A well written business plan will include a mission statement and a
strategy statement. The statements (combined) generally do not exceed two
pages in length and always appear after the executive summary section of
the business plan. Our discussion below defines the elements of both statements
and depicts several examples of each. An additional topic under this section
deals with the strategic planning process. Here you will learn various
items to consider when developing effective strategies. And finally, we
end our discussion by introducing Three (3) Generic Competitive Strategies;
namely, the Low Cost Producer Strategy, the Differentiation Strategy, and
the Niche or Focus Strategy.