Writing a Business Plan Gets Your Dreams Off the Ground

Are you considering purchasing a fuel station? Or are you considering expanding your existing business to increase revenue and profitability? When you think about a sizable investment, the best way to start is by writing a business plan. Business plans give you the confidence that you understand the market and that you’re making a sound financial decision–plus, they help your bank or investors feel the same way. Here are some topics you will need to address in your business plan.

Essential Components to Include When Writing a Business Plan

Identify Your Competitive Advantage

The first step in starting or growing a business is identifying a problem in the marketplace that your company can solve. For a fuel station, this could be providing a valuable product in an underserved area of your community or working more efficiently than your competitors to give consumers a lower price for a quality product. Identifying a problem you can solve better than the competitors becomes your competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is what your company does better than anyone else and why consumers choose to do business with you over the competition.

Understand the Market

It’s important to conduct a study of the current marketplace. You can hire a consulting firm or local marketing agency to do much of this work. Some of the questions that will be addressed in a market analysis include the following:

• The number of consumers and their demographics, including income levels.
• Size and location of competitors.
• Real estate, leasing, utility, taxes, and other expenses applicable in the area.
• Regulations and political climate impacting businesses in the community.
• Community expansion plans.

These factors will help give you and potential lenders or investors a better idea about how much success you can anticipate from investing in the community.

Outline Your Business

A complete description of the products and services you will provide will define how your company will solve the problems you identified for the community. For a fuel station, some of those items may include:

• Will you provide branded or unbranded fuel?
• How many pumps will you install?
• Will you offer alternative fuel options, such as charging stations or hydrogen fuel pumps?
• Will you provide fuel attendants or be strictly self-serve?
• Are you planning to include a convenience store, and how big will it be? What will the product selection include?
• Will you include a car wash to supplement your revenue on the site?

Determine Your Business Structure

You may want to discuss the business structure with a professional consultant, attorney, or certified public accountant. From a very high level, you will need to address if your company will be a sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation. At the same time, you will need to outline how the day-to-day operations will be managed. For example, if you will hire a location manager, approximately how many staff you will need, how you will ensure the business operates to your standards, etc.

Develop Pro-Forma Financials

Pro-forma financials are estimated financial statements based on realistic assumptions of your business. You’ll typically be asked to show five years of projected financial statements for a brand-new business. Ongoing enterprises benefit from using prior financial history as a baseline for their projections. These financial outlooks with forecasted income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and capital expenditure budgets will help you obtain the funding you need to bring your dreams to life.

GP Energy makes building, owning, and operating fuel stations easier.

Our professional team at GP Energy works with business owners like you to develop plans and strategies to achieve success. Whether you’re interested in buying a brand-new fuel station or want to grow your current locations, we have the expertise to guide you through the entire process. Our goal at GP Energy is to make crossing the finish line of goal achievement easily within your reach. Contact us today to get started!