Definitive Business Plan, Second Edition, The

The executive summary

As frustrating as it might seem after you spend weeks crafting the most beautiful plan ever, busy decision makers may base their assessment of the plan on the ex- ecutive summary alone. For this reason, you should do everything possible to make this the best part of your business plan.

In fact, the executive summary is the plan in miniature. It is not an introduction. Ideally, it should capture all the pertinent points of the whole plan in just one page. Indeed, if you are looking for funding you might send the executive summary to prospective investors asking them if they would like to see the whole plan (but you probably won't – see Chapter 12 ).

The summary sets the tone, determines how eagerly the document is read and ...