How to Write an Executive Summary for a Business Plan?

A Short Overview of Executive Summary 

An executive summary is the most important section of a business plan that gives a short and compelling overview of the points. 

Despite the summary being short, it covers all key elements including:

• Mission and vision of your business.
• The opportunities you will avail.
• Financial details.
• Reasons to invest or partner.
• Market analysis.
• CTA (Call to Action).

And more….

Best Practices to Write an Executive Summary for Your Business Plan

1: Read Your Business Plan

Before you start summarizing the business plan, it is important to read it comprehensively. You should find and highlight the main points of the plan, as you need to cover them in the executive summary.

You should list your business’s mission, objectives, financial requirements, and future goals on a separate page and order them according to their importance.If you’re new to this, a business plan template can help you organize these points clearly and make the process easier.

Additionally, be sure to include the legal structure of your business, such as an LLC, if applicable. Mentioning your LLC formation demonstrates that your business is legally established and protected, which can instill confidence in potential investors and partners. You can also explore further advantages of forming an LLC by reputed resources from LLC University.

2: Understand Your Target Audience

To write an executive summary effectively, you need to understand your target audience. By target audience, we mean the investors, entrepreneurs, or a specific group of people who will be reading your business plan’s summary.

To understand the target audience, we suggest considering their:

• Knowledge level: How much understanding do they have about your industry?
• Background: What are their experiences or interests in collaborations?
• Expectations: What are they looking for?

Knowing this will help in crafting a personalized summary that resonates with the specific interests of readers. As a result, there will be increased chances that your business plan summary could capture the attention of readers and encourage them to collaborate.

3: Write A Compelling Hook/Opening Line

Now the actual process of summarization begins. The first thing to write is an attractive “Hook” or “Opening Line” that could inspire your audience to read the entire executive summary till the end.

Your opening or hook line could be anything that can make a big impact on readers such as:

• An interesting fact.
• Unique aspect of your business plan.
• A well-structured description of your business.
• A sentence narrating the success of your previous plan.
• A thought-provoking question.

Remember: A hook line needs to be personalized with the audience. In this case, if your reader is in the tech industry, then it should be something related to technology trends, stats, etc.

4: Add Facts and Figures

In your executive summary, you should back up your statements with facts and figures instead of making vague claims. But what are “Facts and Figures”, it refer to the important statistics, concrete information, key data points, and percentages.

For Instance:

• If you’re starting a business in a fast-growing industry then your facts and figures will be data about market size, current trends, projected growth rate, and potential opportunities. 
• If your business has achieved milestones then you should highlight key metrics like revenue growth, customer acquisition, positive feedback, industry awards, etc.

Adding facts & figures is crucial for:

• A clear understanding of the decision-makers.
• Building trust.
• Supporting decision making.
• Highlighting the most significant aspects of the business plan.

5: Keep the Summary Concise

You should use concise and to-the-point language to cover all the key aspects of the business plan in the summary. Avoid delving into unnecessary explanations but value the time of readers.

However, crafting a concise summary is a tough task that demands solid writing skills. A lot of time, effort, and multiple revisions are required to finalize. Don’t worry, there is an effortless way which we call the “Advanced Approach”.

It involves using online summarizing tools to automatically create short executive summaries. From among the large number of summarizing tools, we mostly rely on Editpad Text Summarizer. The tool uses advanced-level AI technology to create unique, coherent, and accurate summaries.

Let’s have a practical demonstration of the Text Summarizer:

As shown, the tool condensed our 522-word summary into a short one with just 160 words. Similarly, you can also concise longer summaries or directly summarize the business plan.

6: Write Clear & Readable

Don’t overcomplicate the executive summary but try to make it as clear and easier to read as possible. You shouldn’t use jargon or difficult terminology that might be puzzling to readers.

Follow these tips to write a clear and readable summary:

• Prefer words and phrases that are relevant to the audience industry.
• Replace complex words and phrases with simple-to-read ones.
• Break summary sections into bullets, sub-headings, and numbers.
• Prefer short paragraphs.
• Break long-form sentences into short ones.
• Bold keywords and numerical values.

7: Proofread the First Draft of the Summary

Before finalizing, you should proofread the first draft of your business plan’s summary. Below are the common errors to look for:

• Inconsistencies.
• Readability issues.
• Unnecessary details.
• Grammar and Spelling Mistakes.

However, if you use the above-chosen Text Summarizer, there would be rare chances of these errors occurring.

Conclusion

An Executive Summary should reflect all the main points of your business plan in a few words. Write it in the end when your business plan is complete. In this blog, we elaborated on some best practices regarding how to write a summary for a business plan. Consider a Text Summarizer that can assist you in writing an executive summary that is brief, accurate, and readable.