You’re ready to take your great idea to market.  Nobody offers a product quite like yours, and there is a need for your product out there.  It’s time to go in to business and start making these sales, right? Not so fast. A great idea and a market don’t necessarily equal business success.  While they are required, it’s also important to understand the financial impact and how your potential customers learn about your business. First, we should focus on the financial side.  We have written a number of business plans for clients that had great ideas. They had a great product.  They had a great market.  However, pricing pressures from similar products required the product to be sold at lower margins.  After all of the fixed expenses were represented, the company simply couldn’t be profitable.  This is just another reason for why a business plan is important.  These clients would have made costly mistakes, borrowing against their personal assets, only to start a company that really had no chance to succeed.  The business plan kept them from making these mistakes. The other consideration is the marketing piece:  how do potential customers learn about your business?  You should never assume that customers are going to line up outside of your door the day you open.   You have to market to these customers.  A quality marketing plan is essential to your business success.  Get creative!  Overall, don’t think that your idea is ready to take to market without a quality business plan.  Hire a professional, do the plan right, and then move forward once you have a better idea of how to make your business a success.