Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

Audience Decision-Making Expertise 11

ORIGINAL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF A BUSINESS PLAN

WITH AN INVESTOR’S COMMENTS

Another technique for teasing out experts’ decision criteria is to ask experts to think out loud

as they make decisions.^70 On the following pages, an experienced investor’s think-aloud com-

ments, or protocol, about two versions of the same business plan’s executive summary illustrate the

dramatic difference that addressing the audience’s decision criteria can make (note: The product

and its attributes, the dates and numbers, and the entrepreneur’s name and background have been

changed). The comments the investor made while reading the plan and “thinking aloud” were

recorded, transcribed, numbered, and inserted into the text of the executive summary in bold and

brackets.

As can be seen, the investor’s comments about the original executive summary are quite nega-

tive. They indicate the investor is not interested in investing his money in the new business. Missing

from the original plan’s summary are the answers to the investor’s mental checklist of questions or

decision criteria.

Notice that the investor spontaneously listed his decision criteria in comments 20 through

28 after he fi nished reading the original executive summary. The decision criteria he lists

concern the tax ramifi cations of the investment, the nature of the project, the amount of the

investment required, the projected revenue and profi t, the qualifi cations of the entrepreneur, and

the plan for cashing out of the investment. When the investor read the revised version about a

week later, he came away with a much more positive impression. Notice that the writer of the

revision explicitly addressed each of the investor’s decision criteria and used section headings

to highlight them.

Smartphone MBA

January 15, 2005

Limited Partnership Interests for $350,000

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Executive Summary

The following is a business plan for a new company to be titled Smartphone MBAthat will
develop, sell, and deliver via smartphones a line of educational modules in the form of three-
minute videos each of which briefly addresses an important topic covered in the curricula of top
twenty business schools. This business plan provides a description of the new service, a look at

the market for subscribers and advertisers, as well as action plans for starting operations.

The target market for Smartphone MBA consists of three main groups of subscribers: current
MBA students who are presently enrolled in an MBA program, graduated MBAs who want a
quick and easy refresher, and prospective MBA students who are planning to get an MBA in the

near future [1. Current MBA students, graduated MBAs, and prospective MBA students.]
Taken together, these three groups are expected to total over 2 million potential subscribers by

2010. Currently, there are no smartphone services targeted specifically to people who are enrolled
      in, plan to enroll in, or have graduated from an MBA program. This creates a significant
      opportunity for subscription sales as well as for advertisement of a wide range of elite business

and consumer goods and services.