Business Plans Kit For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance)) (Paperback)

by Steven D. Peterson PhD (Author), Peter E. Jaret (Author), Barbara Findlay Schenck (Author) "There's no question among business advisors: When you're establishing, expanding, or reenergizing a business, the best way to start is by writing a business plan..." (more)
Key Phrases: The Part of Tens, Ten Things

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
When you’re establishing, expanding, or re-energizing a business, the best place to start is writing your business plan. Not only does writing out your idea force you to think more clearly about what you want to do, it will also give the people you work with a defined road map as well.

Business Plan Kit For Dummies, Second Edition is the perfect guide to lead you through the ins and outs of constructing a great business plan. This one-stop resource offers a painless, fun-and-easy way to create a winning plan that will help you lead your business to success. This updated guide has all the tools you’ll need to:

• Generate a great business idea
• Understand what your business will be up against
• Map out your strategic direction
• Craft a stellar marketing plan
• Tailor your plan to fit your business’s needs
• Put your plan and hard work into action
• Start an one-person business, small business, or nonprofit
• Create a plan for an already established business
• Cash in on the Internet with planning an e-business

Featured in this hands-on guide is valuable advice for evaluating a new business idea, funding your business plan, and ways to determine if your plan may need to be reworked. You also get a bonus CD that includes income and overhead worksheets, operation surveys, customer profiles, business plan components, and more. Don’t delay your business’s prosperity. Business Plan Kit For Dummies, Second Edition will allow you to create a blueprint for success!

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

From the Back Cover
With checklists, forms, and unbeatable resources to help you succeed

The painless way to create a winning business plan!

If you're an entrepreneur with big ideas but no plan, this friendly guide is for you. Updated and revised to better meet your business needs, this business plan companion covers it all — from funding your operations to targeting your customers to honing your business vision.

Discover how to

• Identify your company's mission
• Size up your customers and check out the competition
• Adjust your plan to fit your needs
• Obtain funding
• Forecast and budget

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Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 2 edition (September 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764597949
• ISBN-13: 978-0764597947
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,764 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #22 in	Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Systems & Planning
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

158 of 160 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Planning Guide, August 14, 2001

By	Jan Denon "jdenon" (Santa Clara, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Business Plans Kit for Dummies (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

Like a lot of people, I am a BIG fan of the first Business Plans for Dummies book. It got me started thinking about going out on my own a few years ago. Well, this new Kit book is a great addition. It's particularly useful as a real hands-on guide to putting together a business plan and then making it work. Every chapter has checklists and other forms that take you through the process step by step, as well as "case study" type examples that really bring the information alive. It's full of updated examples of businesses that have succeeded (and how they did it.) And it also contains terrific analyses of business plans that didn't quite make it (and why.) As a small business owner myself, I was surprised to learn as much as I did from the chapter devoted to small businesses. UNLIKE a lot of other business planning books, this one tackles the subject with real authority along with a great sense of humor. I think this is an essential book for anyone who is putting together a business plan for the first time. I even used the trial business planning software that comes on the CD-ROM to choose the program that would work best for our company. And that's made completing the business planning process even smoother.

59 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical, convenient, comprehensive, November 29, 2005

By	Eugene L. Stickley "Gene Stickley" (Havertown, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Business Plans Kit for Dummies (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

This book and cd combination is likely to be a good buy for quite a range of people. The great advantage that I see is that it is encyclopedic in scope. And by scope I am referring not to the great range of business and management knowledge that is available but to the processes that someone attempting to prepare a business plan is likely to face.

For example the book begins with Part I: Doing Your Planning Homework. This section assumes that you may not yet have a firm business idea. Yet the material on creating or identifying a business idea may very well be quite useful even to those people who have their basic idea in place.

In Part I Chapter two deals quite well with understanding the why of the business plan. This point, why you must be a business plan believer, is often taken for granted or dealt with by a few platitudes by some authors but here the topic gets full treatment. This could be particularly important to people who are attempting a business and a business plan for the first time.

Is the book encyclopedic? Well if you really want to understand market segmentation in depth you will have to go to a text or a couple of seminars. Nevertheless, the concept is here along with many others, but tailored to the beginner and to the new, small enterprise.

Perhaps comprehensive, rather than encyclopedic, would be a better word. However, if it is a topic likely to affect your startup or small business it is here at least in elementary terms. In fact, with an MBA and nearly 40 years experience, I would say that the technical treatment, for the given audience, is really quite good.

The forms or questionnaires, I believe, selectively could be useful to business people at almost any level. The forms take you through an exhaustive chain of concepts and detailed questions. Sometimes it seems that the questions are repetitive. Some of them may be redundant for your business but don't jump too quickly. Take your time and mull over the questions. If you do take the time, you may come up with an eye opening new thought here and there.

The CD allows you to print the forms, including your input, if you choose. The CD also introduces some trial versions of software that might be worth your consideration.

Since I do business plans as a part-time business, I expect that I will be referring to these convenient forms again and again in the future as my projects shift from one type of business situation to another.

Take a good look at this choice if you are serious about a business and a business plan.

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OK Book...VALUABLE CD!! REALLY VALUABLE!, August 22, 2003

By	RMurray847 "afilmcritic.com" (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Business Plans Kit for Dummies (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

The book itself is a very basic rundown of starting a business running and keeping it going. The info presented is quite basic, and not very detailed. BUT, the enclosed CD is FULL, FULL, FULL of forms, government documents, sample by-laws, etc., etc., etc. Having all these forms at your disposal is invaluable. It's a terrific book and CD.