Red Flag #1: Sample Business Plans Online
Many business plan services display sample business plans on their websites to demonstrate their end product. In reality, they are demonstrating a fundamental lack of business acumen and disrespect for their clientele.
By publishing samples, they are enabling low end competitors to flood the market with business plans copied from originals. When strategies, market research, and format are readily available, the competitive advantage for the original client and prospective clients is squandered.
Instead, a premier business plan writing service safeguards their clientele and never releases business plans to acquire new business. As durable competitive advantages are critical to business success, confidentiality extends beyond obtaining funding and the life of the initial project. The most successful business plans are based on proprietary methodologies that ensure a durable competitive advantage. These methodologies are trade secrets and only deployed for actual clients.
Red Flag #2: Bargain Basement MBA’s
Many writing services advertise MBA-educated business writers at unrealistically low prices. In order for this to be true, one or more of the following also has to be true.
1. The MBA’s are recent graduates from third tier schools with little or no business experience
2. The MBA’s are located in a third world country and lack first world insights
3. Inexperienced MBA’s are copying and pasting your information into cookie cutter software which you could do better yourself
4. The company is practicing “bait and switch” and admin staff are actually operating the software
Logically, top flight senior executives with MBA’s are expensive and well worth it. Their deep, relevant experience enables you to avoid costly trial and error and gives you the best chance for success.
Red Flag #3: Single Point of Failure
Many business plan services assign just one person to create a plan. The weaknesses of this approach should be obvious. Insights, strategies, industry experience, and accuracy are compromised because the plan is limited to a single individual’s mental bandwidth.
A premier business plan service deploys three senior executives with relevant industry experience to create each and every business plan. The resulting cross pollination of their interaction has been proven to address unforeseen obstacles and produce the most successful plans.
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You can avoid these red flags and ensure that you receive the best possible custom business plans.