The Successful Business Plan by Rhonda Abrams book review

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

Following a very helpful section that covers the basics of writing a business plan and determining your vision for your business, Ms. Abrams breaks down each section that you might include in a business plan into substantial chapters. In each chapter, she clearly describes the type of information you might include in that section, indicates how to write each section of your business plan so it makes an impact on potential financial backers (if that's your intended audience) and explains 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 plenty of worksheets in the book that guide you in answering the questions you will need to answer in order to write an effective business plan. Also, at the end of each chapter, there are sample business plan sections that allow you to see how to apply the concepts to an actual business plan.

You'll find plenty of great resources in the book including U.S., Canadian and International websites that provide information on business funding sources, research sources and 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, perhaps, if I had never written a business plan, I may have been initially intimidated by the depth 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, but 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 very useful outline of a business plan at the end of the book which can help to keep you focused, organized and clear about each section. If at any time you feel lost, you can simply refer back to the outline and become refocused on the task at hand.

The Successful Business Plan: Secrets & Strategies goes well beyond simply describing how to write a business plan. In the book, Ms. Abrams provides useful 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 is the book.