How To Create An Actionable 5 Years Plan? (With Templates)

You need a business plan to convey your business idea to others and bring it to reality — it’s as simple as that. With the help of a written plan, it becomes easier for employees and investors to understand where the business is going. And it also helps justify the growth potential of the company.

Most business managers prefer writing a 5-year plan to achieve these goals. It is mainly because this duration is neither too short nor too long, perfect for an actionable and result-oriented roadmap. This roadmap helps you identify the milestones you’ll have to reach to make your business profitable.

In this article, we’ll discuss all about 5-year plans — what they are and why you need one. We will also guide you on how to make a 5-year plan. And before concluding the blog, we’ll provide you with a template for a 5-year business plan.

Let’s not keep you waiting. Read on.

What Is A 5-Year Plan?

Before we get into the 5-year plan, we first have to understand what a business plan is. So, a business plan is a document that the leaders of the organization use to paint the existing state of the company and also describe where the company wants to be at various time points in the future. If we have to sum up the basic purposes of a business plan, they are — communication of ideas, guidelines for management, and strategic planning.

Now, what is a 5-year plan? It is a strategic roadmap that helps companies achieve their long-term goals. Companies often use a 5-year business plan to gain the trust of potential investors and bankers. A well-written plan can easily explain the strengths of the company and the industry trends. The readers of a 5-year plan get excited and confident by looking at the financial projection mentioned in it.

Long story short, a 5-year plan is what investors consider to determine if the investment is worth making.

Why Do You Need a 5-Year Plan?

When you establish a long-term plan, it becomes easier for you to determine the priorities and goals of your business. And these two are the pillars behind every successful business. If you want to join the ranks of Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. (two of the most successful companies in the world), you need a business plan.

Here are some of the benefits that a 5-year plan has to offer:

• Better clarity: Creating a business plan ensures that you don’t rely on guesswork and rather make informed decisions.
• Creation of a marketing roadmap: Marketing is the soul of a business. It’s because of the marketing that people in America think that the Austrian company Red Bull is a local brand. They were able to reach so far because of the clarity in the creation of marketing strategies. A 5-year plan helps you define your target audience and the strategies you can use to target them.
• Support for funding: Banks and investors often ask for a 5-year business plan whenever you are seeking investments. It’s because that plan answers the questions regarding profitability and revenue generation.

This is merely a scratch of the surface when it comes to the benefits of a 5-year plan. It helps attract better employees and even provides a structure to the business management. With that said, let’s see how to make a 5-year plan.

How To Write a 5-Year Business Plan?

When you are creating a 5-year business plan, you have to invest a lot of time in non-writing work — data collection, market research, analysis, comparison, product testing, etc. And then you come to the writing part.

As far as the structure of a business plan is concerned, it’s not fixed — especially when the lean startups are growing at such a rapid pace. But you still have to make your own outline so you know where you are heading while drafting the plan.

Now, you can search on Google for a 5-year template, and you come across many. Most of them will have a different structure. But there are certain things that you’ll find common in all of them. Here’s a list of six sections that must be there in your plan.

Section 1: What People Should Know About Your Company

Based on how interesting it looks, some people will stop on abstract, and some will want to know more about your company. In this section, insert only the most relevant information for the reader and leave the complicated equations for the next one.

Description

In this section, you will describe where your business is standing at the moment. Don’t make this one long as the reader just expects to have a little understanding of your business from this section. You can share your geographical location, target market, your company history, etc.

The following subsections will help you provide the relevant information to the readers.

Mission Statement

After a brief description, write a mission statement. One written, share it with every stakeholder — employees, executives, investors, etc. You want everyone to share a consistent perspective when talking in public. It should be short and something that sticks to the mind.

Product/Service

Once your reader knows what you as a company stand for, it’s time to introduce your product/service. You have to list down the functionalities of the product. And if you are in the service business, you have to list down the various options your customers will have. How are your product/services different from your customers, and what unique value you can provide should also be mentioned in this section.

Target Market

Here you will describe your target market. What are the characteristics of your customers? How do they make a buying decision? And even their likes and dislikes can be shared in this section. However, keep this section brief because it will be further expanded in the ‘Marketing Plan.’

Goals

Mention the broad goals that you want to achieve over the period of five years. In this section, you don’t need to state how you plan to achieve them. Your readers should get an idea of what you can achieve once this plan is implemented.

Section 2: Detailed Business Information

We like to call this section — the section of numbers. Here, you’ll provide details facts, graphs, and statistics to attest to everything you claimed in Section 1. The numbers mentioned in this section are very important from an investor’s point of view. They will look into every bit of it before they invest their time or money in your business.

Financial Details

In this section, you describe your assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses, etc. You readers should know how much you have in the tank, how much you owe, and after five years, how much revenue you expect to generate. Provide the charts, spreadsheets, or anything that makes it easier for the reader to understand the finances.

Opportunities & Threats in the Market

In this section, you also share the report of market analysis that made you believe that your business will be successful. You also have to describe who are your top competitors in the market, how much market share they have captured, etc.

Explain what upper hand you have over your competitors that’ll help you disrupt the niche. Moreover, you should also mention the risks that you have to encounter. The more honest you are, the more realistic your plan will be.

Implementation Plan

If you are just starting out, describe the find you’ll need at various stages and for what purposes they are needed. You all have to lay out a plan of how you’re going to use your current funds to generate the best output and attract more capital.

In the case of an existing business, describe how you’ll go into new ventures and still maintain daily operations.

Section 3: Marketing Plan

This is another must-have section in your actionable 5-year plan. Even if you are not creating a full-fledged business plan, this should still have a place in it. The information in the market plan particularly interests the potential investors and financiers. As a company owner or strategist, this is also an important section for yourself as it helps you determine what needs to be done and how.

Over the course of five years, you’ll get great results for every minute you put into this section.

This section should have a detailed analysis of:

• Competitors in the market
• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats)
• TAM (Total Addressable Market)
• USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Marketing Budget
• Channels to be used for marketing
• Elevator pitches and taglines
• Target customers’ persona and profile

Section 4: Financial Plan

You need to paint an honest picture of where you are currently and where you see yourself considering you raise the funds that you need.

Also, mention who’s responsible for keeping records in your company, how this data is stored, and who has access to it. You also need to include your current balance sheet for a better understanding of numbers. Moreover, you also need to show the financial projection for the next 12 months (each month) and annually for the next five years.

Everything related to finances goes in here.

Section 5: Executive Summary (at the beginning)

In your five-year business plan, the executive summary should be placed first. But according to Penn State University, it’s best to write the executive summary after everything else. It’s quite similar to how academics write the abstract of the research paper. They do it at the end when all the results have been drawn.

The ES should be clear and concise, where you spell out all the acronyms and define the industrial terms you used. The summary should only have the most important stat and facts in it. Moreover, there should be no fluff as every word counts. The more actionable facts you write in it, the better your 5-year plan is for the readers.

Your Personal 5-Year Plan Template We Promised

1–3–5 Year Plan Template Slides for PowerPoint

In this template, you can represent your 3–4–5 year business plan. But since all the elements are editable, you can easily make it a 1–3–5 year plan template too by replacing 3 and 4 with 1 and 3, respectively.

This template has a modern design and comes with three vertical columns for the plans of individual years. On top of the vertical columns, there are graphical icons. Users can hold or replace these icons as per their needs. In rows, there are phases of the business plan. Using this template, users can divide their every year’s plan into three phases.

One of the best things about this template is that it is editable in both PowerPoint and Google Slides.

5-Year Growth Metaphor Roadmap Template

It is a 5-year strategic business plan template to present the growth timeline concept. The growth of the plant in 5 different phases symbolizes the growth of the company in 5-years. The colors and design concept used in this template makes it visually pleasing.

This 5-year growth template is descriptive by providing a spotlight coming through the focus year. E.g., if we are talking about the year 2023, the yellow color spotlight comes from it and has text written at the bottom.

You can edit each and every component present in this template to meet your needs. This template is compatible with both Google Slides and PowerPoint.

This Brings Us to the End

Creating a business plan will always be one of the most crucial parts of launching a new business venture. Over the year, the format that individuals prefer for the 5-year plan or any business plan has evolved. And in the generation where people don’t want to waste their single minute, creating a plan from scratch is a tough task.

This is where templates come into the picture. You just have to figure out what are the things you want to include in your plan and then find a template that can hold the information. You’ll be relieved of all the design and structure work, and your actionable 5-years business plan will be ready in no time.