Understanding the Need for Financial Projections in the Business Plan & Pitch Deck

1. Understanding the Need for Financial Projectons in the Business Plan & Pitch Deck Are you preparing to create documents to present your business to others? If so, you’ll need to create fnancial projectons for the business plan, Pitch Deck, or any other type of presentaton document. This can be one of the most important aspects of your presentatons. There are a number of reasons this informaton is so important to your audience. It doesn’t matter who your audience is, either. The focus may difer but, they are important regardless. Here is some basic informaton you need to know. They Quantfy the Full Plan If your document is written well, it will tell a story. The Financial Projectons Business Plan or pitch deck do the same thing. They will tell your business’s story numerically. This is where you will quantfy everything you’ve explained throughout the rest of the document. As an example, the price you’ve decided to charge for your product combined with your expected sales volume will become your revenue. Your market research and marketng plan will have helped decide what these numbers will be. Show Where Your Company Has Been When you present the Financial Projectons in the business plan or pitch deck, there are a number of things that your audience will want to know. If your business has already been in operaton, they will expect to see historic fgures. Although “actuals” are not projectons, they

2. will inform the projectons. Historic actuals are one of the many things that will help justfy the fnancial projectons. Your projectons can’t simply be a guess. They need to be supported by other informaton. The actual performance or committed future sales, will help to support the numbers you include. Show Where Your Company is Going The main role of fnancial projectons in the Business Plan or pitch deck is to show where your company is going. That’s what they are all about, projectng the future. The main purpose of presentng your documents to someone is to paint a picture of the business’s future. Think about it, it works in every instance. If you’re applying for a bank business plan, trying to convince an investor to invest, trying to bring on a partner, or trying to secure a lease, it’s all about the future. It answers many questons about the future. Will the business succeed? How much return might I get (as an investor)? What is the market likely to do? How will the company adapt to antcipated – an unexpected – changes? Financial Projectons: Arguably the Most Important Aspect It should be clear now just how important and informatve the fnancial projectons are in the business plan, Pitch Deck, or any other type of business document. They aren’t separate from the rest of the plan. Rather, they bring the entre plan together in numerical form. Business, at the end of the day, always comes back to the numbers. No matter your audience, they are going to have questons around the numbers in one aspect or another. Make sure to give this secton the attenton it is due. If you do that, and make sure that they te in the rest of your plan, you will be one step closer to success.