Ever since The Apprentice winner was announced, people have been pontificating about why Lord Sugar picked Tom Pellereau to be his new business partner. Why should the ideas man, who presented a business plan with plenty of gaps in it, walk away with the £250,000 prize?

We all know that ideas are one thing; execution and delivery are another. A good idea doesn’t equal a good business plan, and a good idea doesn’t equal a good business. If a business plan has not been stress tested and validated, then it’s unlikely to lead to success.

However, what swung it for Tom – in our opinion – was that his business was already validated. The chair for back pain may be an ingenious idea, but it was the curved nail file on sale in Wal Mart, the world’s biggest retailer – proving that people are willing to pay for one of his inventions – that gave impressive validation to Tom’s business.

Pre-revenue businesses in today’s economic climate are unlikely to get funded without a robust, validated business plan. Attempting to raise money with a business plan built on a hypothesis just won’t work. You have to validate your business plan by understanding your market, carrying out quantitative and qualitative research, sending your team out to speak to potential customers, and coming back with either letters of intent or bona fide orders.

How can you test the validity of your business plan? Conduit Partners runs full–day workshops where we apply 11 pillars of business logic to your plan. This process helps you identify the weaknesses and gaps and show where you need to focus your valuable, precious and limited resources in order to secure the investment your business needs.

The commercial due diligence that investors carry out is more rigorous now than ever. Unless you demonstrate markets needs, know where you sit in the value chain, and can articulate your value proposition, then a verbose 100-page business plan won’t be able to convince investors that you’re worth the risk.