- An executive summary is like an elevator pitch
of your business plan.
Whether you're an entrepreneur looking
for investors or a CEO of a large corporation,
having a strong executive summary is critical
for long-term growth.
Here's the good news, it's short to write.
The not so good news,
it can be challenging to write
because it serves different purposes.
Today I'm gonna share my top five tips
to help you write your own executive summary
and show you what key pieces
of information you should include.
Make sure to stick around until the end
because I'm going to go over a common mistake
that people make that you should avoid.
Let's get started.
Your executive summary is a brief overview of your company
and it's located at the beginning of your business plan
or on the about us page of your website.
Usually it's the first thing that people read
so it needs to be attention grabbing, engaging
and convincing.
In one or two pages,
it needs to have the following.
Number one, it tells your story.
When investors or CEOs read your executive summary
they should understand what your business is about.
What do you do and why do you do it?
Let's use Connected as our example.
Their executive summary immediately grabs your attention
with its headline.
Before reading the rest of the summary,
we already have a pretty good idea of what they do.
They're a product development service firm that partners
with clients to build better products that delight customers
and drive business impact.
Simple enough.
If you scroll down,
you'll see they share more details on the history, size
and mission of the company that explains how
they help clients build better products.
That brings me to my next tip.
Number two, it shows you've done your research.
A good executive summary shows
that you know what you're talking
about and that you can communicate your ideas effectively.
This is a specially important
if you're trying to win over new clients or investors.
In their summary, Connected walks us through their approach
on how their goal is to build the right products
for their clients.
In a few short sentences, the reader is confident
that with the help of their engineers, designers
and product strategists, Connected can help them
deliver world class products.
As a small business, the best way to stand
out is to include information on how your product
or service fits in the market
and how your business differs from your competitors.
If you're feeling unsure
on how to structure your executive summary here at HubSpot
we have a free template that outlines all
the necessary pieces you should include.
You get detailed descriptions
of how to write your financial plan,
market analysis, business operations, and more.
The template is really helpful
if you're writing an executive summary for the first time
or if you want to refresh your existing one
and include some things that you may have missed.
Like I mentioned, it's completely free.
So if you'd like to download it
I'll have it linked in the description box.
Tip number three for writing an executive summary
is to pay attention to your tone and avoid cliche language.
The tone of your writing tells a story
and when it comes to a business document
you have to make sure your tone tells a story
of who you are.
You can decide to be formal or informal depending
on how you want to represent your brand and your audience.
It's also best to avoid cliches
because they can be misunderstood
and that is definitely not something you want when
someone is reading over your executive summary.
For example, saying something
like you have the best restaurant
in town is not necessarily true and can't be tested.
When you're writing your executive summary,
make sure to focus on the things that reflect the truth
of who you are as the company.
Going back to our example,
Connected doesn't claim to build the best products
but instead their purpose explains the extraordinary impact
they create through culture and technology excellence.
Tip number four is break up your executive summary
so it's easy to digest for your readers.
This is especially important to pay attention
to on your website.
Since this one document is going to be jam-packed
with bits of information, you wanna break it
up into sections and spend the most time
on the section you feel your audience will care most about.
If this is for your general audience
then you can focus more
on your mission or company background
and explain how exactly your business provides value.
Using multimedia to break up your information
will help keep the readers engaged
and provide them with visuals to better explain something
like your business model, which can be a bit complicated.
If you're pitching this to investors,
you may not want to include any visuals
but instead spend more time on the market
analysis and financial sections.
Connected is a great example
of a more formal executive summary that provides value
to both their general audience and potential investors.
In one page, we get to read
about their mission, values, partners
and their diverse team that runs this machine.
Tip number five, that is going to save you
so much time when putting this summary together
is write your business plan first.
If you're like me and like to structure your work in order,
you might be tempted to write the executive summary first.
Although it's the first thing people read to learn
about your business, it should be the last thing you write
once you've completed your business plan.
Make sure you don't make this common mistake
or you'll probably have to go back and fill
in some gaps in your business plan or executive summary.
These five tips along with our template
will make your executive summary writing process a breeze.
If you like this video, make sure to subscribe
for more marketing content and comment
below which companies have executive summaries that stand
out to you.
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
- I can find this client info.
- Have you heard of HubSpot?
HubSpot is a CRM platform
so it shares its data across every application.
Every team can stay aligned
no out sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.
HubSpot, grow better.