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The Complete Book of Business Plans

Joseph A. Covello, Brian J. Hazelgren · 2006 · Sourcebooks

Business PlanTemplatesSmall Business

Overview

The Complete Book of Business Plans was first published in 1995 and, by the time Sourcebooks issued its second edition in 2006, had sold over 143,000 copies and been in print for nearly a decade — making it one of the most widely circulated business plan guides of its era. The authors, Joseph A. Covello and Brian J. Hazelgren, bring practitioner backgrounds rather than academic ones: Covello as a business planning and finance consultant who has managed start-ups and turnarounds, Hazelgren as a strategic consultant, entrepreneur, and adjunct professor of entrepreneurship.

The book’s central proposition is that the business plan is not merely a document produced for outsiders but the operational heart of a business — the tool that drives management decisions, tracks performance, and communicates strategy to employees and investors alike. Its defining feature is its density of practical resources: more than a dozen complete, actual business plans drawn from real companies, over 100 guiding questions designed to walk a writer through each section, and a five-part structure that takes the reader from self-assessment through writing, implementation, and ongoing management.

The core framework: five sections from idea to execution

The book is organized into five sections, each serving a distinct purpose in the planning process:

Section One: Getting Ready to Write opens with a self-assessment — does this person, with these skills and this idea, have a realistic shot? Chapter 1 evaluates the entrepreneur and the business idea against practical criteria. Chapter 2 lays out guidelines for writing a plan that actually works, stressing clarity, specificity, and evidence. Chapter 3 is the book’s most distinctive tool: more than 100 targeted questions — covering the business concept, the market, the competition, the operations, and the finances — that force the writer to confront every assumption before committing anything to paper. Chapter 4 presents a complete sample plan (Forward Tech, Inc.) so readers can see the finished product before they begin.

Section Two: Writing Your Winning Business Plan is the technical core, covering each section of the plan in dedicated chapters:

  • Company Overview — the legal structure, history, mission, and business model in summary form.
  • Product and Service Description — what the company offers, how it is differentiated, and the stage of development.
  • Market Analysis — target market definition, market size, trends, and competitive landscape.
  • Marketing and Sales Strategy — pricing, channels, promotion, and the sales process.
  • Internet Strategy — a distinctive chapter reflecting the 2006 revision; how the business uses digital channels for marketing, sales, and operations.
  • Management and Personnel Plan — the organizational structure, key roles, qualifications of the leadership team, and staffing plans.
  • Financial Projections — the full suite of forward-looking financial statements: sales forecast, income statement, cash flow projection, and balance sheet projections.
  • Executive Summary — deliberately placed last in the writing sequence, even though it appears first in the finished plan.
  • Appendix — supporting materials: resumes, contracts, letters of intent, market research data.

Section Three: Implementing Your Plan moves beyond document construction into action: how to raise capital, how to use the plan as a growth management tool, and practical hints for keeping the plan current and functional.

Section Four: Knowledge Building provides technical reference material — financial ratios, a glossary, a chart of accounts, and curated internet resources — that supports both the writing process and ongoing financial management.

Section Five: Sample Business Plans presents eleven complete, real business plans from diverse industries (consulting, retail, manufacturing, pharmacy, landscaping, and more), giving readers concrete models to study and adapt.

Key concepts and techniques

  • The 100-plus question framework. The book’s most replicable tool is its master list of guiding questions, organized by plan section. These questions serve as a structured discovery process: answering them forces the writer to research rather than assume, and the answers become the raw material from which the plan is written.
  • The executive summary is written last. Like Pinson, Covello and Hazelgren treat the executive summary as a distillation of conclusions that can only be reached after the rest of the plan is complete. They frame it as the plan’s most important sales document — the section that determines whether a lender or investor reads further.
  • Financial projections as storytelling. The financial section chapter presents projections not as isolated spreadsheets but as a narrative of how the business will grow. The authors walk through each statement line by line, explaining how revenue assumptions drive cost assumptions and how both flow into the cash position.
  • Real plans as learning tools. The sample plans in Section Five are the book’s most distinctive asset. Rather than constructing hypothetical examples, the authors reproduce actual plans, including imperfect ones, so readers can see how real businesses across different industries address common planning challenges.
  • Planning as an ongoing management discipline. Section Three argues that a business plan loses value the moment it is filed away. The authors treat plan updates — triggered by market changes, financial results, or strategic pivots — as a normal part of running a business rather than a one-time event tied to fundraising.

How to apply it to your blueprint

Use the 100-plus question list in Chapter 3 as a pre-writing diagnostic. Work through the questions honestly before drafting any section; where you cannot answer a question, that gap is a research task. When you reach the financial projections, build them from the marketing plan outward: the revenue forecast should reflect the target market size, pricing, and sales assumptions you have already documented, so the financial section is a consequence of the plan rather than an independent exercise. Study one or two sample plans from Section Five that are in an industry adjacent to your own — not to copy them, but to understand what depth of analysis and specificity is expected in each section.

Strengths and limitations

The book’s principal strength is its combination of process guidance (the questions, the writing instructions), technical content (the financial statements chapter, the ratios reference), and real-world evidence (the sample plans). Most business plan guides offer one or two of these elements; this one provides all three in a single volume. The second edition’s addition of an internet strategy chapter keeps the framework relevant for businesses where digital channels are central to the model.

Its limitation is that the approach is fundamentally prescriptive and document-centric. The 100-plus question framework is thorough, but it assumes the entrepreneur already has a formed business concept — it does not help with the upstream work of evaluating whether an opportunity is worth pursuing in the first place. The competitive analysis guidance is also relatively thin compared to the depth of the financial projections treatment; writers who face intense or complex competitive dynamics may need to supplement with dedicated competitive intelligence methods.

Key takeaways

  • More than 100 guiding questions organized by plan section function as a structured discovery process, ensuring the writer researches before writing rather than writing before researching.
  • The executive summary is written last and positioned first — it must stand alone as a persuasive overview of the entire plan.
  • Financial projections are derived from marketing and operational assumptions, not the other way around.
  • Eleven real-world sample plans across diverse industries provide concrete benchmarks for what depth and specificity a complete plan requires.
  • The business plan is a living management tool, not a one-time document; the book devotes an entire section to implementation and plan maintenance.

How it maps to the Business Idea Factory

The Complete Book of Business Plans functions as a comprehensive template companion to the app. Its five-section structure maps directly onto the Business Blueprint questionnaire: the company overview and product description correspond to the concept and value proposition questions; the market analysis corresponds to the market and competitive sections; the financial projections correspond to the revenue and cost modeling sections. The 100-plus question framework in Chapter 3 is structurally similar to what the Business Blueprint attempts in guided-questionnaire form — a systematic way of ensuring that every critical assumption about a business is surfaced and documented before a plan is committed to paper.

References