How to stop bad writing from blowing your chances with investors

An unreadable business plan could cost you dearly.

By Fergal McGovern CEO, VisibleThread

FOR ENTREPRENEURS SEEKING funding, business plans are vital.

Investors and venture capital firms want to see every aspect of your business – past performance, projected revenue, current marketing, operating costs – distilled into one document. How else can they make a judgement on whether you’re worth backing?

Writing about your own company sounds easy enough: as an entrepreneur, you’re most likely to be working on it 24/7. No one knows your business better than you do so it should be straightforward enough to explain it on paper.

Yet most business plans don’t get the results that entrepreneurs hope for – and without investment, your company can’t grow.

So, how do you make sure yours is as engaging as possible and lands you the funding you need? Simple: focus on ‘readability’.

What is ‘readability’?

‘Readability’ is a measurement of how easy or enjoyable a piece of content is to read. A business plan that isn’t readable quickly gets put aside.

According to a recent article published by Entrepreneur magazine, one of the biggest mistakes founders make when compiling their plan is that it is poorly written.

Including excessive use of jargon, lots of use of the passive voice, overly long sentences and too many adverbs diminishes the document’s readability – and quickly turns off the attention of the reader.

With a hard-to-read business plan, investors will quickly move on and you’ll lose the chance for investment even though your idea may be a great one.

With the many demands made on an investor’s time, using plain English to describe what you do will ensure engagement by the investor and reassure them that you’re a sound investment.

It’s true what Leonardo da Vinci once said; simplicity is the “ultimate sophistication”.

Reading patterns have changed

Enhancing the readability of your business plan should take into account that reading patterns have changed in the last decade.

Of course people still read as much as they used to, but online content has changed how they read. Scanning for critical pieces of information is commonplace now.

If you prioritise readability in your business plan, you’ll ensure that your potential investor can find the most important pieces of information easily.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that people have different reading ages. If your business plan is going to be read by numerous investors or VCs you need to account for this.

One could be educated to a higher degree than another. Some investors may be visually oriented whereas others find it easy to plough through lots of text.

Don’t be tempted to add everything you can think of when it comes to creating your business plan. Your intentions may be good, but you’ll lose the audience you’re writing for – your potential investor.

To make your business plan more readable, focus on the following when you’re writing it:

  • Use the active voice as much as possible
  • Do not use jargon
  • Use long sentences sparingly
  • Adverbs seldom contribute to your content
  • Explain concepts in simple terms; people are suspicious of marketing language
  • Use headings and subheadings to guide your reader

Fergal McGovern is the CEO of VisibleThread and will be running a workshop on why plain language matters for citizenship engagement on 1 March.

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