How to Use ChatGPT to Craft Winning Business Plans? (W/Prompts)

Writing a business plan isn’t everyone’s forte. And if you aim to create one that resonates with diverse audiences, it can feel overwhelming (and you shouldn’t do so anyway). You might find yourself stuck in a labyrinth of what, why, and how, with no exit.

That’s when ChatGPT comes to mind—a tool that’s not only cost-effective but also highly efficient, saving you significant time and effort. No wonder over 200 million people are already using it!

But is crafting a business plan with ChatGPT genuinely effective? The answer is a yes—provided you use the correct prompts. ChatGPT delivers impressive results when guided with precise instructions.

Hence, in this blog, we’ll explore how to create a business plan using ChatGPT, the prompts you should use for accurate results, and the limitations to keep in mind while drafting your plan.

Let’s dive in.

Why use ChatGPT to write a business plan?

Using ChatGPT for a business plan is simply about saving effort, time, and money. While that's true, ChatGPT offers many other benefits that need to be considered.

Let's unfold the broader reasons why it's so valuable for business planning today.

Instant idea validation

Sometimes, you may be unsure if an idea will resonate with potential investors or customers. ChatGPT can help you test and refine your concepts in real time. It can even help you differentiate which ideas will work for whom and when they will be most effective.

Tailored language

You can experiment with different tones and styles to match the audience you're pitching to. For example, if you're writing a business plan for investors or lenders, you can prompt ChatGPT to tailor the content specifically for them. It will craft the plan with their perspective and priorities in mind.

Scenario Modeling

You can ask ChatGPT to help simulate different business scenarios—what happens if your sales projections are off? What if market trends change dramatically? ChatGPT allows you to test these hypothetical outcomes and incorporate the insights into your plan.

Better strategy development

ChatGPT, with its advanced algorithms, delves deeper to uncover relevant industry information, encouraging you to think beyond conventional ideas. It reveals overlooked aspects that could enhance your strategy and challenges you to view your business from new perspectives, ultimately helping you craft a more strategic and innovative plan.

Flexible in approach

Whether you're working on a tech startup or a local coffee shop, ChatGPT adapts to your business's unique needs. It understands your approach and prompts with precision, which helps you easily create a plan tailored to the specific industry, level, and audience you're targeting.

Risk analysis support

ChatGPT isn't just about writing your business plan—it helps you consider what you might be missing. If you're unsure what risks to highlight, it can suggest relevant industry challenges, market shifts, or operational pitfalls, helping you paint a more complete picture of your business environment.

With that said, let’s understand ChatGPT for business planning a little better.

ChatGPT vs. AI business plan generators

ChatGPT excels in flexibility, customization, and generating creative content. With the right prompt. can create detailed content sections, suggest innovative ideas, or refine your writing style. It’s especially useful for startups looking for personalized, creative narratives that go beyond standard templates.

However, ChatGPT lacks integrated features like structured templates or real-time analytics, which can slow down the planning process.

In contrast, AI business plan generators are purpose-built for crafting business plans efficiently with specific features like financial dashboards, automated calculations, and industry-specific templates. Visual elements such as infographics, charts, and market analysis summaries are seamlessly integrated, giving your plan a professional polish. Additionally, collaborative features allow teams to work together and make data-driven decisions.

However, these generators may feel rigid, offering less creative freedom and requiring you to fit into predefined formats.

The point is, that both ChatGPT and AI business plan generators are excellent tools for creating a business plan. The key lies in using these tools effectively to craft a plan that suits your needs.

How to use ChatGPT to write a business plan?

ChapGPT is everywhere, and everyone is using it. But most business owners don’t know how to use it smartly.

Thus, here’s how to use ChatGPT intelligently to prepare an entire business plan:

1) Create an outline first

To prepare a comprehensive business plan using ChatGPT, you shouldn't directly prompt the tool to "prepare a business plan."

Doing so will result in a generic business plan since ChatGPT operates based on predictive models. Instead, break down your process and start by prompting ChatGPT to create an outline for your business plan first.

To get a personalized and accurate outline for your business plan, you can use the following prompt in ChatGPT:

Now, this is a decent outline prepared specifically for stakeholders. If you want a business plan for your investors or lenders, you can change your target audience and command ChatGPT.

2) Prepare a company description

The company or business description section outlines your business idea. Here, you should provide your stakeholders with information on the following key aspects through vision and mission statement:

• How did you come up with the business idea?
• What are your core objectives?
• What’s your mission and vision behind this business idea?

Additionally, you can highlight any milestones or achievements to impress and engage your readers.

To use ChatGPT effectively to craft a compelling business description, you can use the following prompt:

You can see that the initial output is impressive. ChatGPT has considered the prompt and described various points accordingly. However, if you want to add something more or adjust certain aspects, you can easily do so. The key is to ensure your prompt is accurate.

That said, the business description content may seem generic if you read through it.

Remember, you can’t rely solely on ChatGPT. It isn't designed for you to copy-paste and get your work done. Customize your business description further by editing, adding content, and removing parts where necessary.

3) Make a market analysis

In this section, you must demonstrate the market research data and competitor analysis you have done while preparing your business plan. This section should answer the following questions:

• What are the current trends in your market?
• What’s the projection of growth and opportunities?
• Who are the customers, and what are their needs?
• Who are your competitors?
• What estimated share of the market do you capture?

To get help from ChatGPT to prepare this market analysis section use the following prompt:

Everything seems perfect at first sight. It's perfectly organized with precision from the opening to the conclusion, and the formatting is spot-on. However, this marketing analysis section lacks accurate and up-to-date numbers.

When starting a business, you’ll want detailed insights into your market size, the latest trends, and customer analysis. While such data can be derived from SWOT analysis, research, and competitor evaluation, ChatGPT may fall short in providing the latest information, as its knowledge is current only up to May 2023.

These limitations are expected to be resolved soon as ChatGPT continues to enhance its algorithms. Potentially, this will enable users to conduct market research directly within the platform.

For now, you can prepare content from ChatGPT, make some edits, and add numbers using your own market research data and analysis.

4) Define product and development

Defining product and development in the business plan means providing detailed insights into:

• Products and services your business provides.
• Problem your product or service addresses.
• Primary audience or customer base.
• Income and revenue streams.
• Future roadmap for product development and innovation

To prepare this section using ChatGPT, you can use the following prompt:

The content is excellent, and almost all key points are covered. However, this is one section where more detail is essential.

For example, the income sources or revenue stream, investors are more interested in understanding how you’ll generate revenue and your sales strategy. Including this information is crucial, but ChatGPT skipped it in this case.

If you had specified this in your prompt, it would’ve included it. However, you must clearly understand the business plan structure; otherwise, you risk missing critical points. Overall, the content is highly impressive but needs some refinement to be perfect.

5) Structure marketing and sales strategy

The marketing and sales strategies section in the business plan sets up the organization’s long-term growth and success. It’s a crucial part of a well-structured business plan that covers the following aspects of sales and marketing:

• Marketing strategy and marketing channels to reach your target audience
• Sales strategies to convert leads into sales
• Marketing trends to adopt
• Marketing budgets and ROI
• Your competitive pricing strategy to attract customers

This section requires in-depth knowledge, and if you’re willing to prepare this section using ChatGPT, ensure you provide extensive prompts. You can use the following prompt to structure the marketing and sales section:

You can see how the content depth improved as we provided more detailed prompts and specified our requirements. Prompts like “use your skills” prove effective, and ChatGPT delivered a well-crafted piece.

Anyhow, if you review the marketing and sales strategies section, you’ll notice the content feels unexplored. It also misses key elements like competitor analyses, market analyses, research data, and market positioning. These are crucial for the marketing and sales section, but ChatGPT skipped them.

However, refining your prompt and asking ChatGPT to include these aspects will seamlessly add them to the section. The key is knowing what should be included and what can be left out; for guidance, learn what to include in marketing and sales strategy.

6) Demonstrate operation plan

To achieve your organizational goals effectively, you must meticulously plan your daily operations and present them to your stakeholders. Here’s what you should include in your operation plan section in a business plan:

Let’s use the above mentioned tip to create a list of elements to include in the operational business plan.

Prompt:

Here’s the list ChatGPT generated based on our prompt. Once again, we broke down the process and asked ChatGPT to provide just the list, not the content, for better effectiveness.

Now, let’s ask ChatGPT to create content based on its list. Here’s a prompt you can use:

According to our prompt, ChatGPT has covered all 12 elements it provided and crafted content based on that. As we continue testing, it's clear that ChatGPT is learning and improving.

For example, the last elements of the timeline and milestones even started including numbers. However, these numbers aren't entirely accurate yet, which indicates that this feature is still under development.

7) Inform about management and organization

This section summarizes your organizational structure and team. Stakeholders want to know who holds which position and whether the right person is assigned to each role. Reviewing this section will give them confidence in your team's ability to achieve your goals.

Also, for this section, let's prompt ChatGPT to provide the key elements to include in the management and organization section.

To create the content for the management and organizational structure section using ChatGPT, you can use the following prompt:

ChatGPT followed the prompt and provided detailed information on what to include in the management and organization plan. Now, you only need to add the necessary details like names, designations, and experience, and the content will be ready for presentation.

However, this section lacks an organizational structure chart, typically an infographic that provides a quick overview of your team members, showing who reports to whom and the department they work in.

Since ChatGPT can’t generate images or infographics, you'll need to create this using the organization chart template.

8) Prepare a financial plan

A financial plan is the section that attracts potential investors and lenders the most. Thus, it must be crafted with precision and careful attention to specific details. To create this section using ChatGPT, you need to provide a precise prompt to ensure it accurately reflects your business's financial health.

Here's what you should include in your financial plan section:

• What’s your financial health? (Include bank statement, balance sheet and P&L statement)
• If you're a startup, mention the initial capital you began with and your current financial standing.
• Financial project. (Historical data, cash flow statements, expenses, and revenue)
• Financial projections (Break-even analysis, revenue projections, and assumptions)
• What are your funding requirements and the timeframe for the funds?

Now, let's create the content for the financial plan section using ChatGPT. Here's the prompt you can use to draft this section:

While the content and formation of the financial plan may seem perfect, its credibility depends on providing accurate and verified numbers.

The figures generated by ChatGPT are predictive and lack thorough research and supporting evidence. Including unverified numbers in your business plan can leave a negative impression on your readers and reflect poorly on your work.

Moreover, the section also misses important elements like assumptions, sensitive analysis, and balance sheet. It’s crucial to refer to business plan samples to get a more precise idea about what to include and how to include it in your financial business plan section.

9) Risk analysis

Risk analysis is a key component of business continuity planning, helping ensure your business continues to operate even in challenging conditions. It covers elements that include:

• What are the market risks that may hinder your objective?
• What’s the probability of occurrence?
• What are the strategies to mitigate those risks?

Let’s create this section using ChatGPT and see how detailed it gets and what information it provides. Here’s the prompt:

The content generated by ChatGPT fits well, but it lacks numbers and accuracy. Operational risks, such as supply chain disruptions and production risks, have a broad scope and require precision, which the content currently lacks. However, with the right prompt, you can make it more detailed and accurate.

Executive summary

Lastly, let’s discuss the very first section, writing the executive summary last using ChatGPT. We wrote it last to ensure that all essential aspects, including your core values are covered with accurate numbers.

If created at the beginning, ChatGPT may miss key figures, the business overview, the unique selling proposition, the company’s vision, key competitors, and several key components essential to creating an effective summary.

Your executive summary must cover the following information:

• A short description of your business
• The problem you solve
• Your unique selling proposition (USP)
• Your business strategy
• Your future goals

Here’s the prompt you can apply to write your executive summary:

That’s it! Your business plan is ready with the help of ChatGPT! Tools like ChatGPT have made complex tasks easier, enabling you to create an entire business plan in minutes and save time for other important tasks.

However, being aware of some limitations when using ChatGPT for your business plan is important. Let’s examine those limitations and ensure you craft a plan with them in mind.

Limitations of ChatGPT for business plan

ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can help you write your business plan effortlessly. Before entirely relying on ChatGPT to write your business plan, you must know a few limitations.

• Lacks creativity; it can only generate generic content using a predictive model.
• Deficit with specific industry insights and statistics.
• Requires your latest research as its knowledge is limited until May 2023.
• Inaccurate in providing information on place, location, or facts.
• Unable to generate accurate infographics and images.
• Need detailed description or prompt to generate precise information.

These limitations don’t mean you should avoid using ChatGPT for your business plan. It can be a valuable writing assistant, guiding you through every step with creative ideas you may haven’t even considered.

Additionally, it’s a powerful tool that can craft your business content uniquely if you provide precise, prompt, and well-researched numbers to include in your business plan.

Conclusion

ChatGPT acts like a creative collaborator who provides insights, crafts narratives, and ensures every single section of your business plan aligns with your objective. As we saw in this blog, using accurate prompts, you can create a unique business plan tailored to your needs.

However, there are a few limitations to consider, as ChatGPT is still being developed and improved. Until then, you can use it as a writing assistant for your business plan. Or even better, try AI business plan generator platforms.

These platforms, like ChatGPT, create business plans but offer an advantage over them by creating well-researched plans with infographics, images, and the latest data, all in minutes.

Ready to plan? Start today!