An executive summary plays an important part of a business report or business plan. An executive summary is typically a short summary of a long document providing a quick overview of a full-length business report. Click Report Writing for a fast presentation on this subjectHow to Write a Summary
Your executive summary needs to be a place where an investor can go to find out a summary of all of the major information about your proposal. The wording needs to be professional, but precise. After reading an executive summary, your contact in the venture capital investment firm will know all of the major points held within the entire business plan. This way they can decide if you are a good investment or not without taking the time to read your entire document. That reading will come later, if and when they decide to take your investment on. Use information in your executive summary that is unbiased and factual.
The executive summary should be one- to two- pages and usually would not need any pictures or graphics. Yes, a business plan is a sales document, but sell with facts and stories and not exaggeration or hype. It’s also not a random collection of highlights. Rather, the executive summary is the business plan in miniature. The executive summary should stand alone. It should be logical, clear, interesting, and exciting.
Busy executives. They want a speedy understanding of your paper or report. If they like your recommendations or ideas they may delegate someone else to read the detail. If they don’t like it, your paper may go no further.
A selective reader. These readers will read your summary to get the gist of your ideas or findings, skim read the report and then read sections that interest them in more detail.
A detailed reader. They may read your summary to build a framework for the ideas that will follow so they can grasp the meaning more readily.
The first fold of the process tells you what an Executive Summary is and what components are included in it.
The second fold of the process shows you how an Executive Summary is broken down into it separate parts.
The third fold of the process is gives you an actual sample Executive Summary. This will show you what one looks like, therefore helping you to prepare your own.
Some like to write the Executive Summary first to get a better feel for the plan. Some like to wait until last after they have written all the plan details. It is up to you. I, personally, find it works better for me to have written the entire business plan before writing the Executive Summary. Once you have the foundation of your business plan written, it is easy to summarize it in a few paragraphs.
Participate in Business Questions and Forum
Tags:executive summary how to write an executive summary write an executive summary
