Company Snapshot

Year Founded:

Industry:

Annual Sales:

Growth Rate:

Investment Requested:

Company Name or Logo

The Grab – This section is probably the mostimportant part of your entire executive summary. Intwo or three sentences tell the reader why yourbusiness is special. Maybe you have Michael Jordanas a customer and he has promoted your product ontwitter for free. Maybe you just signed a partnershipwith Google. Maybe you were just awarded a patent,or maybe you just made your first big sale. Whateverit is ask yourself “so what” if it sounds reasonable tosay so what then you didn't do a good enough job.Obviously if you just signed a partnership agreementwith Google no one would say “so what” so grab theirattention.

Big Problem – The first ingredient of a goodbusiness idea is a Big Problem, so explain the BigProblem that your product addresses. For instance,there is too much traffic in Chicago and everyonehates traffic. Everyone in the room should be saying“yeah I hate that”.

Unique Solution – The big problem is the easy part. Now you have to convince the readerthat you have come up with a unique solution to the big problem. If you have these twoingredients you have a good business idea. Maybe you developed a new traffic controlsystem that will save 1 minute for every person in Chicago each day during their commute. 1minute each day is valuable when you are talking about a couple million people.

Market Potential – Elaborate on the big problem, by providing stats for your industry. Howmuch is spent annually on similar products or services and how fast is it growing. Maybe youoperate a in home health care service company and with all of the Baby Boomers gettingolder and sicker each day you have a very large market potential with a rapidly growingmarket.

Unique Selling Proposition – This is where you elaborate on your unique solution. Whatspecifically gives your product or service an advantage over the competition? Maybe yourhome health care service actually sends Doctors to the home instead of just nursepractitioners. Or maybe you guarantee same day visits so that you don't have to scheduleahead of time. Just point out why you are special.

Management Team – Depending on what industry you are in this can be the most importantparts of your executive summary or one of the least important parts. Regardless yourinvestors or bankers are putting trust in the team not the idea. Ideas are easy to come by, butexecuting on those ideas can only be accomplished through a strong team. Quickly showwhy your team has the experience and know-how to execute your business plan.

Business Model – In this section it is vitallyimportant that you communicate clearly andconcisely how you are going to makemoney. Not only how are you going tocreate sales revenue, but how will yoursales be profitable. Often times the bestway to do this is by using a diagram.Maybe something like the diagram shown tothe right. Yes that is simple, but at least itgives readers an understanding of how youthink you will make money and thenhopefully the rest of the Executive Summaryconvinces them that you can make thatbusiness model successful.

Product Sales

Online Advertising Revenues

Profitability

Financial Projections - Based on yourmarket, your business model and, yourhistorical performance you need to developa bottom up financial forecast. If your planis for a group of investors don't spend toomuch time on this section because youknow and they know that you really have noidea how much money you might make.Investors typically won't make a go / no godecision based on your financial projections.They will essentially make their ownfinancial projections. That being said youshould have some sort of graph or tablewith current sales and projected sales goingforward for at least 3 years.

Row 1 Row 2 Row 3 Row 4

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Column 1

Column 2

Column 3

Request – Now it is time to request either an investment, loan, or sales contractdepending on the purpose of the executive summary. You should restate why yourcompany provides value. Remind the reader of the big pain that you are solving andyour market potential. Finally reemphasize your team and its ability to get the job done.Ask for the dollar amount that you need to reach the next major milestone for yourbusiness. Don't disclose how much equity you are willing to give up or what interestrate you are willing to pay. This should be done later through face to face negotiation.

Visit www.theexecutiveplan.com for more information on ExecutiveSummaries. Simply email me at adam@theexecutiveplan.com to getyour free copy of my 11 page report on How to Write a PowerfulExecutive Summary.