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
Hi Montse! An excellent article, very helpful and with good arguments for doing so.
I need some advice. What areas can I consider or which would be the correct ones to make an executive summary about a Secretary of Culture in the area of social communication whose problem is administrative?
Greetings! 🙂
Hi Montse! I wanted to thank you for the information. I am making a business plan and I did not have the necessary tools to do it, but with your explanation I was able to do better with the little I had written!
Excellent, very clear. That would be enough for me.
CEO: Cidcitei International, CA
Montse, you are such a bitch 🙂
I don't know if this is a compliment or an insult... it's not spam because you put the fake email 🙂 so I take it in good faith and thank you 🙂
I found it very interesting and I got here because of an academic project. They asked me for an executive report on a life plan, and I have no idea how to do it.
The information you have posted is very easy to understand.
Thank you so much.
Thanks Jenny 🙂
A big hug
Thanks Montse.
How to make an executive summary on statistics
It gives me a lot of joy when people with knowledge share it. It has been a great help to me, as I am venturing into starting a carpentry business and I need investors. I will not give up until I get my business up and running. Thanks Montse, greetings from Chihuahua, Mexico.
Good morning Montserrat, I would like to know how to develop an executive summary of a market research on sausages. I hope for your help 🙁 Regards!
Hi Montserrat… I have a question, can I make an executive summary explaining the expenses and costs of a specific department? If possible, what tips would you give me! Tks!!
Good evening Monserrat, I have a question. Are the summary and the executive report the same thing?
Yes, I consider it the same.
I wouldn't do an executive summary, well, maybe I would do a little bit, but very short just to situate the project. What I would do is a good dashboard with Google Data Studio with the achievements and the KPIs of the project... and I would offer to send him the dashboard every month.
The explanation is really good, thank you very much, it helped me a lot for my work at university.
Hello, good morning Monserrat, I don't know how old this article is, but it fits me like a glove.
I am an agricultural engineer and I head a department. I need to present the director with a summary of all the activities and achievements of the year in question. Could you help me? How do I start and how do I finish?
Thanks in advance.
Can I apply for an IT Engineering thesis project?
Very good article. I would like to make an executive summary for a strategic plan for a company that sells construction materials... it is difficult for me to define it since there are several products.
Thank you… This information was very useful to me, but I have more questions regarding my entrepreneurial project?
Thank you very much!!! Your video helped me a lot, now I can make my executive summary without any problems.
Greetings.
gooooood
Excellent!! A great article, short, concise and clear.
Congratulations! It has been very useful to clarify my ideas when preparing an executive summary.
A hug!!