Creating a business plan for your small business is one of the most crucial steps when launching a start-up, so, as a small business owner, you might feel obligated to hire a business plan writer at some point. Although there are some advantages of working with vendors in person, most scenarios involve a higher cost for something that’s not needed. By hiring someone to write your business plan, you can provide much more value when it comes to developing your idea.
In this article we list the pros and cons of working with national and local business plan writers.
LOCAL BUSINESS PLAN WRITER
Advantages
- Building trust: It’s almost always certain that you can build a stronger relationship from a live, face-to-face meeting over using electronic communication, such as conference calls or video chats. Meetings in person are more personable and can develop a trusting bond between the client and the vendor at a faster pace.
- Efficient communication: A 2010 MIT study, conducted by Dr. Sandy Pentland (PhD ’82), highlighted the positive facts about interpersonal communication that is conducted in person. In this study, Pentland found results to reinforce the notion that meetings in person host more efficient communication, which, in turn, increases results.
Disadvantages
- Lack of data: The downside about local business plan writers is that they probably don’t have enough data available in order to perform a complete research analysis for the marketplace. For local businesses, subscribing to many different credible databases and research journals can too expensive to handle.
- Lack of expertise: The skill set, such as financials research, and marketplace expertise, that is required to cover all components of a business plan might be more than what smaller writing organizations can offer.
NATIONAL BUSINESS PLAN WRITER
Advantages
- Lower costs: Since national business plan writers have a larger amount of business, subscribing to databases and journals can be more affordable. The economy of scales savings are passed on to the customer.
- Additional resources: Again, because large business writing companies have increased business, they can swing the high costs for access to numerous sources for research information. This results in having more accurate research information to cautiously build your business plan with. Additionally, by contracting from a larger business plan writing company you have better consultants to help you create your plan. Most of these companies have experts on staff that each harbors a depth of expertise in any particular area of the business plan, so you know that each component of your business plan will be solid. Due to having a bigger staff, consisting of experts in certain areas of the plan, larger companies usually form better methods and strategies for compiling a business plan.
Disadvantages
- Less effective communication: If communication is not organized, then a certain amount of quality of communication will decrease. If meetings aren’t conducted in person then it’s possible that important non-verbal signals won’t be caught and registered, as Dr. Sandy Pentland’s MIT study suggested. Although, if the business plan writing company does organize its communication, such as using a compiled list of criteria questions, then communication of any kind will work better.
Deciding on the best vendor for your business can be challenging. When deciding if you are going to go with a local or national business plan writer, you should think about what factors are more important to you, your mission statement, and your values. If you absolutely need to have meetings with your vendor in person, then opting for a local plan writer is the best solution for you. Furthermore, if lower prices and a higher quality of market knowledge are more valued to you, then you should go with a national plan writer.