Executive Summary of a Business Plan: Quick Tips on How to Make Yours Stand Out

For many business owners, the most intimidating piece of content to create is the executive summary of a business plan. When writing an executive summary, you need to focus on concisely explaining your key points in a skimmable yet compelling way. This forces you to take a step back and review the business plan from a higher level and distill the main points into an engaging narrative. If you’re not sure how to get started with your executive summary, read on! 

What is an Executive Summary of a Business Plan? 

First things first: what is an executive summary? An executive summary is typically the first section of your business plan, after the cover letter, that provides a quick summary of the overall plan. The goal is to create a summary that motivates the reader to look through the rest of the business plan.

What is the Recommended Length?

The length of the executive summary will vary depending on the size and scope of your document, but in general you should be able to condense it down to 1-4 pages. One or two pages is ideal to keep it easy to pick up for a quick skim. You know your audience best, and if you know they won’t read anything more than a page, keep yours to a page. 

What to Include in the Executive Summary

You want this summary to tell a story that encourages the reader to look through the rest of the business plan. Like any good story, you’ll need to start with an interesting hook. It’s best practice to start by outlining the problem that you’re trying to solve. Use the first paragraph to set the stage with a sentence or two devoted to the problem. Conclude that paragraph (your thesis statement) with a sentence explaining how your business solves that problem.

Use the meat of the executive summary to highlight your unique position to solve the problem. Maybe you have 23 years in the field, and you’re uniquely qualified to create a solution because of your industry knowledge. Or perhaps you invented a patented product that’s the best on the market because of these three really important reasons. No matter your point of differentiation, make sure to clearly highlight why your specific position will solve the problem and, if possible, show why it’s better than the competition. 

Wrap up the executive summary with an overview of what’s in it for your reader. For example, if it’s an investor, maybe by investing now they have an opportunity to enter into this new industry. If you’re writing a business proposal for a potential client, highlight what benefits they’ll experience in working with you. Keep the executive summary tailored to your audience. If you’re presenting the document to vastly different audiences, it’s a good idea to create different summaries for each audience. 

Tips for Writing the Executive Summary of a Business Plan

If you’ve never written an executive summary before (or even if you have!) use these tips to create your best summary. 

• Write it last. While it’s normal to want to write your business plan from beginning to end, it’s best to write the executive summary (and cover letter) last. This allows you to flesh out the details in the main section of the document, and you can use that to find the most important points to include in the summary. Plus, it’s really hard to summarize something if it doesn’t exist. 

• Write for your audience. This is mentioned above, but it’s so important that it’s going in here too. The executive summary is your shot to get your audience to read the rest of your document. If you create a general summary that doesn’t speak directly to them about why they should be interested, they won’t. Include content that describes the benefit of your plan to them.

• Use call-outs and graphics. It’s very easy for the executive summary to become a giant block of text that no one wants to read. Split up the text by adding call-outs and graphics to showcase key points. If someone sees an interesting graphic, they’re more likely to read the text around it versus avoiding the whole document because it’s too much text. Just make sure you keep it professional and tied to the content.

• Make it skimmable. You’ve probably gathered this by now, but the executive summary should be very skimmable. Oftentimes it’s being read by an executive with very little time, and they’re most likely to try to skim it anyway. They’ll appreciate you and understand your points better if you make it easy to skim. You can do this by adding call-outs, bullet points, bolding or italicizing key points, adding headers for each section that explains your benefit, and so on. 

Now you have all of the information you need to start creating an executive summary for your business plan. Next step: write your business plan and then create the summary. Let us know how it goes!