Executive Summary First or Last?

The first item on our table of contents (TOC) is the Executive Summary (ES.) The ES is a summary of your business plan and although it is first on the list - most people leave this until last because while working through the other elements of the business plan - you can see your most important aspects appear. Since this is the opening of your plan you need to be sure that you have included all the important elements. IMO this should be left until last because you need to get this right and interesting enough to ensure that the rest of the plan is not dismissed – especially if you are using it to ask for funds.

So what should the ES include? The usual suspects are included such as your business name, location, and product – then you should include the purpose of the plan. You might want to have a couple of standard ES – depending on the purpose. Of course you need to include items such as forecast sales and profits (generally for 3 years) and an explanation as to how you arrived at these. It is important to speak plainly, a bank or lender will be used to seeing fluff and unreal expectations and are less likely to put money up for unsubstantiated ideas.

As I said depending on the purpose your ES might look different. So what different purposes might those be? Here we get into the plethora of plans that you might need such as a strategic plan, an operations plan, an annual plan or a plan that seeks funding. Each ES should say what the intention of the plan is – if you are looking for money say so, and what you will give in return. Don’t forget to explain your niche or why you have the competitive edge. Stay focused – the ES doesn’t need to be a book ! Todays ES is concise and should be about one page in length. This may sound quick and easy but as Mark Twain once said “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter.” So keep it short and sweet – remember you want them to read the whole plan – this is just the introduction. Like the trailer to a movie!

Tomorrow we will look at the basics of part II of our TOC – the Company Overview (Mission etc.) Also take a few moments and see what you can find on the web – think of some successful (of course!) companies and check out their business plans. OK we are on our way! Like I said earlier -you can do this! –no investment except a little time is required – what is the point of buying business plan software? That’s not to say that a good consultant is not worth their weight in gold – shameless plug! Until tomorrow….