Industry Statistics for your small business plan

If you are putting together a business plan for yourself, for a bank or investors, you need quality, specific data to benchmark your projections against the performance of other firms in your industry and market. The best business plan data helps you compare your vision and experience against averages for operations like yours, identifying strengths and explaining how you plan to overcome any concerning trends in your industry and market area.

In addition to an industry benchmark balance sheet, you will need an overview of your industry's performance in your market area. Multi-year trend information such as average sales, total industry market volume, failure rates and the specific performance of businesses like yours (average size for the industry, small business startups, etc.) provides an important component to your plan. Key data helps tell your story, identify industry (and your own) strengths and weaknesses – and convinces lenders and investors that you know what you are talking about.

Most banks or investors require three solid years of your own numbers (or projections) against industry balance sheet benchmarks and financial ratios. Our Industry Financial and Market Research series develop separate trends and measures with industry-wide, small business and startup measures for each industry we analyze. We develop financial analysis reports for more lines of business (over 5,500) than any other provider, assuring you that the assumptions in your plan are truly based on the performance of businesses like yours. Our marketing research reports (covering more than 6,500 lines of business) are available in both national and local versions, so you can match your type of business and market area to others in the same situation. That crucial information forms the competitive backdrop to your business plan. It also helps you create your own targets, and alerts you to obstacles that you might need to address as you tell your story.