The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies by Rhonda Abrams is an incredibly thorough and easy to understand guide to writing a business plan.

The book begins with a very helpful overview of the basics of writing a business plan and determining a vision for your business. Next, Ms. Abrams breaks down the sections that you might include in a business plan and describes each in extensive detail. In each chapter, she clearly explains the type of information you might include in that section, indicates how to write that particular component of your business plan so it makes an impact on your intended audience and describes how to think through your business goals so that you can write a plan that is truly a road map to the success of your business.

There are several worksheets included within the book that will help you to work through the questions you will need to answer in order to write an effective business plan. Also, at the end of each chapter, you'll find sample business plan sections that allow you to see how the concepts work when they are applied to an actual business plan.

There are plenty of great resources in the book, including a great list of U.S., Canadian and International websites that provide information on business funding sources, research sources and other resources for entrepreneurs. In addition, there's a short business terms glossary that defines terms used throughout the book that may be unfamiliar to people who are new to business planning and development.

The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies is exhaustive in the information it covers on business plan writing, and that may be its only flaw. I think if I had never written a business plan, I may have been initially intimidated by the sheer amount of information in this book. Although the information is written in a very straightforward manner, there's a lot of it packed into one book.

If you use this book to assist you with your business plan writing, you will certainly not be lacking any information; however, it does cover the topic in great depth, so you must be willing to think about your business plan systematically, focusing on one section at a time. To that end, Ms Abrams has included a useful business plan outline at the end of the book, which can help to keep you focused, organized and clear about the contents of each section. If you ever feel lost while you are writing your business plan, you can simply refer back to the outline and become refocused on the task at hand.

The Successful Business Plan goes well beyond simply describing how to write a business plan. In the book, Ms. Abrams provides insight into how to truly plan for the growth and development of your business and how to focus and direct your company in a way that fits with your goals and vision for the company. If you can only buy one book on writing a business plan, this book would be a great choice.


The Successful Business Plan: Secrets & Strategies