Introducing your business, your vision and objectives

Your business plan should set out the current situation, your vision for the future and how you will get there.

Current situation

The first step in producing a business plan is to provide an overview of the current situation. If you haven’t completed it already, you can fill out a template which helps to describe your current business situation. This will help you to introduce what your business does (or will do) in your business plan.

You can also explain more about the history of your business in this section – when it was set up, a timeline of purchases/changes and what you have achieved to date. If you are starting a new business or diversifying, then you can use the introduction to:

Describe the industry and its opportunities
Say why you want to be in this sector
Explain what has brought you to this situation

You should also provide some key details about your business at this point:

Address, phone, email
Legal status: sole trader, ltd, etc.
Advisors: bankers, consultants, solicitors
Management team: names and short biographies

Your vision for your business

A vision statement will explain to readers where you want the business to be in five years’ time or longer. It can be based on your personal objectives, and perhaps those of anyone else involved in the management of your business.

Download the personal objectives template

Examples of vision statements

Dairy

As a dairy farmer, my vision is to expand my herd size from 125 to 190 cows, introduce three robotic milking units to replace my worn-out parlour and to help my work/life balance while maintaining or increasing my current level of profitability over the next four years.

Beef & Lamb

As an upland livestock tenant farmer, my vision is to retire from farming within the next four years and to maximise the cash I can release from my business.

Arable

As an arable farmer, my vision is to ensure I improve the health of my soils through moving to a no-till system and the re-introduction of a livestock enterprise in order that I can pass a sustainable business on to the next generation in 10 years’ time.

Pork

As a pig farmer, my vision is to double the size of the outdoor breeding herd to 1,000 sows within the next three years through the development of a contract farming agreement with one of my large arable neighbours.

Your mission – how you will achieve your vision

A mission statement will explain how you do what you do and what is important in the way you run your business – your values. The strengths explored on your SWOT analysis (and the factors identified on your PESTLE analysis) may help define your mission statement, and you can use this values list to help you consider which values are most important to your business.

Business objectives

Objectives are shorter term goals which allow you to monitor performance against your plan. They should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Specific – Have an objective which you can focus on, which is not vague and therefore difficult to achieve
Measurable – Business objectives should be reviewed on a regular basis and action taken when you’re veering off target for meeting your goals
Achievable – You and/or your team should be able to meet the objective within the set deadline, even if it is challenging
Relevant – Think about the vision and mission for your business and ensure that your objectives work towards these
Time-bound – Ensure that there is a deadline to work towards, which can help motivate you to achieve the objective

Regular team meetings and one-to-one discussions can help you to meet your objectives by ensuring that everyone is clear on what’s required of them and giving you the opportunity to monitor progress.

Useful links

Market analysis

Financial information