Do you know if there is a business plan competition at your school? If you search online for college business plan competitions you can see a whole big list of current business plans and competitions. In these competitions, you present a business plan or idea to judges, students, business people, alumni and sometimes even Venture capitalist who are looking for the next big thing. These competitions have become quite popular among students because they have huge cash prizes for those who can win these very competitive contest. Wherever you are in the country, there is likely a competition for business plans offered somewhere nearby. Many of these require you to be at least a part time student, but not often do you need to be enrolled at the school hosting the competition. If it is, you can just team up with a student at that school. Want to compete? Here is a list of the biggest competitions.

o The best known competition in the entire country is the MIT 100k Entrepreneurship Competition. Six awards are given out at the contest. Two in the Venture completion, and two in the Entrepreneurship for development competition. Each winner of those prizes takes home 30 grand, and the 4 runner-ups each win 10 grand.

o The Stern School of Business at New York University has one of the largest cash purses for a contest. They have over 150,000 dollars up for grabs. The contest is open to the greater NYU area, and offers two tracks. A normal business plan track is offered as well as a Social Entrepreneurship track which has to do with developing businesses that are socially responsible and helpful.

o At the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship at Purdue University, the largest business plan competition in the Life sciences field is offered. The competition is open to any service or products in the life sciences industry and has 134,000 in prize money.

o For graduate students who are greatat the elevator pitch, there is a contest just for you. Wake Forest University’s Elevator Competition has 65 Grand in prizes for the ultimate elevator pitch.

o All of these competitions so far have been on the east coast. On the west coast, the Venture Challenge at San Diego State University has a traditional business plan competition with over a 15 Grand prize for the top competitors.

There is no shortage of advice on writing business plans out there. Much of the advice on business plans is too detailed. The following is a list of the essential elements of a business plan.

But first a couple of thoughts. First, if you enter a business plan competition as part of a school, keep in mind that you are entering a competition within an academic environment. Some things you learn in school might not be applicable in the real world. For one, you might learn in class that you should include five-year financial projections. In the real world, however, predicting financial performance over five years, especially for a startup, is practically impossible. Second, if you are an entrepreneur with dreams of getting VC funding, a business plan might not be the best use of your time or effort. More on this later.

The Market Opportunity Is there a market need for your product or service? What is your estimate of the size of the potential market? What part of this market can be addressed with your product or service? Has the need been validated with potential customers? The best possible validation of your idea is a paying customer. If your product is in development, the next best would be a customer who has signed a contract to purchase your product or service when it is complete. After that, the next best validation would be some comments from potential customers that praise your product or service as being a solution to their needs.

After you demonstrate a market need, think about customer segmentation. You cannot target all customers initially.

Segmentation naturally leads to a discussion about a go-to-market strategy. This section should spell out, at least generally, how you plan to get your first customers. Be creative here. Imagine you wanted to sell industrial equipment. You could demonstrate a way to get your first customers by including a list of people at various companies who are in a position to purchase industrial equipment (or at least need buy-in before such purchases are made). This list could include the names of the people, their position, company name, and contact information. Someone reading this would think-rightly so-that you know what you’re doing to sell your product.

Finally, give some thought to the business model. What are your potential revenue streams? What is your pricing strategy? What is the planned distribution strategy?

The Broader Context Give your audience the broader “macro” context of the industry. What are the legal and regulatory risks involved? What might make this opportunity an attractive investment right now? What might make it a risky investment? For example, government-mandated regulation easily creates demand for any products or services that will help companies comply with new rules.

The Founders and Management Team Use this section to show that you have a solid, experienced management team that can effectively work together to get a product or service to market.

Conclusion If you are going for venture capital funding, keep in mind that many venture capitalists (VCs) do not read business plans. They are simply just too busy. Still, it might still be a good exercise to at least critically think about the above because any pitch you make would probably need to touch on these. If not, you can be sure the VCs will ask you about them. And if you can’t address the above broad areas in sufficient detail, then perhaps you might not be ready to seek funding.

Whenever you start any type of business, it is a pretty good idea to see what competition you might have out there. Find out what they are charging, who they are and what type of volume they have. If you are planning on starting a Mobile Oil Change business, these rules also apply. Typically, mobile oil change operators do not realize that their biggest competition is really the low-cost discounters that are at fixed sites – like Wal-Mart Auto Center for instance.

Depending on the affluence of the area, this could be a huge issue, but it you are looking for fleet business, it is irrelevant or if you are in a high-end area of wealth, like the Suburbs of West of Chicago, or those areas North of Dallas-Ft. Worth. If you are going to be operating in such an area of high-net-income demographics, then the Wal-Mart or discounting fixed site oil change companies are not important at all.

Most long-time mobile oil change companies that are any good generally do not advertise much, sometimes they are in the phone book, but not all the time. Many of the fleet oil change companies are not in the phone book or they also do other types of truck maintenance, thus are listed in a different section of the phone book, sometimes a little one-line listing, which can be deceiving to the not trained person who is unfamiliar with the industry.

So you cannot tell, but once you start pounding on doors during your blitz marketing campaigns you will find this out, as potential customers will tell that they have it all covered and they are not interested in your services. Generally, folks in the industry will know, who they are or you can always ask the Snap-on-Tool guy, they seem to know everyone who does that type of work in town, it’s their job to know. Just do not ask a computer guy, they don’t know squat about the industry.