Whether you're an experienced franchisee or on the lookout for a first-time franchise opportunity, you should consider a business plan. Creating a business plan will not only help you but it may also be essential in the initial stages of the business. You may be asked for a business plan, for example, in order to get the capital that's required when you're launching the enterprise. So they make sense for both charting your potential successes and in the acquisition of start-up cash.

One of the advantages of purchasing a franchise is that you're not alone. You can often get assistance from your franchiser to help with the business plan. After all, your franchiser has a vested interest in seeing your business thrive. Besides, there are certain aspects of the business plan that the franchiser alone has the answers too. But if the franchiser doesn't have the time to help with the other aspects of the plan, or if you want to amend your business plan after getting the franchiser's guidance, you need to ensure that you do it properly.

A business plan for any franchise can act as a personal aid in prioritizing what's important and what isn't. You can operate your enterprise more successfully. With information provided by the franchiser, you will see that the features of a conventional business plan for a brand new start-up and those for a franchise are distinctly unique. The franchiser may be willing to help with other aspects of the plan in order to make the franchise itself more attractive to you.

There are a number of features consistent with a franchise business plan:

The abstract is the introduction of your business plan, is shorter than an executive summary and provides key concepts of the business plan. The summary is a description of the company and related details about the business comes next. Overview of the franchise is at this point, where you discuss the franchise. This part of the business plan is put in place of the traditional "industry analysis" section of a conventional business plan.

Competition is everywhere and the challenges you will face in this particular market are discussed in the next section of the business plan. How to manage a marketing plan, attract customers thru advertising and come ahead of your competitors are all covered too.

Another section of the business plan is the management and human resources section where the qualifications of staff who will run the franchise are discussed as well as the number of staff and how they work together as a team.

Just as important is to have a clear picture of your financial projection and objectives. Assumptions made to come up with the projections are also discussed here.

The last section usually consists of exhibits or documents which support the projections, statistics or whatever information you provided in the business plan. They are generally at the end of the business plan as part of the whole document or in a separate binder.