How to make a good executive summary?
These days, some of the Masters in which I teach Digital Marketing are coming to an end and students must present their Master's final projects. These projects can be in the form of research, in the form of a Marketing Plan or in the form of a Business Plan. Most of my students choose the latter option. So the tutorials of these last weeks are to finish finalizing their projects, prepare the executive summaries (which, although they are included at the beginning of a business plan, are written at the end) and to prepare the presentations that must be made before a university tribunal.
During this week's tutorials I realized that for many of these students, doing a executive summary It's not as easy as it seems to me. So for them, I have written this post.
What is an executive summary?
A executive summary It is a document that is delivered as an appendix to a business plan and whose objective is to summarize our business plan in about two pages.
This document is the one we will give to our potential investors at the first meeting. We will never give our business plan directly, for two reasons:
- Because our potential investor does not yet know whether or not he is interested in our business, and therefore, he will not want to read a document that can be more than 100 pages long (he will want to spend at most 5 minutes listening to us).
- Because we don't know our future investor (...it could be a future competitor) and we don't just hand over our business plan to anyone.
How to make an executive summary easily?
The simplest and most effective way (or at least this is my opinion based on my experience) to make a good executive summary is to pose it in the form of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), that is, in the form of questions that our potential investors may ask themselves and that we will try to answer in three lines maximum per question.
What questions does a potential investor ask?
These are some of the questions that our executive summaryAt a minimum, you should answer:
- What problem have you detected?
- What is the project about? (How are you going to fix the problem?)
- Where is the business? (How will you make money?)
- How much money does it take to create it?
- How long will it take to reach your break-even point (or your dead point, or your break even,.. depending on where the investor is from)? and what economic results will be obtained?
- What team carries it out?
- Why do we think it will be successful?
These are the same questions that the committee that will hear our Master's final thesis will surely ask themselves, so it is worthwhile for students to be well prepared and able to answer them without hesitation.
In this video I explain how to do it.
To see an example of Executive Summary with the questions included, click here: Executive summary example
To see an example of Executive Summary drafted without the questions included, click here: Executive summary example 2
Both examples are perfectly valid for presenting to a project tribunal or to potential investors.
Come on, cheer up! Here I leave you with this article from Technova, the business incubator of the La Salle Technology Park in which they interview some entrepreneurs. It is titled An entrepreneur always keeps fighting.
I hope I have been helpful.
We talk to each other.
186 responses
Yeah
Hello, we must submit monthly reports from external management and supervision regarding the progress of civil works projects, where everything that is included is important, but this can become very long and tedious, causing many people not to read it. So I would like you to advise me to see what could go in the summary or executive report so that they can find the most relevant information punctually and that in some way they can be told on which page they could expand on the information that is of interest to each reader. Thank you very much.
Thank you, what a great contribution
Thank you so much, it was really helpful.
Blessings
Thank you very much for the information, it has been very useful for me in presenting a project, since it is the first time I have done it and I didn't know where to start.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. One question, what do you mean by lock ins?
Hi, could you advise me on how to make a short executive summary on customer service?
Very good everything. I wanted to see if you could help me because I want to prepare an executive summary for a rag doll sales company that I myself am creating.
Thanks for the information! Very useful, just what I was looking for 🙂
Hello Montserrat, could you tell me what aspects I could take into account when writing an executive summary of an environmental impact assessment study?
I hope you can help me with this question…
a big hug..
Hello Good evening.. You must make a business plan for a product idea. That is to say, I have to put together a report with the following structure:
BUSINESS IDEA SUMMARY
Value proposition
Target Market
Potential Market
Business System
Work Team
Required Resources
Budget..
This whole scheme must be based on my idea which is Churros with ice cream, the ice cream cone is made from churro dough.. can you help me please.. and thank you. at least with the initial idea
Good evening. How can I make an executive summary of a problem, such as technical problems on a road?
Good morning, could you help me with an example of an executive market research report? The issue is that we are doing a project for the university on introducing a salary account debit card to the market.
Thank you for waiting for your comments.
Hahaha, all that's missing is for us to do your homework for you! At university, what they really want is not to see your executive report, but for you to make the effort to do it!!!!
Come on, cheer up, get on with it.
A hug.
Good afternoon, I am looking for a format where I can feed the weekly sales information in Bs, cost of sales sold, Bs purchases received in that period. Thank you.
Excellent post. Thank you very much.
Hi Monse: Could you help me with some guidelines to implement a popular stock exchange? Thanks
THIS INFORMATION WAS VERY USEFUL TO ME!!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH
Hi Montse. Thank you very much for the information you share, it is very good.
I hope you can help me by giving me ideas about the executive summary for a high school.
Good evening... could you guide me... to make an executive report on cultivation projects... please...
Hello Montse
I would like you to help me by explaining how to make my executive summary of a technical report in anticipation of obtaining the bachelor's degree.
you are attacked in advance.