Prepare Several Versions of Your Business Plan
To write a business plan, we face one of two cases. The first is writing a plan to start a new business. The second is writing a plan for a currently working business which either lacks a plan or has one that is old or out of date.
Since we are discussing smart, not ordinary, writing of a business plan, you need to prepare multiple versions. Before anything else, prepare a general schema or your business model canvas. Like a blackboard, it is always in front of you so you can see the generalities of your business plan.
A mini plan or summary plan in four or five pages is another version you need. You can use it to recruit employees or offer it to a supplier, and send it quickly as the compact version of the plan.
The complete version, the working plan, contains more details and is designed for your domestic use. In this version, you must show that you know the ins and outs of your own business. Every point that occurs to you is written here. Relying on memory is out of place; all points must be written. A business plan is normally between ten to thirty pages, but it can reach hundreds of pages in the long term through revisions. If your working plan contains only eight pages, you must be scared a little bit, because no one can write down the entire details of one's work and end up with less than thirty or forty pages, even for small businesses.
Then there is the version to offer to the investor, who takes you more seriously as the plan becomes more precise, and the introduction version used for presentation in seminars, containing the important and prominent points. Prepare your main business plan according to its application and audience.