A business plan is a document that provides information about the company, its mission, vision, and goals. It includes an executive summary of the company’s main points.
The saas business plan template pdf is a document that can be used to start a new company. It includes all the information that you need in order to create and present your business plan.
For every entrepreneur, writing a business strategy is a crucial step. However, if you’re establishing a SaaS company, the business strategy is critical since the amount of money needed to drive growth may be considerably more than you think. Rather of flying by the seat of your pants and hope everything works out, set aside a day or two to develop a strategy for growing your company.
Every business plan has the same components, but a SaaS (or subscription) business plan should pay particular attention to client acquisition (i.e. marketing) and the financial strategy.
But shouldn’t a financial strategy be included in every company plan? Without a doubt. Cash flow, on the other hand, may be a serious problem for a company that depends on monthly subscriptions. Because payments are spread out over months or even years rather than being received all at once, it may take a long time to break even on marketing and development expenses. This implies that you’ll probably need more money up front than you think to get your company off the ground.
Why should you create a business plan for your SaaS company?
A business strategy may seem to be a waste of time for entrepreneurs who just want to get started creating something and addressing consumer issues. It’s even possible that it’s a kind of procrastination. Why waste time “planning” when you might be “doing”? Here are some of the most compelling reasons to devote a day or two to your company strategy.
Strategy
A business plan may assist you in thinking through and clarifying your company approach. Will you need payment in advance for subscriptions? Will you provide a free trial period? Alternatively, you may go the “freemium” approach, where certain aspects of your product are permanently free and others need a paid pricing tier upgrade.
You’ll be able to get your whole team on the same page and have clarity about your path if you write out your first plan. This isn’t to say you can’t alter your approach in the future; it simply means you need to know where you’re starting from.
Cash reigns supreme
For many subscription companies, the cost of gaining a client is often more than the first month’s payment. In reality, recouping the cost of gaining a client may take several months or even a year.
As a result, it’s essential to develop a strategy that includes a detailed financial projection. A solid financial plan will allow you to play around with various situations so you can figure out how much cash you’ll need to manage both the worst-case and best-case scenarios.
Plan for acquiring customers
A solid business strategy will include how you intend to attract new clients. This may take the shape of a comprehensive marketing strategy that you incorporate in your strategy. You can’t simply expect that “if you build it, they will come” like in the movie Field of Dreams. This works sometimes, but most of the time gaining consumers requires more effort.
Plan for Retention
With a subscription company, acquiring consumers is only a portion of the process. In a competitive industry, SaaS companies must continue to win their customers’ loyalty month after month. Your company plan should assist you in considering and developing a strategy for retaining consumers in the long term.
Knowledge and market research
Your business plan will require you to consider who your target market is and how you’ll reach them. Knowing your client is critical to your business, and having a thorough knowledge of them can aid you in developing the appropriate product for them over time.
What should your SaaS business strategy include?
While all business plans have the same components, the client acquisition section and the financial strategy are particularly important in a SaaS business plan. The specifics of everything you need to put in your strategy are listed below:
A brief overview
Despite the fact that it appears first in your business plan, you should write your executive summary last, after you’ve gone through the rest of it. Without the rest of your strategy, a strong executive summary may highlight the main components of your company without getting into too much detail.
The key to writing a good executive summary is to avoid repeating everything in your entire strategy, as tempting as it may seem. You should definitely pare down the information to the essentials so that the reader is left wanting more.
Because an executive summary is often utilized as a stand-alone document that you may send to lenders and investors as part of the fundraising process, it should be brief and to-the-point. Make certain you include the following essential elements:
- The issue you’re attempting to resolve. Make a narrative out of it to keep your audience interested.
- How your product addresses this issue.
- Who is your intended audience?
- Your revenue and profit forecasts
- Who you are and why you’re the best person to create this company
- How much money are you looking to raise (if you’re looking for investment)?
Problem
Every successful company solves a customer’s issue. Your client for SaaS companies may be another company or a consumer, but in either case, your service must address an issue for your customer. If you’re Netflix, you’re meeting a need for low-cost, always-on entertainment. You address the issue of unorganized sales funnels and poor client communication if you’re Salesforce.
Making an issue statement “real” for your audience is crucial. You want someone who reads your business plan to feel empathy for the client who is having a problem right away. You want your audience to comprehend and connect to the issue.
This may be done via narrative and real-life instances of how consumers are presently resolving their issues. If you’re developing a new project management solution, for example, you may discuss how your prospective clients are presently attempting to address their issue using spreadsheets and email, and how this leads to confusion and poor communication.
Solution
Writing about your solution is perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of company planning. This is where you explain your SaaS service and how it addresses your clients’ issues if you’re running one.
You’ll want to include a part where you discuss your competitors and how you plan to distinguish your service from other options, in addition to talking about your solution.
Make sure to talk about price and where your solution fits in the market. This means you should specify if you’re a low-cost or high-cost option on the market. If the market is new and there aren’t many direct rivals, you may compare the cost of your solution to how your consumers are presently addressing their issue.
Market to be targeted
The target market section is an essential part of every business strategy since it describes who your consumers are. You’ll want to emphasize various facts depending on the kind of service you’re offering. You’ll probably want to explain common demographics, hobbies, and other important characteristics that assist you select a suitable target client for a service that customers subscribe to. If you’re selling to other companies, you should explain the average size of the company, the industry they’re in, and the typical decision-maker.
Whether your target market is made up of individuals or companies, you’ll want to be sure that you account for the whole amount of prospective clients. This is particularly helpful for investors, who will want to obtain a clear sense of the size of your market potential. The TAM, SAM, and SOM methods may be used to estimate market size.
Acquisition strategy for customers
Customer acquisition is critical to the success of your SaaS business. It doesn’t matter how excellent your service is if you don’t have any sales or customers.
We’re talking about marketing and sales when we speak about customer acquisition. This section of your business plan is where you describe how you’ll reach out to potential consumers and how your sales process will work.
Your marketing and sales tactics will be determined by your target market. Do your potential consumers discover about new goods by using Google to look for answers to their problems? Do they participate in trade shows? Alternatively, they may be frequent Instagram users, and advertising on that platform will be the most effective method to reach them.
Your marketing strategy should include information on how you want to reach your target audience and how much money you anticipate to spend on marketing and advertising.
You must specify whether your sales process will need a sales staff or will be self-service in your sales strategy. If you’re selling to companies, you’ll probably require a sales staff, and the sales process will take weeks, if not months. If you’re selling to consumers, you may be able to use a self-service sales approach, in which people sign up for your service without having to contact you.
Team
The Team part of your business plan is critical if you are seeking outside funding. Investors want to know who is behind the firm and why they believe they have the abilities and expertise necessary to convert a concept into a profitable corporation. Investors will also want to know whether you have any holes in your management team that need to be filled. Being aware of these flaws demonstrates maturity and candor regarding your company’s present condition.
The Team part of your business plan is still essential if you’re utilizing it for internal, strategic reasons. You don’t have to include full biographies for everyone on your team, but you may describe the holes you still want to fill and even the organizational structure of your business so you and your partners know who is in charge of what.
A financial strategy
The financial plan for a SaaS company includes several key elements that a conventional business plan may lack. Subscription companies will need a subscription sales estimate as well as a few key indicators that smart investors will be looking for.
Forecast for subscription sales
A SaaS business’s subscription sales forecast will indicate how many new customers join up each month, as well as how many customers quit. You should also mention the typical membership price and any setup costs you may charge new clients. Subscription forecasting is difficult since income from yearly contracts must be recognized over time rather than all at once. Check out our guide if you’re new to subscription sales forecasting.
Rate of churn
Typically, this is incorporated in your sales estimate. It’s the monthly proportion of current customers that terminate their membership. This is a crucial metric for determining the health of a subscription company. If a large proportion of consumers are expected to cancel, this suggests that their value is poor and that your solution isn’t a suitable match for their issues.
Value for money over time
The entire amount of money that a typical client will spend on your service throughout their tenure as a customer is known as lifetime value (LTV). If your service is new, you may not have accurate information on the average client lifetime.
Fortunately, dividing 1 by your monthly churn rate will give you an estimate of a customer’s anticipated lifespan. This will offer you an estimate of how long a typical client will subscribe to your service for. You may calculate your projected LTV by multiplying this figure by the average amount you charge your clients.
LTV is a useful metric since it may help you determine how much you should spend to attract a new client. In most cases, you’ll want to spend less on acquiring a client than they’ll spend with you over the course of their lifetime, thus knowing your expected LTV may help you budget.
Cost of acquiring a customer (CAC)
In addition to LTV, as stated above, the financial part of your company plan should include information on your average client acquisition cost. This is the entire amount of money spent on acquiring a typical client. You may calculate this by dividing your marketing and advertising expenditure by the number of consumers you anticipate to gain as a result of that investment.
Cash flow
A profit and loss projection will undoubtedly be included in your financial plan, but your cash flow forecast is even more crucial. It’s astonishing how much capital is required to finance early development for SaaS companies. This is due to the fact that your clients usually pay you regularly rather than upfront.
A subscription company, unlike a firm that sells goods and receives all of the income immediately, collects money from consumers month after month, year after year. So, although your average client may be worth a lot over time, recouping the money you spent on obtaining that customer may take some time.
A cash flow projection can assist you figure out how much money you’ll need to keep your company viable until you have your first clients.
A business strategy may assist you in managing your SaaS company
Writing a business plan for your subscription company is a crucial step in the process of getting started. The increased insight into your plan will be well worth the effort, and having a roadmap to follow when the turmoil of beginning a company sets in may offer the guiding force you need to expand.
Check out our full guide on creating a business plan as well as our library of business plan samples if you need more information on how to write a business plan.
The saas business plan template excel is a tool that helps companies to create a company plan. It includes templates, examples, and other information on how to start up your own SaaS company.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I write a SaaS business plan?
For more information, please visit our website at https://www.saa-planning.com/
How do you write a business plan example?
A business plan is a document that outlines the purpose, goals, and strategies of a company.
What makes a successful SaaS company?
A successful SaaS company is one that has a large customer base, and generates a lot of revenue.
