The best "how to" manual on business planning:
I have read dozens of books on business planning and this is by far the best. I have encouraged all of my clients to read this book and they have all benefited from the information. Hazelgren writes clearly and with great business sense. Covello's financial examples are also helpful.
Not great:
This book is far from complete. It has some very basic information about creating a business plan, asks you pertinent questions regarding creating your plan, and has 11 pretty poor examples. I originally bought the book for a Business Plan Writing Class. It was a new book for the instructor and he abandon using it after the second week. It does not provide details in any area of business planning, and though it asks you questions to get you thinking in the correct way, does not provide guidance on how to answer the questions or what areas are important for different types of plans. Furthermore, the questions are not structured in a way that actually helps you formulate a useable business plan. The "101 questions" remind me to a employment application or high school written exam. One of the reasons the instructor selected the book was for the examples. Upon closer examination however, they are really bad business plans that do not provide the depth required in the "real world." The plans are very simplistic. They might pass for someone getting an SBA loan or for internal management use, but a VC or other sophisticated financier would immediately throw any of these plans away. Even the formatting of the plans are bad; they look like they were written on a typewriter twenty years ago! The book offers little to no advice on how to write your plan for different target audiences, what elements are important for different types of businesses, and because its examples are so incomplete, they give someone without prior exposure to business plans a false idea of what your financier is really looking for. ...
Excellent book for any size of company:
We used this book by Hazelgren and Covello to spark new planning processes for our company with 66 branches nationwide. Excellent material!
Interesting Book:
It has been a life saviour and taught me to write a Business Plan in a very easy and lucid manner.
EXCELLENT - a must have at this price:
I am an intellectual property attorney and law professor. I frequently have the opportunity to talk to entrepreneurs and individuals interested in start up advise. I ALWAYS recommend this book to people who are new to business plans. The book has some sample business plans in the back. Truthfully these sample plans are not all that good, but do provide some idea of the proper layout and format of a business plan. The reason I like this book so much is because of the detailed questions it forces readers to ask themselves. The majority of the book is set up like a workbook, and asks highly detailed questions that must be answered before writing can begin. These questions will also force the would be entrepreneur to think of and address a series of questions that many first timers would forget or not even know to ask or consider. This book is probably not for people who have been through the process, but for those who are doing it themselves and/or doing it for the first time buying this book is money well spent!
| Author: | Joseph A. Covello | | Author: | Brian J. Hazelgren | | Binding: | Paperback | | Dewey Decimal Number: | 658.4012 | | EAN: | 9780942061413 | | ISBN: | 0942061411 | | Number Of Pages: | 328 | | Publication Date: | 1995-01-01 |
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