Executive Summary
How to Write An Executive Summary? Whether you've put together a business plan or an investment proposal, you're going to need an executive summary to preface your report. The summary should include the major details of your report, but it's important not to bore the reader with minutia. Save the analysis, charts, numbers and glowing reviews for the report itself. This is the time to grab your reader's attention and let them know what it is you do and why they should read the rest of your business plan or proposal.
The executive summary is also an important way for you, as the entrepreneur, to determine which aspects of your company have the clearest selling points, and which aspects may require a bit more explanation. Akira Hirai, founder and CEO of Phoenix-based Cayenne Consulting, a firm that helps entrepreneurs develop business plans and financial forecasts, says that the process of distilling the essence of your business down to a page forces you to think hard, decide what's important, and discard things that aren't essential to the story line. "By doing this," he says, "you develop a better vision of what your business is all about, and you become better at telling your story."
Investors, lenders, executives, managers and CEOs are busy. Always. That means that the executive summary is an essential gateway for your business plan to get read. Think about it this way: if you had an endless list of things to do, and someone handed you an 80-page document and said "read this! you'd probably first want to know why.
"The most important reason to include an executive summary is that in many cases, it is the only thing the reader will read," says Pablo Bonjour, founder & CEO of Katy, Texas-based SMG Business Plans, a company that offers entrepreneurs assistance in writing business plans. According to Bonjour, investors will read the executive summary to decide if they will even bother reading the rest of the business plan. It's rare for an investor or lender
The executive summary is also an important way for you, as the entrepreneur, to determine which aspects of your company have the clearest selling points, and which aspects may require a bit more explanation. Akira Hirai, founder and CEO of Phoenix-based Cayenne Consulting, a firm that helps entrepreneurs develop business plans and financial forecasts, says that the process of distilling the essence of your business down to a page forces you to think hard, decide what's important, and discard things that aren't essential to the story line. "By doing this," he says, "you develop a better vision of what your business is all about, and you become better at telling your story."
Investors, lenders, executives, managers and CEOs are busy. Always. That means that the executive summary is an essential gateway for your business plan to get read. Think about it this way: if you had an endless list of things to do, and someone handed you an 80-page document and said "read this! you'd probably first want to know why.
"The most important reason to include an executive summary is that in many cases, it is the only thing the reader will read," says Pablo Bonjour, founder & CEO of Katy, Texas-based SMG Business Plans, a company that offers entrepreneurs assistance in writing business plans. According to Bonjour, investors will read the executive summary to decide if they will even bother reading the rest of the business plan. It's rare for an investor or lender