Service Offerings
Our review service includes four distinct packages to best serve your needs. The cornerstone of our value proposition is our proprietary Honest Assessment Review, which is included with each level of service. The Silver, Gold, and Platinum packages include additional reviews so we can gauge improvement in the business plan and provide a clear path to success.
Whether you are a novice or a veteran at writing business documents, we believe you will find our services an invaluable tool in upgrading your plan and improving your chances of getting in front of potential investors. As a side note, we typically spend far more than the minimum review times identified in our service plans.
Bronze
Our Bronze service offering is intended for those plan writers who either want validation for their efforts (a final grade, if you will), or a quick analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. The quality of advice is the same as what you get with our other packages. We execute a quick dive into your plan, perform an Honest Assessment Review, and provide critical feedback.Silver
The Silver package is geared towards those authors who are unsure about their overall report quality and whether the content and structure is proper. For this reason, we implement a feedback loop in which we recommend changes that will enhance the product and focus your efforts properly. The second pass at the Honest Assessment Review provides an excellent before-after comparison and perspective.Gold
Our Gold service is ideal for those business plan writers who feel overwhelmed and potentially confused with what it is they should be producing (this is very common). Customers who require this level of service are often asking the questions: What am I missing? What more needs to be done? In response to this need, we provide two feedback loops to gauge improvement and identify shortcomings that might be holding you back. We have found that the second and third assessments create confidence in the quality of the end product.Platinum
The Platinum service package is our most extensive level of service. Business authors who utilize this package know they do not have the time necessary to focus 100% on the plan’s content. However, they fully understand its relative importance in their ultimate success and they recognize that what they are producing will likely not make the grade.
As with our Silver and Gold service offerings, the initial assessment we perform identifies those areas that are most deficient. From there, we develop a strategy and outline to conquer each of them. We then take several passes through each component of your plan and provide multiple feedback loops to instill confidence and get it across the finish line.
Honest Assessment Review
If we have seen it once, we have seen it a thousand times: a start-up approaches us with a “great idea” that their friends, family, and peers say is a “can’t miss,” a “no brainer,” or an “opportunity of a lifetime.” In most cases, they are being supportive without any real clue as to whether it is a legitimate business concept; let alone one that could receive funding.
Leveraging our many years of experience appraising what it takes to get the attention of potential investors, we developed a proprietary system called Honest Assessment Review. This process analyzes numerous subjective and objective components of your business plan and generates an algorithm-based index score (Min: 0, Max: 100).
The appraisal itself encompasses more than 140 critical details and attributes that we have found necessary to produce a comprehensive and effective business plan. The indexed score and grading system indicates the practicality of putting a business concept in front of potential investors. Importantly, the Honest Assessment Review framework quickly identifies those elements that require the most attention going forward. These are areas we will work with you on completing and mastering in an effort to make your business plan the best it can be.
The subjective review component is a function of our many years of experience spent reading thousands of business plans, analyzing financial statements and corporate reports, and raising capital for companies that possess various levels of differentiation. We scrutinize and evaluate critical presentation features such as grammar, language, technical and analytical writing skills, readability, and powers of persuasion in determining overall effectiveness.
Naturally, not all business concepts are comparable. For that reason, the Honest Assessment Review process is adjusted to take into account primary differences such as industry selection, whether the business is a product or service, and the means of distribution and delivery. The result is a fair and level scoring system that we use to determine the overall quality and breadth of a business plan.
We are quick to note that the overall quality and breadth does not correlate directly to funding success as investors’ appetites seem to ebb and flow with the tides. Our scoring system does, however, provide an objective indicator as to how well a particular business plan might be received by potential investors. This is a material hurdle in the funding process and should not be underestimated.
Do you know how well your business plan scores?
Working With Us
Working with us may be a bit different than working with some consulting practices that focus on business plan construction. As noted in the FAQ section of our website, we do not enter into a business plan service agreement with the intent to raise capital for your business. However, there are situations and circumstances in which we will make referrals and formal introductions to potential investors. We stress that this is an exception, and definitely NOT the norm.
Our objective is to provide focused “white glove” service to each of our clients and it is incredibly important that we meet or exceed your expectations. We are a small organization and we receive more requests than we can handle. For that reason, we evaluate prospective clients for goodness of fit. Before you pay us a cent, we carefully review your materials and assess whether our service will be beneficial to you. Following this initial appraisal, we may conclude that our service may not be optimal for your situation.
Engaging our services includes the following basic, but essential steps:
- You complete the online Contact Form.
- We send you a mutual non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
- You send us a copy of your plan and we perform a FREE, cursory analysis to assess its condition and what steps may be involved.
- We discuss your materials with you and decide if it is in our mutual interest to collaborate.
- If so, we discuss with you the level of service that may be necessary to get your business plan where it needs to be.
- After completion of our service we will send you an invoice via PayPal, payable upon receipt.
On the surface this engagement process may seem excessive, but we have found it ideal for a couple of key reasons. First, it increases the transparency of what we might be able to do for you before you spend a dime. Unlike some other programs where you may be held captive by ongoing advice, we do not cross-sell additional consulting services.
Second, this process insures that we do not take on too many clients and prevents us from being pulled in too many directions. Our objective is to provide focused “white glove” service to each of our clients. Accordingly, we tend to spend far more time per client than many of our competitors. In doing so, we would argue that Biz Plan Review offers a better value proposition when you consider the actual cost per hour of service, as well as the underlying objectivity.
Terms and Conditions
Our objective is to provide focused “white glove” service to each of our clients and it is incredibly important that we meet or exceed your expectations. That said, we are a small organization and we receive more requests than we can handle. As such, we evaluate prospective clients for goodness of fit. Before you pay us a cent, we carefully review your materials assess whether our service will be beneficial to you. Following this initial appraisal, we may conclude that our service may not be optimal for your situation.
Our services are carried out on a best efforts basis. As the true subject matter experts, you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the information contained within your business plan and any associated marketing materials.
For service offerings of less value than the Platinum package, we do allow you to upgrade for a cost equal to the difference between the two packages. There are no penalties or upcharges, and we will generously accrue whatever time is remaining to the next level of service.
Example: a Silver customer who has accrued 2.5 hours of service, one 15-minute phone conversation, and the initial Honest Assessment Review decides they want additional support. We could upgrade to the Gold for an additional charge of $240. The customer would have a minimum of 2.5 hours of review time remaining, 25 minutes of phone consultation, and 2 additional assessments.
Service Comparison
Bronze
- Comprehensive review and analysis of business plan and materials
- Honest Assessment Review
- Email correspondence highlighting assessment score, strengths & weaknesses
- Next step guidance
Silver
- Minimum 3-hour review and analysis of business plan and materials
- Initial Honest Assessment Review
- 30-minute phone consultation (can be two 15-minute discussions)
- Free second Honest Assessment Review
- Next step guidance
Gold
- Minimum 5-hour review and analysis of business plan and materials
- Initial Honest Assessment Review
- 40-minute phone consultation (can be two 20-minute discussions)
- Free second and third Honest Assessment Reviews
- Next step guidance
Platinum
- Minimum 8-hour review and analysis of business plan and materials
- Initial Honest Assessment Review
- 1-hour phone consultation (can be two 30-minute discussions)
- Multiple Honest Assessment Reviews (as necessary)
- Next step guidance