Author: Franz Malten Buemann

In an era where more than 50% of small enterprises fail in their first year, having a clear, defined, and well-thought-out business plan is a crucial first step for setting up a business for long-term success.
The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It’s key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality.
Business plans are a required tool for all entrepreneurs, business owners, business acquirers, and even business school students. But … what exactly is a business plan?
In this post, we’ll explain what a business plan is, the reasons why you’d need one, identify different types of business plans, and what you should include in yours.

Business Plan Template [Download Now]

Working on your business plan? Try using our Business Plan Template. Pre-filled with the sections a great business plan needs, the template will give aspiring entrepreneurs a feel for what a business plan is, what should be in it, and how it can be used to establish and grow a business from the ground up.
Purposes of a Business Plan
Chances are, someone drafting a business plan will be doing so for one or more of the following reasons:
1. Securing financing from investors.
Since its contents revolve around how businesses succeed, break-even, and turn a profit, a business plan is used as a tool for sourcing capital. This document is an entrepreneur’s way of showing potential investors or lenders how their capital will be put to work and how it will help the business thrive.
All banks, investors, and venture capital firms will want to see a business plan before handing over their money, and investors typically expect a 10% ROI or more from the capital they invest in a business.
Therefore, these investors need to know if – and when – they’ll be making their money back (and then some). Additionally, they’ll want to read about the process and strategy for how the business will reach those financial goals, which is where the context provided by sales, marketing, and operations plans come into play.
2. Documenting a company’s strategy and goals.
A business plan should leave no stone unturned.
Business plans can span dozens or even hundreds of pages, affording their drafters the opportunity to explain what a business’ goals are and how the business will achieve them.

To show potential investors that they’ve addressed every question and thought through every possible scenario, entrepreneurs should thoroughly explain their marketing, sales, and operations strategies – from acquiring a physical location for the business to explaining a tactical approach for marketing penetration.

To show potential investors that they’ve addressed every question and thought through every possible scenario, entrepreneurs should thoroughly explain their marketing, sales, and operations strategies – from acquiring a physical location for the business to explaining a tactical approach for marketing penetration.
These explanations should ultimately lead to a business’ break-even point supported by a sales forecast and financial projections, with the business plan writer being able to speak to the why behind anything outlined in the plan.
3. Legitimizing a business idea.
Everyone’s got a great idea for a company – until they put pen to paper and realize that it’s not exactly feasible.
A business plan is an aspiring entrepreneur’s way to prove that a business idea is actually worth pursuing.
As entrepreneurs document their go-to-market process, capital needs, and expected return on investment, entrepreneurs likely come across a few hiccups that will make them second guess their strategies and metrics – and that’s exactly what the business plan is for.
It ensures an entrepreneur’s ducks are in a row before bringing their business idea to the world and reassures the readers that whoever wrote the plan is serious about the idea, having put hours into thinking of the business idea, fleshing out growth tactics, and calculating financial projections.
4. Getting an A in your business class.
Speaking from personal experience, there’s a chance you’re here to get business plan ideas for your Business 101 class project.
If that’s the case, might we suggest checking out this post on How to Write a Business Plan – providing a section-by-section guide on creating your plan?

1. Business Plan Subtitle
Every great business plan starts with a captivating title and subtitle. You’ll want to make it clear that the document is, in fact, a business plan, but the subtitle can help tell the story of your business in just a short sentence.
2. Executive Summary
Although this is the last part of the business plan that you’ll write, it’s the first section (and maybe the only section) that stakeholders will read. The executive summary of a business plan sets the stage for the rest of the document. It includes your company’s mission or vision statement, value proposition, and long-term goals.
3. Company Description
This brief part of your business plan will detail your business name, years in operation, key offerings, and positioning statement. You might even add core values or a short history of the company. The company description’s role in a business plan is to introduce your business to the reader in a compelling and concise way.
4. The Business Opportunity
The business opportunity should convince investors that your organization meets the needs of the market in a way that no other company can. This section explains the specific problem your business solves within the marketplace and how it solves them. It will include your value proposition as well as some high level information about your target market.
5. Competitive Analysis
Just about every industry has more than one player in the market. Even if your business owns the majority of the market share in your industry or your business concept is the first of its kind, you still have competition. In the competitive analysis section, you’ll take an objective look at the industry landscape to determine where your business fits. A SWOT analysis is an organized way to format this section.
6. Target Market
Who are the core customers of your business and why? The target market portion of your business plan outlines this in detail. The target market should explain the demographics, psychographics, behavioristics, and geographics of the ideal customer.
7. Marketing Plan
Marketing is expansive, and it’ll be tempting to cover every type of marketing possible, but a brief overview of how you’ll market your unique value proposition to your target audience, followed by a tactical plan will suffice. Think broadly and narrow down from there: Will you focus on a slow-and-steady play where you make an upfront investment in organic customer acquisition? Or will you generate lots of quick customers using a pay-to-play advertising strategy? This kind of information should guide the marketing plan section of your business plan.
8. Financial Summary
Money doesn’t grow on trees and even the most digital, sustainable businesses have expenses. Outlining a financial summary of where your business is currently and where you’d like it to be in the future will substantiate this section. Consider including any monetary information that will give potential investors a glimpse into the financial health of your business. Assets, liabilities, expenses, debt, investments, revenue, and more are all fair game here.
9. Team
So, you’ve outlined some great goals, the business opportunity is valid, and the industry is ready for what you have to offer. Who’s responsible for turning all this high-level talk into results? The “team” section of your business plan answers that question by providing an overview of the roles responsible for each goal. Don’t worry if you don’t have every team member on board yet, knowing what roles to hire for is helpful as you seek funding from investors.
10. Funding Requirements
Remember that one of the goals of a business plan is to secure funding from investors, so you’ll need to include funding requirements you’d like them to fulfill. The amount your business needs, for what reasons, and for how long will meet the requirement for this section.
Types of Business Plans
There’s no one size fits all business plan as there are several types of businesses in the market today. From startups with just one founder to historic household names that need to stay competitive, every type of business needs a business plan that’s tailored to its needs. Below are a few of the most common types of business plans. For even more examples, check out these 11 sample business plans to help you write your own.
1. Startup Business Plan
As one of the most common types of business plans, a startup business plan is used for brand new business ideas. This plan is used to lay the foundation for the eventual success of a business.
The biggest challenge with the startup business plan is that it’s written completely from scratch. Startup business plans typically reference existing industry data and explain unique business strategies and go-to-market plans.
2. Business Acquisition Plan
Believe it or not, investors use business plans to acquire existing businesses, too — not just new businesses.
A business plan for an existing company will explain how an acquisition will change its operating model, what will stay the same under new ownership, and why things will change or stay the same. Additionally, the business plan should speak to what the current state of the business is and why it’s up for sale.
For example, if someone is purchasing a failing business, the business plan should explain why the business is being purchased and what the new owner will do to turn the business around, referencing previous business metrics, sales projections after the acquisition, and a justification for those projections.
3. Business Repositioning Plan
When a business wants to avoid acquisition, reposition its brand, or try something new, CEOs or owners will develop a business repositioning plan.
This plan will:

Acknowledge the current state of the company.
State a vision for the future of the company.
Explain why the business should (or must) be repositioned.
Outline a process for how the company will adjust.

Companies planning for a business reposition do so – proactively or retroactively – due to a shift in market trends and customer needs. For example, Pizza Hut announced a plan to drastically overhaul its brand, as it sees the need to shift from dine-in to delivery – a decision resulting from observing years of industry and company trends and acknowledging the need to reposition itself for the future of its sector.
4. Expansion Business Plan
Expanding a successful business venture into another location typically requires a business plan, as the project may focus on a new target market and demand more capital.
Fortunately, an expansion business plan isn’t like a startup business plan in that it starts from scratch. Instead, this type of plan references sales, revenue, and successes from existing locations. However, as great as a reference as these points can be, it’s important to not be too reliant on them since it’s still a new business that could succeed or fail for a myriad of reasons.
Getting Started With Your Business Plan
At the end of the day, a business plan is simply an explanation of a business idea and why it will be successful. The more detail and thought you put into it, the more successful your plan – and the business it outlines – will be.
When writing your business plan, you’ll benefit from extensive research, feedback from your team or board of directors, and a solid template to organize your thoughts. If you need one of these, download HubSpot’s Free Business Plan Template below to get started.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Lightning Component modern framework is a User Interface framework to develop dynamic web apps for mobile and desktop devices. As is the case with each release, the latest Winter’22 release is packed with rich features including, the newly added Lightning Component features! Currently, the Winter’22 release is available under
The post Top 5 Lightning Component Gems of Salesforce Winter’22 Release! appeared first on Automation Champion.

We’re thrilled to launch Email Academy — a new on-demand learning platform designed to give marketers of all skill levels the skills they need to stay sharp and stay ahead in an ever-evolving email marketing world.
Being a “customer-centric” company may sound like an overplayed cliché, but at Campaign Monitor, we really mean it. We absolutely love our customers. 
We’re constantly learning from and inspired by what they do. And, as a team, we’re all geared towards their success — doing whatever we can to help them achieve their goals, whatever they may be.
And that’s why, today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Email Academy, a free online resource for marketers to level up their email marketing skills.
In the ever-evolving world of email marketing, it’s important to constantly sharpen your skills and keep them up to date. And Email Academy is designed to do just that. 
Whether marketing is your full-time job, or one of the many hats you wear, Email Academy is here to equip you with the tools you need to grow in your career, build your business, and become a more effective marketer.
Here are some of the in-demand email marketing skills you can look forward to learning in Email Academy.

Email courses for beginners
If you’re new to email marketing, or need to brush up on some basics, we have three different courses designed specifically for you. These courses are a great launching point for anyone early in their marketing career.
Email marketing fundamentals
In this course, you’ll cover all the basics of email marketing. Expect to walk away with a firm understanding of why email marketing is important, what the main types of marketing emails are, and how to understand your audience.
Email design basics
Design is essential to running effective email campaigns, and this course will help you get started. Learn design best practices for sending emails that are on-brand, effective, and meet accessibility standards.
Subscriber data management
Data management is a hot topic in the digital marketing world, and one that nobody can afford to ignore. Enroll in this course and learn how to manage subscriber data, how to grow and maintain your list, and best practices for segmenting audiences.
Advanced email courses
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our time in the email marketing world, it’s the importance of continually learning and developing new skills. With that in mind, if you’re an experienced email marketer looking to upskill, have some amazing course options for you.
List growth tactics
Growth is the objective of almost every marketer. In this course, we’ll cover best practices for growing your subscriber list in a reliable, scalable, and ethical way.
Email personalization tactics
The days of batch-and-blast email sends are over. Learn how to send relevant, personalized emails that your subscribers will engage with.
Email data and reporting
Having trouble measuring the success of your email campaigns? Enroll in this course to learn all about the industry-standard email metrics, how to interpret them in the context of a campaign, and tactics for improving your email metrics over time.
Email automation and triggers
Timing is everything in email marketing, and automation is the key to making sure you’re reaching your subscribers with the right message at the right time. This course will cover standard automation journeys and how to build them.
Deliverability best practices
Deliverability may feel like the underbelly of the email marketing world, but it’s incredibly important. In this course, you’ll learn about what deliverability is, why it matters more than you think, and best practices to follow to make sure you don’t run into deliverability issues with your marketing campaigns.
Become an early Email Academy graduate
Whether you’re looking to land a job in email marketing, level up your skills and get promoted, or simply want to grow your business, Email Academy is the perfect place to start. This free course will teach you the relevant, in-demand skills you need to get started in email marketing today.
And don’t forget to show people what you’ve learned! After completing a course, you’ll receive a certification to let current or prospective employers know that you have the skills to get the job done.
Thank you, and happy learning!
Ros de Vries, Customer Experience Programs Manager at Campaign Monitor
Sign up for Email Academy for free today!
The post Introducing Email Academy — a Free Learning Platform for Marketers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

You don’t want to waste time simply guessing what a prospect or customer wants and needs from your business or how they’ll react to a certain marketing campaign or strategy that you plan to implement.
Rather, you can turn to the process of data-driven marketing to make informed decisions that are based on real data to ensure your marketing efforts are relevant to prospect and customer interests and behaviors.
Now you might be thinking about the fact that your business has a large volume of complex data that are dispersed across multiple sources — this is where data mapping comes in handy.

Data Mapping
Data mapping is a key part of data management and data integration. That’s because it ensures you’re looking at and considering all of your data and doing so accurately — in other words, data mapping is what allows you to integrate your data from multiple sources.
In this blog post, we’ll talk more about what data mapping is, why it’s useful, data mapping techniques, and data mapping tools.
What is data mapping?
Data mapping is the process of matching data fields or elements from a source, or sources, to their related data fields in another destination — it’s how you establish relationships between data models that are in different sources or systems. Data mapping software and tools automatically match data fields from one data source to another for you.
Data mapping allows you to organize, distill, analyze, and understand vast amounts of data that live in various locations so you can draw conclusions and insights.
Why is data mapping useful?
Here are some more reasons why data mapping is both useful and necessary:

Integrate, transform, and migrate data as well as create data warehouses easily.
Establish direct relationships between your data across multiple sources at once.
Ensure your data is high quality and accurate (data mapping software can automatically flag inconsistencies and data that isn’t high quality or accurate).
Identify real-time trends and share data reports with team members both easily and efficiently.
Ensure you’re getting the most out of your data and applying insights and learnings appropriately.
Use data mapping software to simplify (and automate much of) the process of code-free data mapping.

Data Mapping Examples
A business like Amazon may use data mapping to accurately target you. They do this by pulling insights from your browsing habits, reviews, purchase history, and time on page. They can then pull and connect that data to/with data from other sources such as demographic information.
By combining these types of data sources, Amazon has the necessary information to target you with certain products and personalize your shopping experience in a number of ways (e.g. based on challenges you may be facing, geographic location, experience level, interests, education, nationality, age, and more).
Let’s consider another data mapping example — say you work for a TV network and you’re looking to organize TV shows on the network, actors who appear on the network, and actors within a show that appears on the network. The sharing of data between the three sources may look something like this:

Data Mapping Techniques
Within data mapping, there are three main techniques that are used — manual mapping, semi-automated mapping, and automated mapping. Let’s talk about what each of these techniques entails.
1. Manual Data Mapping
Manual data mapping requires professional coders and data mappers — IT will code and map your data sources. Although this is a heavy lift and requires professional help, it allows you to fully control and customize your maps.
2. Semi-automated Data Mapping
Semi-automated data mapping (or schema mapping) requires some coding knowledge and means your team will be moving between both manual and automated data mapping processes (hence the name of this technique).
Data mapping software creates a connection between the data sources and then an IT professional reviews those connections and makes manual adjustments as needed.
3. Automated Data Mapping
Automated data mapping means a tool will take care of all aspects of the data mapping process for you, making it an ideal option, if you are not/ don’t have access to a coder. This type of software will typically allow for drag-and-drop mapping. You just need to learn how to use the tool (and pay for it).
Speaking of the tools that will automate the process of data mapping for you, let’s review some of your options next.

Data Mapping Tools
Data mapping tools and software make the process of data mapping —including visualizing and interpreting your data — easier. There’s no code needed, they often have a drag-and-drop user interface (UI), and you can implement them on your team no matter your level of technical experience. Many data mapping tools also have the ability to help you with other data management tasks such as data migration.
1. Bloomi

Price: Free 30-day trial; contact for a quote.
Bloomi, which is owned by Dell, is an iPaaS solution — that’s both cloud-native and scalable — that connects both cloud and on-premise data and applications. Design cloud-based integrations, which the tool refers to as Atoms. Then, you can begin transferring data between the cloud and your on-premise apps.
Bloomi’s data mapping functionality translates electronic data interchange (EDI) for you. The tool has a drag-and-drop UI that makes data mapping easy as well as a library of available connectors so you can establish integrations quickly.
2. Tableau

Price: Free 30-day trial; $12-$70/ user/ mo.
Tableau is a visual analytics and business intelligence platform with data management and data mapping tools. Whether your data is in spreadsheets, Apache Hadoop, databases, the cloud, etc., the platform allows you to connect and begin visualizing your data in seconds without code.
Tableau regularly populates your most recent data (on a schedule that you can adjust). The drag-and-drop interface is easy to use and smart dashboards allow for effective data visualization. Lastly, you can easily share your data maps and dashboards with your team via mobile device for easy alignment and access.
3. Astera

Price: Free 14-day trial; contact for a quote.
Astera is an enterprise data management software that uses visual interfaces to convert, map, and validate data structures for you without the need for code.
You’re able to use the tool’s drag-and-drop feature to create, debug, and manage complex data integration tasks. Astera also natively connects to a variety of database providers including SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2.
To ensure your data is of the highest quality, there’s built-in data cleansing, data profiling, and data quality options — and to improve accuracy, there are built-in transformations that remove duplicate records, complete missing information, and get rid of redundant data. You’ll get flagged and receive emails if and when your data records don’t meet the high-quality data standards.
Use Data Mapping on Your Team
Data mapping has the power to ensure your marketing team and business as a whole get the most out of your data. It also helps you maintain high-quality data and automate the processes of data integration, transfer, migration, and more. Determine which technique you’ll use and if you need a tool to get started with data mapping on your team.

When you’re working at a new job or trying to get a promotion, you need to be organized. While you might list organizational skills on your resume, putting that skill into action is a little harder.
Having organizational skills means that you can meet deadlines and be efficient in your workflow management. In fact, organizational skills can be synonymous with energy and time management in most cases.

All of these skills are very important in the workplace and potential employers want to make sure you can stay on top of things.
In this post, we’ll dive deep into what organizational skills are, specific examples of what they look like in action, and how to develop organizational skills in the workplace.

Organizational skills are about building structure, boosting productivity, and prioritizing the right tasks at the right time.
The antithesis of organizational skills is procrastination, clutter, inefficiency, and miscommunication.
Organizational skills mean you’re able to keep yourself calm while coming up with a scheduled plan. Many people with good organizational skills break up projects into smaller goals so they are easier to accomplish.
Importance of Organizational Skills
Organizational skills are important because they’ll help you get tasks done on time. These types of skills are important in the workplace because managers will see that you can handle your tasks, and have autonomy over your own projects. This will help you get promotions and references if you apply to new jobs in the future.
If you don’t have a plan in place for how you’re going to accomplish something, it will be much harder for you to finish. You’ll need to be able to anticipate how long a task will take, what resources you’ll need to complete that task, and have the discipline to block out the necessary time to finish it.
Organizational Skills on a Resume
When you’re listing organizational skills on your resume, you might consider breaking it down into more specific sets of skills. Let’s dive into the examples below.
Organizational Skills Example
The best organizational skills to list on your resume include:

Communication
Time management
Delegation
Attention to detail
Decision making
Strategic planning
Goal setting
Creative thinking
Problem-solving
Productivity
Managing priorities
Teamwork/collaboration
Deadlines
Scheduling
Conflict management
Office management

1. Own your calendar.
The best way to develop organizational skills is to truly own your calendar. Block off time where you need to get work done. Then, create a schedule for yourself that is realistic to stick to. It’s hard to stay organized when you have random meetings popping up on your calendar.
Additionally, it’s important to know how you work best. For example, I like to have meetings back-to-back because it’s hard for me to get work done in 30-minute increments between meetings. I want all my meetings at the same time, so I can block working time and then meeting time.
2. Make lists.
When you have a lot on your to-do list, you can make separate lists for what needs to get done and when. I usually have a running to-do list where I’ll add everything I need to do for the week. Then, I’ll break that down into daily to-do lists. You can organize your lists by tasks, meetings, reminders, etc.
3. Figure out what tools will help you.
Obviously, everyone works differently. That’s why it’s important to figure out how you work best. Do you like using a physical calendar or a digital calendar? Regardless, you’ll need tools to help you stay organized. Below is a quick list of physical and digital tools to help you get started.
Physical Tools

Planner
Calendar
Notepad
Folders
Journals

Digital Tools

Google Calendar
Trello
Asana
Evernote
Teuxdeux

4. Communicate with your team.
Another way to develop organizational skills is to communicate with your team. It’s important to communicate your plan of action to any necessary stakeholders. Additionally, communication will help keep you accountable.
If you’re working on a project with several people, you can communicate updates on your part of the project as they occur or at the end of the day. This is a great way to keep the team organized and on task.
5. Declutter your workspace.
Lastly, to truly be organized, your workspace should be free from clutter. While not everyone likes to keep everything neat and tidy all the time, you should still only have necessary items on your desk so you don’t get distracted. This will help productivity and organization overall. When you need to find a list or an item, it’s important that you know where it is and it doesn’t get lost.
Organizational Skills in the Workplace
Now you might be wondering, “How can I use these organizational skills in the workplace?” and “How can I highlight these skills?”
The first step is to list these skills on your resume when you’re applying for jobs. You can say “organizational skills” or you can list other skills, like the ones above, to be even more specific.
If you’re in a job interview, think of stories and examples of how you remained organized and how it helped you solve a problem or complete a project successfully. It’s important to discuss how you scheduled your time, how you handle multiple assignments, and how you delegate tasks.
While a potential employer might not ask specific questions about organizational skills, you can highlight these stories in questions like “What are your strengths?” and “Why are you a good fit for this role?”
Once you’re working for a company, you can highlight your organizational skills during projects or meetings. It’s a good idea to use these skills whenever you can because it’s sure to impress your boss and help you move forward in your career.
Organizational skills don’t just mean that you keep to-do lists. It means you manage your time efficiently, you’re productive, can solve problems, and think critically. That’s why it’s important to develop your organizational skills whenever you can.