Your Business Plan's Executive Summary
What should be included in the executive summary on your business plan?
The Executive Summary is a synopsis of your business plan. It is often
considered the most crucial part of the plan because it is the first section
your readers will see and is designed to capture their attention and draw them
into reading further. As an abridged version of the larger business plan, the
Executive Summary should capture a couple of key points from each of the other
sections.
The Executive Summary should touch on most of the areas of the business
plan, including:
- Your significant products and/or services.
- What makes the business unique, or distinctive.
- The market analysis.
- An overview of the management team.
- How your company will succeed in the future.
- The current competition in the market.
- Funds requested and how they will be used.
- Summary of your past financial operations and future financial projections.
If your business depends largely on technology, such as an online retail
business, you might also want to include a brief overview of your technological
capabilities. In addition, if you foresee significant potential risks, you
should mention them and the steps you plan to use to overcome such risks. The
key to a strong Executive Summary is keeping it concise, while still engaging.
While you want to present the important aspects of the business plan, you want
to do it in a way that allows the reader to quickly explore each area without
getting bogged down with details. Those will appear in the longer version. Keep
in mind, however, that the Executive Summary is neither a place to simply list
your plans and ideas nor a place for hyping your business.
Although it appears at the start of a business plan,
the Executive Summary is frequently written last, after each section has been
written and evaluated. This allows you to carefully write and review each
section before determining which key points to include in the Executive
Summary.