What should executive summaries include

An executive summary efficiently summarizes a larger business plan while communicating key findings and takeaways from your research, as well as proposed courses of action. For example, if a company performs a competitor analysis prior to deciding whether or not to move in a different strategic direction, a business plan would be put together to articulate findings and suggest the next steps.

This business plan would open with an executive summary. Writing an executive summary can be a daunting task. It can be difficult to know where to start, what to write about, or how it should be structured. Once your online survey is performed, there is work to be done in terms of packaging your findings to leadership in a way that easily communicates the need for a new strategy.

The most straightforward way to do this is to create a business plan that includes all of your research, findings, and suggestions. This business plan naturally requires an executive summary. Crafting the executive summary of your business plan after writing every other part of the report is the best practice. This ensures that you can build out a summary that represents the remainder of the plan as accurately as possible. Even while crafting an objective presentation of your research findings and the proposed direction that your business, never forget that you want to inspire excitement in your audience!

At the end of your executive summary, your audience — whether they be an investor, banker, advisor, or executive — should be eager to read on. Your executive summary should be thorough, but it should not reveal everything.

Your audience should be encouraged by the summary to read the remainder of your report if they want the full story. With a clearly defined structure, an executive summary can be a standalone piece. Without one, however, it would need the support of the entire report to make an impact. Is there any context your stakeholders need in order to understand the summary? If so, weave it into your executive summary, or consider linking out to it as additional information.

Your executive summary is a living document, and if you miss a typo you can always go back in and fix it.

But it never hurts to proofread or send to a colleague for a fresh set of eyes. Executive summaries are a great way to get everyone up to date and on the same page about your project. If you have a lot of project stakeholders who need quick insight into what the project is solving and why it matters, an executive summary is the perfect way to give them the information they need. For more tips about how to connect high-level strategy and plans to daily execution, read our article about strategic planning.

Resources Project planning How to write an executive summary, with What is an executive summary? Try project planning in Asana Imagine it this way: if your high-level stakeholders were to only read your executive summary, would they have all of the information they need to succeed? Outline the recommended solution.

What is an executive summary in project management? The same four parts apply to an executive summary in project management: Start with the problem or need the project is solving. Executive summary vs. The benefits of an executive summary You may be asking: why should I write an executive summary for my project? How to write a great executive summary, with examples Every executive summary has four parts.

Start with the problem or need the project is solving At the beginning of your executive summary, start by explaining why this document and the project it represents matter. In order to offer these prices, we will do the following: Offer watches in new materials, including potentially silicone or wood Use high-quality quartz movement instead of in-house automatic movement Introduce customizable band options, with a focus on choice and flexibility over traditional luxury Note that every watch will still be rigorously quality controlled in order to maintain the same world-class speed and precision of our current offerings.

To round out our example executive summary: Cheaper and varied offerings not only allow us to break into a new market—it will also expand our brand in a positive way. Then, as you continue to hone your executive summary writing skills, here are a few common pitfalls to avoid: Avoid using jargon Your executive summary is a document that anyone, from project contributors to executive stakeholders, should be able to read and understand.

Always proofread Your executive summary is a living document, and if you miss a typo you can always go back in and fix it. Your target market is who you think your customers will be. Assuming your business has competition every business does! Are you competing on price, quality, or something else? Briefly describe what makes your business different here. For a startup, it might be a brief description of aspirations, such as a sales forecast goal for the next year or three years from now.

I often recommend a simple highlights chart, a bar chart with sales and gross margin for the next three years. This is especially important for startup companies. Investors want to know who is behind the business idea and why you and your team are the right people to build the business. It also may be valuable to highlight any gaps in your team and how you intend to fill them. If you have potential partners or candidates in mind, briefly mention them and expand on their qualifications within your full business plan.

If you are using your business plan to raise money for your business, your executive summary should highlight how much money you are looking for. Investors will want to know this upfront and not have to dig through a business plan to find this detail. You may also want to discuss future milestones that your business hopes to achieve. This is particularly important for businesses within a highly saturated or complex industry, such as medical device manufacturers and drug companies, for example.

They need to explain where they are in the process of getting regulatory approvals and what steps remain. Read on for tips on writing an executive summary for each of those scenarios. Before you develop your executive summary for seeking investment, understand how it fits into your business plan.

The executive summary can be the first section of your business plan, or you might be developing a stand-alone executive summary that you plan on handing out without the rest of the plan.

My views on this are taken from eight years as an active member in an angel investment group, and more than 10 actual angel investments, plus membership in the Angel Capital Association.

A well-prepared executive summary is useful for angel investment platforms like Gust, AngelList, and others to gauge interest in candidates. Of the group I work with, for example, three-fourths of us will read every executive summary submitted to us.

All of us will read summaries for plans that pique group interest, and half of us will look at the rest of the plan only if we are still interested after reading the summary. Let the investors know about any previous startup experience or specializations from the start because this makes a huge difference. Spending to build inventory for existing orders, for example, is way less risky than spending to develop a product that is in design and prototyping. Valuation, in this context, is controversial.

Valuation is what you say your company is worth, a number that determines how much ownership you give away for investment. In other words, "use language that will resonate with your target audience," says Hirai. Don't be afraid to change your executive summary when you present it to different investors. Consider creating different versions for each audience, he says, but make sure that it's always kept professional, crisp, and free of any embarrassing errors.

Another good tip he gives is to use personal pronouns e. Your reader will feel a stronger personal connection with you, your brand, and your idea if you can relate to the reader in the first person.

Don't forget to be confident, either. If the writer does not clearly believe in this company, says Bonjour, why should the reader believe in it? Put yourself in your reader's shoes, and ask yourself why you would want to invest in a company. Remember, every executive summary is--and should be--unique.

Depending on the size of the business plan or investment proposal you're sending, the executive summary's length will vary. However, the general consensus is that an executive summary should be between one and four pages long.

Think logically. A two-page summary can be printed on the front and back of a single page, which can feel like a professional brochure. And if you can't tell the essence of your story in a page or two, says Hirai, then you probably haven't thought things through well enough. Echoing this thought, Bonjour asserts that "you can cheat a bit by using smaller fonts, widening your margins, shrinking images and tables, but ultimately you need to summarize everything contained within the executive summary.

After all, it is called a 'summary' for a reason. Avoid using terms like "the best," "groundbreaking," "cutting-edge," and "world-class. The most important element to any executive summary is a clear, concise, and relevant explanation of what your company does.