copies of patents, copyright evidence or trademarkregistrationscopies of leases:detailed accountsmarket research reports:CVs of key personnelphotographs that provide relevant support, eg of retailunits if you are in a retail business or of designs if yoursis a design business;technical descriptionsproduct brochuresThis is far from being a comprehensive list because there are somany possibilities, but it gives a flavour of the sort of evidenceyou may consider important.

You have a few seconds to grab your readers' attention and gethem interested in your proposal. Your readers are busy, theyhave a dozen phone calls to make, some of which will lead on toother calls, ten e-mails to send, a couple of letters, two meetingsand then a lunch appointment, a meeting after lunch, and theirchild s school concert this evening they have to squeeze in timeto write a report and work out some numbers and to cap it allthere are four other business plans on their desk as well as yoursThey are busy and they will skim your document. However, theone thing they will read is your summary -as long as it is short,ideally only one page long.The summary is written last although it goes at the begiof your plan. It is the most important part of your planIn this one page you must sell your idea. Your audience mustbe sufficiently interested to read the rest of your document. Inyour summary you must explain yourself, your team and yourbackground, what your business is, what is exciting about theproposal, why it will succeed, what you want them to do-toinvest how much. when -and what their reward will beWhatever the really key points are, they must be in the summaryonly you can decide what they are but the minimum must be anoutline of:the businessthe team.the proposalwhy it will succeedwhat the rewards will beany major risks and how you can minimise themwhat you want from the reader

You will probably refer to the market and the competition butpossibly only in passing. And all this in one page! It is a tallorder but it can really be done. The secret is to choose the reallyessential points, then to write them down and then to edit out allthe bits that are unnecessary, starting with flowery adjectives anddescriptions. Imagine you are standing outside your project andwriting a newspaper article about it.The one significant difference from a newspaper is that youmust put the really important numbers into the summary. Theremay not be many vital figures but they must be there; they are thekey evidence that will persuade the reader, they communicate thesize of the project, the market, the investment and its rate ofreturn to the investor. They help to fix the key points into eachreaders mind. They also ensure the reader understands what theproject is all about Numbers are an essential part ofcommunication in businessThe following is an abbreviated example:The Promoters propose to establish a new bookstore chainto take advantage of an unexploited gap in a EI billion retailmarket in the UK, having considerable growth potentialwhich arises from demographic changes and the imminentremoval of regulation. The fragmented bookshop market isconsolidating into a small number of national chains andthis project opens the prospect of constructing one of these.

The management team have direct experience of developingand running the largest bookstore chain in the UK, with 150outletsThe concept is for single-floor, general bookstores in goodlocations in towns, where competition is currently limitedand where they would be the dominant bookseller. The storeswill be different from competitors in product, environmentand service as well as achieving a lower cost base. Carryingaround 30, ooo titles together with complementary products,the stores will have the authority of a specialist, butwelcoming, atmosphere to attract a wider audience thanmost competitors.Single-floor units will avoid the higher staffing andbuilding costs of multi-floor operation. A lower cost basewill result from central purchasing and from the extensiveuse of wholesalers for supply. Administrative costs will bereduced whilst improving the quality of buying throughaccess to a large database. By stocking a more populageneral range the stores will achieve a better stock turn thancompetitors who also stock academic titlesThe promoters plan to raise an initial 750, ooo to openthree shops in the first year and will then raise a further E.million to finance the opening of eight shops per annum.with an eventual target of so shops. Based on forecast salesof E3o0 per square foot and stocks of 8o per square foot, thestores are forecast to generate cash from their second year ofoperation and the business will be cash generative from thefourth year.The attached forecasts show a business achieving rapidgrowth and producing attractive returns on net assets. Byyear five, the return on investment is 3o per cent. The peakfunding requirement is E3.5 million in year four, but thepromoters intend to raise a sufficient sum in the secondround of financing to cover this and to allow for unforeseenproblems as well as for faster growth. The promoters areinvesting [200, ooo in Ordinary Shares themselves and seekinvestors to join them on the same basis. It is anticipated thatinvestors will be able to realise their investment in three tofive years through a trade sale.As you see from this example, in less than an A4 page thesummary covers,the market:the management team;why the proposal is differentthe proposalthe return.e exSome points are omitted: reference to risks, for instance, is notncluded because we decided that the several risks would taketoo much space- they were covered in the main document. Youmay decide that you do want to include a few words on risks inthe summary-only do so if it provides an opportunity to showhow small they are or how overwhelmed they are by the returns.Your summary is short- you want to concentrate on positivethoughts; don't let readers finish your summary with a negativethought in their minds.Figures in the example are used to illustrate the points buttheir use is limited to the most important issues and roundednumbers are used. The reader will not absorb the meaning offigures precise to several decimal places. The summary is a placeto fix impressions, not to go into detail