A carwash can be a lucrative entrepreneurial venture. To get started off on the right foot, however, you’ll need to know how to start a carwash business plan. The first thing you’ll need to create is an executive summary of your overall plan. It should be worded in such a way that anyone knows what your intentions happen to be and who will be implementing the plan. Briefly mention your experience, but don’t write a novel about every job that every manager in this potential business has held.
Once you have your summary ready, you’ll be ready to proceed to the other components of your carwash business plan.
What Do People Need To Know About the Business?
Immediately after the summary comes an overview of what the carwash business plans to offer. This is the place to list the specific services that you’ll be offering. Here are some examples that other carwash business plans have put into place in this section.
- Exterior services that include hand-washing when requested.
- Interior cleaning services that include vacuuming and trash removal.
- Full detailing services.
You’ll also want to give readers an overview of what the market conditions happen to be for this potential business. Are there any competitors in your market right now? If so, what is their market size? How will your business fit into this existing market? Don’t just settle on the old stand-by throw-in comment that says “We will counter our competition by hiring the best employees.”
That’s not a business plan. Set real goals that will drive sales for you. Have metrics in place that will help you measure progress toward a goal. Everyone knows that happy customers come from happy employees. Happy business owners come from consistent revenues streams that only arrive when a thorough look at the business structure is included in the planning stage.
What Will Your Market Segment Be?
Let’s say that you are putting your carwash into a community that has a population of 10,000. There’s one other carwash in the community already. What will the market segments be that you primarily plan to target? Will it be customers with a certain income level? People who are located within a certain radius of your business? Or will your carwash primarily be a business to business [B2B] operation and target dealerships and businesses with extensive fleets of vehicles?
List out the answers to these questions in this portion of your carwash business plan. List out the specifics of your primary customer segment and any research you’ve conducted on the matter. Talk about the location of your business and any advantages that it will provide you to reach out to your primary customer segment targets. When you do, then you’ll provide a comprehensive look at the potential of your business and put into place a plan to reach out to people that you can follow at any time.
Who Is Your Management Team?
Every new business is either made or broken based on how it is managed. The sad reality of the entrepreneurial world is that only 5% of businesses are able to survive through their first 5 years of existence. If you’re going to beat the odds, then now is the time to implement a management strategy with the people that you’re bringing on-board.
The experience of your management is what will set you apart in this section of your business plan. Make sure to list some detailed specifics about the experiences your management team will bring to the business. Even if you are going to be the only manager, your experiences will help to give people evaluating your business plan the confidence they need to potentially invest into the future of your carwash.
Now You’re Ready To List Out Your Objectives and Mission
Many businesses run into a common error at this point in their business plan. Your objectives and mission statement must work together, but also make sense for the location of your business. If you will be the only carwash in your community, being the premiere carwash in your community as a top objective doesn’t make sense. You’re the premiere carwash be default.
Many mission statements are self-serving and that’s another common mistake. You don’t need to have the philosophy that the “customer is always right,” but you do need to market yourself specifically though your mission statement to your primary customer segments. Something as simple as “We will create world class results through world class customer service” is suitable, even if it is something that seems a little generic. If it plays well with your customer segmentation research, then putting it into your business plan makes sense.
The Rest of the Plan Is Up To You
The rest of your business plan depends on what you may need. Financial institutions may want to see a company summary. Others may want to have a more complete look at the services you plan to offer. Detailed estimates of profit and loss might be expected. You may need to put in all of the details of your market segmentation work. If you put all of this together as you create your carwash business plan, however, you’ll be able to pull the appropriate documentation when it is requested instead of needing to create separate business plans every time there is a request to see it.
A final step in the business plan process is to set expectations for yourself at different increments. Where do you see the business being in 1 year? How about 3 years? Or 5 years? If you formulate specific plans of action that you can take to keep building success upon, then you will have a tool that anyone in your organization can reference and know what their role will be in your success.
Knowing how to start a carwash business plan means knowing what the goals will need to be to make your entrepreneurial venture successful. Incorporate these data points and you will design a document that will serve you for years to come.
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