Here's a good book to help you in this area: What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan. What the CEO Wants You to Know captures the basics of finance and economics and explains in clear, simple language how to do what great business owners and entrepreneurs do instinctively and persistently. Charan explains the basic building blocks of business and how to use them to figure out how your company can, does, or will make money and operate as a total business. Learn how to use these building blocks to cut through the clutter of day-to-day business and the complexity of the real world. What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan. This little book is only a 137 pages: but I'm telling you, it's so well written you'll be as intrigued as I was. What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan. Get it for your business plan library.

Writing

Next is writing. You have to be able to get your thoughts down on paper. Businessese, academese, legalese - all appear too often in business plans. Often preventing a knowledgeable writer with good intensions to fail at getting the message across to an intelligent, interested reader. For some reason, when people write business plans they are compelled to write "commence" and "prior to" instead of "begin" and "before." If you want to write an effective business plan, your business plan library must have books on how to be an effective writer.

Start with Edward Baily; he wrote a surprisingly straightforward book called The Plain English Approach to Business Writing. This book, The Plain English Approach to Business Writing, is about writing as you would talk, which not only makes your writing easier to read, it's also makes it easier to write. In a brief, entertaining 124 pages Baily clearly lays out the dos and don'ts of plan English, illustrating them with examples drawn from business documents, technical manuals, trade publications, and the works of writers like Russell Baker and John D. MacDonald. The Plain English Approach to Business Writing offers practical advice on clarity, precision, organization, layout, and many other topics. Best of all, you can read it an hour...and use it for the rest of your life.