How to Write a Management Summary in a Business Plan

The management summary is an important part of your business plan. It has to describe all the necessary information about your employees as well as the resources the company has.

Why is it so important? Because when you introduce your business plan to the investors, you need to persuade them that your company worth investing – and in order to do so, you need to use every option available to you.

Describing who stands behind the company’s processes and rules the company itself is one of the best things you can do to persuade investors. Moreover, a proper management summary should also describe your business idea at least briefly. This could help make the investors more interested in what you have to offer, encouraging them to read the rest of your business plan.

Here are some useful tips that could help you ensure that the management summary will give the readers all the information they need.

Introduce yourself

Sure, describing your management team to the investors is very important – but even before you do that, you should introduce yourself to them. Tell them more about your visions of the company and the reasons to choose all the members of the management team, explain what do you expect of your team to do in the future and how exactly can it benefit your business.

While vision is important, additional data is important as well. Don’t forget to describe your skills, experience, and other business-related things to the investors too.

Provide information about your board of directors

Your board of directors is another thing worth mentioning. When writing about them in your management summary, you need to mention all the data the investors might find important.

Such data include their names and contact details obviously, contain some necessary biographical information that is relevant to your business plan. You can also explain how exactly does each member participate in company’s business processes and how can they contribute to the future of the company as well.

Identify each of the company’s departments

It doesn’t matter whether your company is big or small – either way, it’s important to write something about its departments in the management summary.

Of course, such description doesn’t have to be too detailed. It’s enough for you to describe the departments briefly, mentioning the people who are in charge of them as well as describing the responsibilities and functions of the managers who are responsible for this departments.

Create a hierarchical system

Your company does have a certain structure – and a management summary needs to reflect that. This would make such summary easier to read and process as well as will give the investors some additional information that is important.

Name people who are responsible for your company’s growth and success.

Make sure there aren’t too many of them – five or six is enough. Give the investors some basic information about them and don’t forget to list their duties.

Foresee all options

It’s unlikely that your team functions just exactly as it’s described in the chart. Most likely your employees have other duties besides the ones usually listed in most resumes – they do some additional tasks and they interact with the other staff members as well. They are also able to replace the other managers when needed.

Describing how exactly does your team functions show the investors that you understand it well enough. Therefore, you’ll be able to replace a certain manager in case of their absence, vacation, and so on, ensuring that your team will continue to function properly.

Create the business plan appendix

 

Not all the data can and needs to be included in the management summary section. This way it might become too long, making it harder for the investors to proceed it.

However, while the management summary section needs to be short, there could be still some data left that you would like to include. In this case, it’s better to create a proper appendix in the end of your business plan that would contain all the other important information.

For example, such appendix can contain the following characteristics of your management team members:

• Education. Education doesn’t necessarily matter but if your employees’ education is related to their positions and is impressive, it should be included in the business plan. Such credential can impress the investors and even encourage them to choose your company among the others.
• Skills. All the key skills your employees have can benefit your company in some way. That’s why it’s important to mention all the necessary skills of every member of the management team. It doesn’t even matter whether such skills were gained while an employee was working in your company or not.
• Employment. Experience matters more than education sometimes, especially if your team members have been working in a certain field for years. This shows the investors that your staff is reliable and professional. That’s why it’s important to list all the previous employment history of your employees.
• Achievements. If you or one of your team members have succeeded in a certain area, received a reward or completed a certain important task mention that in the appendix as well. It would be interesting to the investors.

Review it with your team

Every part of your business plan needs to be reviewed and edited. When we’re talking about the management summary, however, you don’t have to do this on your own.

Instead, let your team review it. This will help you ensure that you listed all the data correctly and maybe will give you a couple of valuable ideas on how to improve this section.

There are different types of business plans but each and every of them has to include the management summary section if you want to impress the investors. Don’t forget to make each chapter informative enough and yet concise so it would be easy for the readers to process. Remember that the main goal of your summary is to help the investors to understand who rules the company and where do they want to lead this company in the future.

Of course, the investors don’t just go and give money to everyone: they need to know whether your company is worth investing in or not. A proper management summary can help them understand that and make the final decision. It’s a great opportunity to show that working with you would be beneficial for both sides.

Also, you can perceive the management summary of your business plan as a cause and effect essay outline: you only need to give enough arguments to get the attention of investors eventually.

We hope that this article was useful for you. Good luck with your management summary. If you have any thoughts on this topic, please leave them in the comments below!