How to Write an Executive Summary for a Business Plan

First impressions might not be the last impression, but they undoubtedly set the tone for everything that follows.

The executive summary in your business plan works exactly like that. It’s the first thing potential investors, lenders, or stakeholders will read, and in many cases, it might be the only thing they read.

This makes it your golden opportunity to hook their attention, communicate your business potential, and inspire confidence in your idea—all in a matter of minutes.

However, how do you write your executive summary in a business plan?

Well, let’s figure that out with this blog post. But before that.

Why is the executive summary crucial in your business plan?

The fact that the executive summary is the most-read section of your business plan proves its importance. Here’s why it’s a critical aspect of your business plan:

• It shapes the reader’s perspective and builds the first impression of your business.
• It helps readers understand your business plan without requiring them to read it entirely.
• The high-level overview of your business plan demonstrates its potential and helps the readers make an informed choice.
• It hooks the readers and persuades them to read your entire business plan.
• Serves as an independent snapshot of your business idea, making it easy to share and pitch.

How to write an executive summary for a business plan

Let’s now understand the essentials that will help you build a worthy-to-read executive summary.

1. Start with a hook

A well-written executive summary starts with a hook. An unmissable hook that captures the readers' attention and pulls them softly to read your executive summary till the end.

A hook can be anything from a stat, a bold statement, or a compelling fact. If not, it can be a unique description of your business.

For instance, this hook by Jose Gallegos offers a very interesting insight into market opportunity and the core problem they are resolving.

“Jose Angelo Studios addresses a $8.2B market opportunity in B2B growth marketing, where 67% of companies face a customer acquisition cost issue.”

Now, it’s important to balance the hook with the reader’s emotional and intellectual capabilities. If it doesn’t resonate with the reader, your executive summary won’t be read till the end.

2. Offer a brief company description

Once you capture the reader’s attention with a hook, offer a concise and quick description of your company. It should clarify what your business does, where it’s located, who leads it, along with your business goals and milestones.

This will help clarify the reader’s expectations and prepare them to understand more about your business.

Some examples of goals and milestones you can include in your executive summary:

• Rhode Corp plans to launch 3 new stores across LA by 2024 end.
• We have successfully captured the first 1000 users for our product.
• Metallica has successfully captured a 7% market share in the US market.

Anything that showcases customer interest such as initial sales, pre-sales, or newsletter sign-ups can be included in this section.

3. Define your problem and solution

The executive summary should most importantly clarify the problem you are trying to solve. No, I am not talking about what you are trying to offer but the core problem of your target market.

When you clarify the problem, you show that you have built the product considering the needs of your target market. It proves that there is a market willing to turn into your customer and make your business successful.

Of course, you also highlight the solution—the product or service that will solve the customer’s problem.

4. Include a captivating market analysis

An effective executive summary offers insight into your market size and the target market of your business. While it doesn’t delve much into details, it shows that your business has a potential market to turn profitable.

Add statistics at this point to keep the readers hooked. Additionally, state the growth potential of this marketspace and its future predictions to instill the reader’s confidence in your business idea.

For instance,

• Upmetrics’ target market is emerging startups, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and college students planning to build business plans at cost-effective rates.
• The Business planning cloud market is $4.5 Billion in the US with only 3 prominent players offering their services.

5. Outline your competitive advantage

A great executive summary includes an overview of a business’s competitive landscape.

It highlights your prominent competitors and outlines your competitive advantage over them.

Don’t undermine or hide your competition. Instead, show how despite the competition your business has the potential to thrive.

6. Highlight your business strategies

Quickly outline your business strategies, mainly for marketing and sales. State how you intend to reach your target audience and turn your potential prospects into paying customers.

Remember: There’s no need to detail your marketing plan in detail. That’s already included in your business plan.

In addition to your marketing efforts, this section should also answer an important question: How will you make money?

This could be through online sales, store sales, subscription pricing, pricing per piece, or bundled pricing.

Simply give a crisp overview to show that you thought of potential outlays to make money.

For instance,

• Coral Technologies would make money through their tiered subscription services priced monthly.
• Coral Technologies will reach its potential customers through content marketing, paid ads, and email marketing.

7. Include details about your team

Introduce the people who would be turning your business idea into reality. This includes people in key managerial positions and important stakeholders.

Mention how these people make the best fit and highlight any achievements or expertise that may interest the readers.

For instance,

• Mike Tyson, the visionary behind the thriving venture Xylo, will be leading the technical operations at Coral Tech.
• We have filled 10 key positions in our organization and are in the final phase of hiring the operational head.

8. Clarify the financials

Investors would take a thorough look at your financial plan if they consider funding you. However, much before that they would be reading an executive summary where they would seek a certain understanding of growth, revenue, investments, and ROI.

This is what your executive summary should include and in a much easier-to-digest manner.

Include figures about sales, profitability, and revenue to help readers understand the financial sustainability of your business. Add charts or figures to simplify the understanding, if needed.

For instance,

• Spectrum Core has predicted a 14% growth MOM and revenue of $700K over the next 12 months.
• It will take $250K to start Spectrum Core, of which $100 K would be bootstrapped. These expense projections include payroll and other variable expenses for the first 3 months.

9. Include a clear funding demand

Lastly, if you’re planning to seek funding, make a clear funding demand in the executive summary. Here you don’t need to explain your funding utility plan. However, make sure to back your funding demand with concrete proof or statement.

Now, that’s a comprehensive list of everything that an executive summary must include. Depending on your unique business plan, you may tweak the information and remove information non-essential for your plan.

Best practices for crafting an executive summary

We already discussed the essentials of an executive summary. However, you cannot simply pull sentences from your business plan and place them in your summary. You need a unique approach to make sure that your summary gets read till the end.

We have compiled some tips and best approaches to help you write your business plan’s executive summary.

1. Write it at the end

Always write your executive summary after you complete writing your business plan. This will help identify the high-value information that should go in your summary.

2. Make it crisp

Executive summaries are supposed to be one or two pages long. In the case, of a complex business plan, the summary may stretch up to 4 pages.

Now, identify the absolutely essential information. The kind of Information that a reader cannot afford to miss. Your executive summary should stand alone in case a reader doesn’t read your business plan.

Once you place together all the essential information, re-read your summary again and again to remove all kinds of fluff. Focus on brevity and clarity and remove excessive wordiness.

3. Make it easy-to-navigate

Break down your summary into headings and then break the information into bullet points. This will make your summary scannable and easier to read. Even if the reader scans through the document, they will get the gist without losing on important context.

If you write in paragraphs, keep the paragraphs short. Preferably 3-4 lines at max.

4. Keep it simple

The language as well as the structure needs to be simple. Avoid using complicated or jargon-filled language. This will bore the readers even before they get to the main business plan.

5. Weave a story

Storytelling is the easiest and most proven way to captivate the audience and make them do whatever you want them to do.

Weave a narrative such that it clearly outlines your passion while demonstrating a strong business potential.

Let’s now put all this knowledge together in an example and see what the completed summary looks like.

Example of a compelling executive summary

You can easily find a free executive summary template online. If you follow the guidelines and the outline, you may get a summary that may look more or less like the following example.

Conclusion

This article detailed the process of writing an executive summary at length. However, remember that an executive summary is only as good as your plan. A poorly written plan will indefinitely generate a poor summary.

The business planning experts at PlanGrow Lab bring their years of expertise to create highly contextual and impressive business plans for your unique business ideas. Not only that, they can also review your existing plans or summaries to make these documents more nuanced.

Confused? Book your first free consultation call and discuss your plan. No strings attached.