Your executive summary is a summary of your entire business plan, and a critical component of the entire plan. Ideally, you should write this section last, after you have completed writing the entire plan.

Unlike other types of executive summaries (which are often a paragraph or two), your business plan executive summary should be a two to three page summary of the contents of the plan.

The executive summary is more for people who are indirectly responsible for making decisions about your business plan, but for whom their support is necessary. These folks may only read your executive summary when basing a decision on whether to support your business.

The executive summary should not rehash the entire plan nor go into too many details. Instead, it should spell out the key opportunity you seek to capitalize on -- and the major highlights on how you plan to do so. A brief financial overview -- with topline numbers only -- is also important.