Industry Trends for your small business plan

Small business owners come to our site for specific financial analysis and marketing data for their specific line of business, or to assess the competitive situation - and their performance within it -- in their target market area. Many of you are writing a small business plan to take to a bank or investors. Others are looking for local market data, small business failure rates or sales per employee trends to inform the projections in your business or marketing plan. In either case, you will need to compare your business vision and experience against industry averages for operations like yours, identifying strengths and explaining how you plan to overcome any concerning industry trends as you create the business plan.

We have a lot of small business data that can help, especially in our Industry Financial, Cash Flow and Marketing Research Profile series. We develop separate small business and startup trends in each. In other words, we can help you understand how small businesses that are in your precise industry are doing. That crucial information forms the competitive backdrop to your small business plan, to writing a marketing plan - or to your evaluation of whether to go full steam ahead. It also helps you create your own operational and market targets, and alerts you to obstacles that you might need to address as you tell your story to a bank or investors.

Our Industry Financial and Market Research Report Profile series each develop separate trends and measures for small business and startups for every industry segment we analyze (over 6,500 lines of business in all). Information in the Market Research Report ($99) is available in both national and local versions, so you can match your type of business and market area to businesses in similar situations.

In other words, we can help you understand how the industry and small businesses within it are doing. That crucial information forms the competitive backdrop to your business plan or marketing plan. It also give you information you need you formulate business goals, and alerts you to concerns that you might need to address when you tell your story to a bank or investors.