Business Plan Executive Summary

The business plan executive summary is a critical component in your plan's structure.

This section provides an overview of the whole business plan, and quite frankly it is the only page some people will bother to read, so here is where you need to be very convincing!

In your executive summary you should touch on every important part of your plan.

Some of the people who are presented with your plan will read no further than this page, other than flicking through to the back to look at the numbers.

Bearing in mind that many of those people are likely to be potential sources of funding for your new business, your executive summary needs to a clear concise and compelling summary of your plan.

What to Cover

In this section of your plan you need to cover the important important aspects of your plan, and depending on the purpose of your plan, the items you cover will vary, but will generally include the following:

• Who you are and why you can make your business work
• What your business actually does
• Why you do it better or differently to your competitors
• Who your target customers are and why they will buy from you
• What you expect to achieve in the first year of operation, and
• Where you expect your business to be in five years.

And most importantly, keep it real. One of the more common business planning mistakes is to try and make your business ideas sound better or more profitable than it really is.

If you do this, not only are you setting yourself up to fail but your potential investors will be able to pick up on any inconsistencies and let's face it, to be in a position to be able to help you they really need to know what they are doing!

They will be able to spot an unrealistic business plan a mile off.

When to Write the Executive Summary

You normally wouldn't attempt to write your business plan executive summary until you had completed all of the other sections, and that means that you need to do the research and analysis before you start.

If you have skipped any of the steps recommended when you are starting a small business, writing a business plan is going to be extremely difficult and will have very little value to you or to your potential backers.

So do yourself a favor and go back and do the Market Research, analyse the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths of your new venture and revisit your business identity before attempting to write your business plan!

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