each of these templates is 100% customizable and editable. You get both structure in the form of content ready slides, and the edit capability means the presentation can be easily tailored to specific audience profiles.   

Browse the collection below and craft a well-structured 5-year plan for your company.

Let’s dive in!

Template 1: 5-Year Strategic Business Plan PowerPoint PPT Template 

Your five-year business strategy should outline the course your company is on. Portray with detailed slides how you foresee the sector will be like in five years, anticipated trends, and how your company will address the issues facing your target market. The slides are appropriately organized using design methodologies appropriate for multiyear business plans. It will help you display marketing strategies, financial predictions, competitive analyses, assessment of SWOT, communication, and future routes that should all be included in a standard five-year business plan.

Download and plan.

For your five-year company plan, you simply need exceptional advice that is guaranteed to work. Get 5 Essential Tips to Develop a Solid 5-Year Business Plan here .

Template 2: 5-Year Plan of Customer Acquisition and Retention of The Company

Customer retention is all about looking after your current customers and, in some situations, having them come back for more. Customer acquisition is about using advertisements to locate and attract new consumers. Both are crucial for growth, but they require distinct approaches and techniques to succeed. The PowerPoint presentation will help you find the balance of both these tactics. You can monitor the information on 5 stages of the process to achieve the required target audience. This slide demonstrates how much attention should be paid to acquiring new clients and keeping the ones you already have. It also demonstrates how many new clients should be targeted in order to have a strong clientele.

Download here .

Template 3: 5-Year Planning Gantt Chart for Market Development Template

For successful execution of work, the Gantt chart is an important business plan tool. Let this ready to use template assist you in visualizing project deliverables, timeframes, and progress. Edit it according to your marketing plan to assign time and responsibilities using the graphical lines or bars that show tasks, progress, and status. Create the project timeline shown by horizontal bars of various lengths, which can also include job durations, beginning and ending times, and task progressions. It will help you determine how much work has to be done. 

Download here.

Template 4: 5-Year Planning Gantt Chart Showing Progress Percentage

Deploy your strategic plan with our specially curated Gantt chart template, which illustrates information like tasks assigned to, status, priority, and start and end dates to depict progress percentage. Deliver on schedule by planning all tasks in advance and making them visible in one location. Customize your team's project Gantt chart according to your distinct workflow and critical path, and let it represent the progress percentage through a horizontal bar graph. Download this slide to monitor the schedules, and the workflow, determine the requirement, and estimate timelines to deliver on time. 

Get it here.

Recognize strategies that don't produce the desired results and choose alternative approaches to make use of different resources with the help of the 5-Year Transformation Roadmap Plans for Planning Ahead.

Template 5: 5-Year Planning Gantt Chart with Business Expansion Template

As you work on your business expansion, you would require to monitor projects in an optimal way. A Gantt chart is a business plan tool that assists with project planning, scheduling, and oversight. You can use the PowerPoint presentation to track progress and get a broad sense of how the project is moving forward with the scope of business expansion by monitoring customer research, primary research, and market research. Develop tactics to enhance the market share of a specific good or service by use of market penetration.

Use the templates with ready-made headers to plan and schedule these projects in order to distribute resources efficiently and to ensure that higher-priority projects are completed before lower-priority ones.

Template 6: 5-Year Planning Gantt Chart with Completion Percentage

The strategic plan is crucial to evaluate work in progress, analyze long term contracts and business environment for the success. This premium PPT template provides you with the baseline concepts to go forward. Use headings like Situation Analysis to monitor the business environment internally and externally, Company Analysis to keep an eye on the financial position and prospects and Customer Analysis to identify your target market. Staying ahead with finding competitors in your business and learning about their various marketing methods is the process of conducting a Competitor Analysis. With this template, you can be aware of your requirements and plan a marketing strategy to implement promotional schemes to widen your target audience.

Template 7: Five-Year Strategic Plan for E-Business Template

This is a pre-designed PPT template that showcases a plan for market expansion through market development and product diversification. Grab this PPT slide to achieve new markets or retain old customers. Channel marketing plan with e-business marketing strategies mentioned in the slide like e-mail advertising and mobile-based approach. The slide helps you present how tactics like giving internet clients personalized experiences and social media advertisement can create growth in your business and create a new audience.

A five-year plan is a list of objectives a business aims to accomplish over the course of the following five years. It often includes objectives with clear time lines and measurements. 

With the support of this template plan, you can define the approach, and you can set more manageable goals to help you reach the more ambitious ones in your five-year plan.

The slides can considerably boost your presentation for demonstrating multiyear business plans. You should define your objectives, ensure they are measurable and detailed, and achieve desired results. 

FAQs for Strategic Plan for E-Business

What is a 5-year plan and its importance.

A five-year business plan is a plan of action that aids organizations in more effectively achieving long-term objectives, such as attracting investors or generating a set level of revenue. It is crucial as it guarantees that everyone is working toward the same objectives and gives the company a clear direction and focus.

What is the 5-year plan example?

With a 5-year plan, you can identify the steps you need to achieve to reach the goals. For example, you are a 3rd-year student living in a hostel. Your aim for 1st year could include completion of graduation and search for a job. 2nd year, you may plan to clear all your student loans, and for 3rd year, you may aim to apply for MBA by increasing your monthly savings. And in subsequent years, completing the course and pursuing a business manager post by the end of the 5th year.

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5-Year Strategic Plan

Creating a five-year strategic plan must be considered by your business as it allows the management to have a guide when it comes to setting the direction of the business operations.

More so, a five-year strategic plan presents the vision of the company which is a great way to build action plans that the workforce and other stakeholders can refer to. Simply put, a  five-year strategic plan  can make the objectives and goals of the business be realized by aligning strategies and tactics with particular call-to-actions.

To come up with an effective five-year strategic plan, it is essential for you to understand the gap between the conditions of the business now and that of the future. You have to be realistic when writing all your professional goals and action plans. Also, focus on how you will present the document to different entities.

You can start developing the presentation of your five-year strategic plan with the help of our examples. Download the specific example that you think is a great reference for you and your business.

5 Year Strategic Plan Template

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Size: 20 KB

5 Year IT Strategic Plan Template

Size: 27 KB

5 Year Strategic Business Plan Template

Size: 26 KB

5 Year Plan Template Example

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Simple 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Size: 127 KB

Standard 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Size: 198 KB

Basic 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Size: 333 KB

Initial and Important Things to Know about 5-Year Strategic Plan Development

Businesses from different corporate and creative industries develop strategic plans that ensure that they are well-guided when it comes to their operations and activities. As an example, a five-year term  restaurant strategic plan  is important for restaurant businesses to know how they can brand themselves in a way that they can be different from competition that also offer the same food items or products.

This document can also help a restaurant know the next things that they need to do in terms of financial state improvement, marketing program implementation, and other activities for the business. If you want to create a 5-year strategic plan, here are some of the initial and important things that you have to be aware of:

1. Be knowledgeable of the basics of developing a five-year strategic plan. This can help you to create realistic goals that can be backed up by measurable action plans, programs, and activities. It may be hard at first to look into the things that you would like to achieve in the span of five years. However, being able to set a direction for the business can help you reach corporate milestones accordingly. You may also see strategic planning checklist examples .

2. It is essential for you to have a framework that can be the basis of your call-to-actions. You have to be specific with the things that you want the business to be successful at. However, always be reminded that there will be a lot of changes that can happen within five years. Hence, you have to make sure that the five-year strategic plan that you will make is also flexible. You may also like sales strategy plan examples .

3. You have to make sure that you will present the current state of the business. The condition where the operations is at must be evaluated properly so you can identify the strengths that you can further develop and the weaknesses that you can look into and practice to improve. Being able to know what the business condition is and what it needs to grow can help the entire team finalize a list of development processes and activities. You may also check out  personal strategic plan examples .

4. Allow your action plans to be measurable and specific. With this, a time frame can be showcased where all the activities that you have planned will be plotted based on their effect to the different areas of the business and its operations. Knowing that you are particular with your goals can help the workforce have more focus when it comes to delivering the responsibilities and obligations that are given to them.

Campus Farm 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Parks 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Importance of Knowing the Current Condition of the Business When Making a 5-Year Strategic Plan

Even if you are making plans for the future operations of the business, it is still essential for you to look into the current processes and activities that are followed by the operations team. You also have to observe how the business is being managed as well as how marketing and advertising efforts affect the business and its image. These suggestions are also applicable when creating  HR strategic plans  and  hospital strategic plan examples .

Here are some of the reasons why it is important for you to know the current condition of the business when making a five-year strategic plan:

1. The current condition of the business can allow you to measure the gap that you need to bridge. Since you want to be in a particular state or business condition, you need to have an idea on how far your better goals are from reality. Having the knowledge about this matter can help you prepare the necessary steps that the business needs to take for milestones to be achieved within expected time periods.

2. The current condition of the business can present the guiding principles that you need to follow when making a five-year strategic plan. More so, you can be more efficient in terms of following existing protocols, regulations, and business rules. You may also see security strategic plan examples .

3. The current condition of the business can make it easier for you to identify your starting point. Just like any other activities, creating a five-year strategic plan must start from somewhere workable and has the potential to be developed. This can also help you to know the development platforms and communication channels that you will use at certain time frames within the implementation of the five-year strategic plan. You may also like one-page strategic plan examples .

4. The current condition of the business can help you identify the key items or elements that you will be working with. Considering the existing factors that affect the growth of the business, you can point out the things that are needed to be changed to ensure that the business can get its desired results. You may also check out procurement strategy plan examples .

5. The current condition of the business can lead you to the execution of a SWOT analysis . Before drafting a five-year strategic plan, you first need to have all the details and data that can give the direction to where your strategic plan will be developed. Knowing the current strengths and weaknesses of the business as well as the threats and opportunities within the market environment can give you reality-based findings and information sources that can further improve the document that you will be making.

6. The current condition of the business can give you an idea about the actual results of business activities, programs, processes, and efforts. Knowing the relevant successes and previous failures of the business can give you the ability to change items that weaken the business and propose strategies and tactics that can better the overall operations and management of the business .

Community Churches 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

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5-Year Strategic Plan Example

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School of Technology Management 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Do You Want to Have an Effective 5-Year Strategic Plan?

Ensure that your five-year strategic plan is active and action-based. It is important for you to get the attention and approval of all the stakeholders of the business so you can minimize challenges rooting from misunderstandings in the future. The participation of entities who are expected to provide their deliverable can give you the results that you would like to achieve. You may also see community strategic plan examples .

Here are a few other things that you can do to ensure that you will create an effective 5-year strategic plan that can provide a lot of benefits to your business, its operations, and its stakeholders:

1. Be resilient when it comes to achieving your corporate or business goals . Your 5-year strategic plan must be flexible. Be reminded that there are many ways in which your desired outcomes can be achieved. With this, you just have to lay all your options and select backup plans. Being prepared by changes, shifts of directions, and other unforeseen circumstances can make the usage of your five-year strategic plan more successful.

2. Make sure that you will identify the areas of the business that you would like to develop. It is recommended for you to have a general master plan and then have supporting strategic plans per area so you can fully discuss your suggested activities in minute details. You can incorporate  sales strategic plan examples  and other kinds of strategic plans that the business uses when making your 5-year strategic plan draft. This can further define the objective of every action that you would like the workforce to execute.

3. It is important for you to have a projection of the business five years from now. Being able to present this information can identify whether the results that you want to get is worth the efforts, time, and resources that you are willing to use. You may also like business development strategy plan examples .

Department of Economic Security 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

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5-Year Strategic Plan for the Environment and Natural Resources Sector Example

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Hospital 5-Year Strategic Plan Example

Tips and Suggestions in Developing a 5-Year Strategic Plan

Have you made a 5-year strategic plan before? Or is this your first time to create this kind of document? No matter what your knowledge scope is when it comes to drafting 5-year strategic plans, being able to understand the concept of the document and referring to existing 5-year strategic plans can already guide you in terms of successfully creating your own 5-year strategic plan. You may also see marketing strategy plan examples .

In addition to what has been specified above, it is of utmost importance for you to know the purpose of the document, the proper usage and implementation of the simple strategic plan , and the effective planning of your processes for document content execution. More so, there are recommendations and guidelines that can also help you be better in the craft.

Listed below are a few tips and suggestions that you can follow when you are already in the development phase of a 5-year strategic plan.

1. Know the relevance of the 5-year strategic plan with the vision, mission, objectives, and operational nature of the business. There are different strategic plans that are applicable for various industries and corporate practices. As an example, there is a big difference when it comes to the content of a five-year  real estate strategic plan  with that of a five-year hospital strategic plan.

This only goes to show that it is truly essential for you to know all the elements and factors that can affect the potential successes of using a 5-year strategic plan.

2. Know the strategies, techniques, and tactics that you will incorporate in your action plans. You have to define the weight or value that these items can add to the effectiveness of your call-to-actions. Knowing the proper incorporation of these items with your general plans can help strengthen the framework that you will use for the entire five years of business operations.

3. Have a list of both your long-term and short-term objectives. You have to set these items right away as they can provide you an overview of the potential time that you will spend within the processes of business development. This can also help you allocate your resources properly in consideration of the time frames specified in the 5-year strategic plan. You may also check out school strategic plan examples .

References can be very beneficial within the activities that you will undergo in relation to the creation of a 5-year strategic plan. Examples and templates can give you an easier time when learning how to properly put together all the details that are essential to be included in your company’s 5-year strategic plan. You might be interested in health and safety strategic plan examples .

Take your time when looking into all the downloadable examples that we have presented so you can efficiently come up with an impressive 5-year strategic plan.

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10 Simple Tips to Write a Successful Business Plan

"The absolute biggest business plan mistake you can make is to not plan at all." So writes Noah Parsons in his helpful blog post 17 Key Business Plan Mistakes to Avoid in 2023 . But how does one pull together all of the necessary components of a cohesive plan? It can feel overwhelming.

Eric Butow, CEO of online marketing ROI improvement firm Butow Communications Group, has teamed up with Entrepreneur Media to update the second edition of our best-selling book Write Your Business Plan to provide you with a simple, step-by-step process for creating a successful business plan. In the following excerpt, he gives ten tips to gather all of the critical information you will need to succeed.

1. Know your competition.

You need to name them and point out what makes you different from (and better than) each of them. But do not disparage your competition.

2. Know your audience.

You may need several versions of your business plan. For example, you may need one for bankers or venture capitalists, one for individual investors, and one for companies that may want to do a joint venture with you rather than fund you.

3. Have proof to back up every claim you make.

If you expect to be the leader in your field in six months, you have to say why you think that is. If you say your product will take the market by storm, you have to support this statement with facts. If you say your management team is fully qualified to make the business a success, be sure staff resumes demonstrate their experience.

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4. Be conservative in all financial estimates and projections.

If you feel certain you'll capture 50 percent of the market in the first year, you can say why you think so and hint at what those numbers may be. But make your financial projections more conservative. For example, a 10 percent market share is much more credible.

5. Be realistic with time and resources available.

If you're working with a big company before you buy a business, you may think things will happen faster than they will once you have to buy the supplies, write the checks, and answer the phones yourself. Being overly optimistic with time and resources is a common error entrepreneurs make. Being realistic is important because it lends credibility to your presentation. Always assume things will take 20 percent longer than you anticipated. Therefore, twenty weeks is now twenty-four weeks.

6. Be logical.

Think like a banker and write what they would want to see.

7. Have a strong management team.

Make sure it has good credentials and expertise. Your team members don't have to have worked in the field. However, you need to draw parallels between what they've done and the skills needed to make your venture succeed. Don't have all the skills you need? Consider adding an advisory board of people skilled in your field and include their resumes.

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8. Document why your idea will work.

Have others done something similar that was successful? Have you made a prototype? Include all the variables that can have an impact on the result or outcome of your idea. Show why some of the variables don't apply to your situation or explain how you intend to overcome them or make them better.

9. Describe your facilities and location for performing the work.

That includes equipment you use to create your products and/or services. If you'll need to expand, discuss when, where, and why.

10. Discuss payout options for the investors.

Some investors want a hands-on role. Some want to put associates on your board of directors. Some don't want to be involved in day-to-day activities at all. All investors want to know when they can get their money back and at what rate of return. Most want out within three to five years. Provide a brief description of options for investors, or at least mention that you're ready to discuss options with any serious prospect.

To dig deeper, buy Write Your Own Business Plan and get 1 month of free access to business planning software Liveplan Premium.

Manufacturing Business Plan PDF Example

• May 7, 2024
• Business Plan

Creating a comprehensive business plan is crucial for launching and running a successful manufacturing business. This plan serves as your roadmap, detailing your vision, operational strategies, and financial plan. It helps establish your manufacturing business’s identity, navigate the competitive market, and secure funding for growth.

This article not only breaks down the critical components of a manufacturing business plan, but also provides an example of a business plan to help you craft your own.

Whether you’re an experienced entrepreneur or new to the manufacturing industry, this guide, complete with a business plan example, lays the groundwork for turning your manufacturing business concept into reality. Let’s dive in!

Our manufacturing business plan covers all essential aspects necessary for a comprehensive strategy. It details operations, marketing strategy , market environment, competitors, management team, and financial forecasts.

• Executive Summary : Provides an overview of the manufacturing company’s business concept, market analysis , management, and financial strategy.
• Facilities & Equipment: Describes the facility’s capabilities, machinery, and technological advancements.
• Operations & Supply: Outlines the production processes, supply chain logistics, and inventory management.
• Key Stats: Offers data on industry size , growth trends, and market positioning.
• Key Trends: Highlights significant trends impacting the industry, such as automation and localization.
• Key Competitors : Analyzes primary competitors and differentiates the company from these rivals.
• SWOT: Analyzes strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Marketing Plan : Outlines tactics for attracting new contracts and maintaining client relationships.
• Timeline : Sets out key milestones from inception through the first year of operations.
• Management: Information on the management team and their roles within the company.
• Financial Plan: Projects the company’s financial performance over the next five years, detailing revenue, profits, and anticipated expenses.

Manufacturing Business Plan

Fully editable 30+ slides Powerpoint presentation business plan template.

Download an expert-built 30+ slides Powerpoint business plan template

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary introduces your manufacturing business plan, offering a concise overview of your manufacturing facility and its products. It should detail your market positioning, the range of products manufactured, the production process, its location, size, and an outline of day-to-day operations.

This section should also explore how your manufacturing business will integrate into the local and broader markets, including the number of direct competitors within the area, identifying who they are, along with your business’s unique selling points that differentiate it from these competitors.

Furthermore, you should include information about the management and co-founding team, detailing their roles and contributions to the business’s success. Additionally, a summary of your financial projections, including revenue and profits over the next five years, should be presented here to provide a clear picture of your business’s financial plan.

Make sure to cover here _ Business Overview _ Market Overview _ Management Team _ Financial Plan

Dive deeper into Executive Summary

Business Overview

Facilities & equipment.

Describe your manufacturing facility. Highlight its design, capacity, and technology. Mention the location, emphasizing accessibility to transport routes. Discuss advantages for efficiency and cost management. Detail essential equipment and its capabilities.

Operations & Supply Chain

Detail product range. Outline your operations strategy for efficiency and scalability. Discuss supply chain management. Highlight sourcing of materials, inventory control, and logistics. Emphasize strong partnerships with suppliers and distributors.

Make sure to cover here _ Facilities & Equipment _ Operations & Supplies

Market Overview

Industry size & growth.

Start by examining the size of the manufacturing industry relevant to your products and its growth potential. This analysis is crucial for understanding the market’s scope and identifying expansion opportunities.

Key Market Trends

Proceed to discuss recent market trends , such as the increasing demand for sustainable manufacturing processes, automation, and advanced materials. For example, highlight the demand for products that utilize eco-friendly materials or energy-efficient production techniques, alongside the rising popularity of smart manufacturing.

Key Competitors

Then, consider the competitive landscape, which includes a range of manufacturers from large-scale enterprises to niche firms. For example, emphasize what makes your business distinctive, whether it’s through advanced technology, superior product quality, or specialization in certain manufacturing niches. This section will help articulate the demand for your products, the competitive environment, and how your business is positioned to thrive within this dynamic market.

Make sure to cover here _ Industry size & growth _ Key competitors _ Key market trends

Dive deeper into Key competitors

First, conduct a SWOT analysis for your manufacturing business. Highlight Strengths such as advanced production technology and a skilled workforce. Address Weaknesses, including potential supply chain vulnerabilities or high production costs. Identify Opportunities like emerging markets for your products or potential for innovation in production processes. Consider Threats such as global competition or economic downturns that may impact demand for your products.

Marketing Plan

Next, develop a marketing strategy that outlines how to attract and retain customers through targeted advertising, trade shows, digital marketing, and strategic partnerships. Emphasize the importance of showcasing product quality and technological advantages to differentiate your business in the market.

Finally, create a detailed timeline that outlines critical milestones for your manufacturing business’s launch, marketing initiatives, customer acquisition, and expansion goals. Ensure the business progresses with clear direction and purpose, setting specific dates for achieving key operational and sales targets.

Make sure to cover here _ SWOT _ Marketing Plan _ Timeline

Dive deeper into SWOT

Dive deeper into Marketing Plan

The Management section focuses on the manufacturing business’s management and their direct roles in daily operations and strategic direction. This part is crucial for understanding who is responsible for making key decisions and driving the manufacturing business toward its financial and operational goals.

For your manufacturing business plan, list the core team members, their specific responsibilities, and how their expertise supports the business.

Financial Plan

The Financial Plan section is a comprehensive analysis of your financial projections for revenue, expenses, and profitability. It lays out your manufacturing business’s approach to securing funding, managing cash flow, and achieving breakeven.

This section typically includes detailed forecasts for the first 5 years of operation, highlighting expected revenue, operating costs and capital expenditures.

For your manufacturing business plan, provide a snapshot of your financial statement (profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow statement), as well as your key assumptions (e.g. number of customers and prices, expenses, etc.).

Make sure to cover here _ Profit and Loss _ Cash Flow Statement _ Balance Sheet _ Use of Funds

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