Tip of the month

You have only 5 minutes on your business plan!

Though business plans are usually comprehensive documents that can take months to complete, potential partners or acquirers (referred to here simply as potential investors) often do not spend much time reviewing them. In fact, it has been suggested that many potential investors spend only five minutes in the initial consideration of the plan. If that is the case, what objectives might a company set for its business plan? Should the company simply conclude that a business plan in unnecessary? Certainly not, since without a business plan most investors will not even give the company five minutes. What the five-minute rule of thumb means is that - like other aspects of life - first impression count!

To make the most of the five minutes, attention should be paid to both the format and content of the business plan. In the typical five-minute read, the following six steps are followed, with less than one minute spent on each step: