The Executive Summary of Your Plan

Most experienced investors/lenders have hundreds of business plans come across their desk during any given year and it's virtually impossible for them to read each one in their entirety. As a result, business plan writers are required to develop an executive summary.

An executive summary is simply a quick overview of the entrepreneur's proposed business venture.

Investors and bankers read the entrepreneur's summary and decide which business plans can be eliminated and which warrant a further investigation. Knowing this, the entrepreneur should begin to realize the importance of the business plan's executive summary. Moreover, if investors and bankers are not interested or aroused by your executive summary, chances are they will not read the entire business plan.  And if an investor does not read your business plan, chances are she will not provide the necessary financing for the business venture.

Most Executive Summaries address the following items;

• The nature of your business venture
• A brief explanation of the product/service your business will offer
• A brief analysis of the market
• The background of all management
• A brief summary of the your marketing plan
• A brief summary of your financial plan and capital requirements

The ideal Executive Summary is two or three pages in length and convinces the reader that the business plan is worth reading in its entirety. Therefore, as the author of the business plan, your objective should be to write an executive summary that will tantalize and spark the interest of an investor, banker, or other reader so that they will read the entire business plan.

HINTS:

• It is extremely important to focus only on the positives aspects when writing the executive summary.

• Never lie in your executive summary in an attempt to get a banker, for example, to read the entire business plan. Tantalizing is extremely different from lying.  And never lie in any other section of your business plan either.
• Never make false claims (knowingly) in your executive summary in an attempt to get an investor to read your plan. False claims may get your business plan read, but after wasting an investors time, you won't get the financing you require.
• The Executive Summary is always the last section to be prepared.  In other words, Never, Never, Never write the Executive Summary until you have completed all other sections of your business plan.  If you do, you'll find yourself constantly rewriting it and rewriting it, and rewriting it.

• The Executive Summary always appear directly after the Table of Contents.

This concludes our discussion on the Executive Summary.   Below provides various examples/formats.

EXAMPLES OF THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF A BUSINESS PLAN

J&B Incorporated
Scholarship Information Services
Maple Syrup Company