According to Loudoun SBDC Business Advisor Terry Saeger, the short answer is yes, but not necessarily for the reason most people think about, which is getting a loan from a bank.
Desea redactar un plan de negocios para usted, el propietario de la empresa.
The business planning process forces you to think about the key aspects of your business and how each of those elements inter-relate and ultimately impact the success or failure of your enterprise. Writing a business plan should be easy once you have done the hard work of deeply understanding all the key elements of your business. The document you give to the bank, or investors, will clearly demonstrate that you have an organized and thorough understanding your business.
Think of a business plan as a framework which forces you to imagine what you want the business to look like and where you want the business to go. What does “success” look like, how do I get there, and what are all the things I need to consider while getting to “success”.
I was first introduced to the “Business Model Canvas” by Osterwalder and Pigneur (www.strategyzer.com) when I was a mentor in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps Teams boot camp program. The I-Corps program (https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/) is an intensive seven-week program designed to force business planning and customer discovery (subject for another article) for pre-revenue companies who have received seed funding from Federal government agencies and are trying to determine if their ideas can be commercialized (turned into a real business).
The Business Model Canvas is a simple but powerful model which helps you think through the nine key elements of business planning. The nine elements include Customer Segments, Value Proposition, Channels, Customer Relationships, Revenue Streams, Key Resources, Key Activities, Key Partnerships and Cost Structure. I highly recommend getting their book as you enter the business planning process and sign up for the SBDC’s business planning seminars.
So, do you really need to write a business plan? Successful businesses understand their markets, customers, cost structures, value propositions and a host of other factors which combined determine their success or failure. Successful business owners understand all the elements of their businesses and how manipulating one element impacts others, often in profound ways. I believe you need a business plan if you want to get the most out of your business and we at the SBDC are here to help you maximize your business’s potential.
Los asesores comerciales del SBDC pueden presentarle el lienzo del modelo comercial y el proceso de pensamiento involucrado en la implementación exitosa de los conceptos de planificación comercial.
Spanish 
English