A business pitch is a business plan that you present to your potential investors to secure funding. The pitch helps you explain your business to investors to enable them to make the right decisions.
10 Tips for Creating a Successful Business Pitch
If you’re getting ready to create a business pitch deck for your startup or new business plan, there are several things you need to keep in mind.
1. Be Concise and to the Point
A good business pitch requires you to provide crucial points regarding your business. You can use statistics and visual presentation to explain your issues. Simplify the expression and ensure that the investors understand the facts right away.
Getting to the point will hook your potential investors into following your topic without losing interest. To achieve this, you have to focus on crucial aspects of your business and summarize them into simple terms.
2. Create an Elevator Pitch
An elevator pitch is a brief business presentation delivered quickly, such as during an elevator ride. Describe your business’ nature, what you do, and show why you are the best candidate for funding.
To compose an excellent elevator pitch, ensure you describe your business well to help investors understand it without any struggle.
Take a page out of this slide’s book. Pay attention to how they used a single sentence to convey what their business does.
3. Practice Your Timing
Practice whatever you are going to present and ensure that you keep time during the rehearsal. You may let your colleagues track the time and observe your body language and speech. That way, they will give you candid feedback regarding the quality of your practice.
Bear in mind that you’ll need to present your pitch within a short time. Depending on the organizer’s specifications, ensure to deliver your pitch within the allocated time.
4. Pay Attention to Details
Once you’ve presented a brief description of your business, get into the details and justify why investors should invest in your business idea, and show how you will offer solutions to societal problems.
For example, based on industry analysis, demonstrate how your business compares with others in the niche and which approaches you will use to perform better than your competitors.
Additionally, don’t forget to add financial projection to your presentation. Potential investors take a keen interest in reviewing this information than others. Make the prediction simple and be ready to answer any questions that investors may ask.
5. Understand Your Audience
Before you think of an effective business pitch, don’t hesitate to find out about your potential investors and create a pitch tailored to them. Give a brief description of how your product works and demonstrate how you intend to grow your business.
Let the investors understand what your business does and convince them that you deserve funding. More importantly, talk about your business idea and show the problem you are planning to solve.
Bear in mind that investors want to hear how your business will generate returns for them. Therefore, show them how you will create demand for your product and present realistic financial projections.
6. Address a Real Customer Experience
Use real customer experiences to highlight an existing problem and demonstrate how your idea will solve it. Tell a story regarding real customer challenges and avoid the technical talk. More importantly, ensure that the story you give relates to your target market.
For instance, mention your customer’s name and show how your business managed to solve the problem they had. Be realistic and let your audience connect with your story.
Research shows that a compelling story will make investors relate to your business situation and better understand your business idea.
7. Outline Your Business Model
Once you furnish your investors with what your company does, they’ll be interested to know how to generate income. A business model entails your assets, business activities, and what you do to get customers and make money.
Inform your investors about the duration you’re likely to take in each stage of development. Have in mind that businesses are different. For instance, some companies’ product development may take many years, while others will take a few months.
Whichever stage your company is in, show the investors that your team is competent to manage your business at any particular stage.
Here’s a great way to represent your team on a single slide.
In your revenue model, describe how you will generate income for the next few years. For instance, provide a five-year financial projection showing total revenues, profit before tax, operating expenses, and net income.
8. Talk About Your Team
Investors are interested to know if you have the right team to implement your business strategies. Highlight the most important details about your team, such as experience and qualifications.
You don’t have to give details of everyone working for you. However, you may talk about the founders of your company. Give a brief bio of members in the founding team, and ensure that they are diverse in gender and other aspects.
Investors believe that a diverse team has a unique approach to solving issues, which is right for your business.
In your presentation, ensure to highlight the following about the founding team:
- A brief biography of each member
- Names and titles
- Members’ photos
- Social media (e.g., LinkedIn) profiles
In any business, a team is one of the most important assets a company has. Investors are concerned with whether the topmost people in your company have the expertise and experience to lead your startup to success.
9. Show How You’ll Deal With the Competition
In the competition slide, show investors what sets you apart from other players in the industry. Highlight the company’s vision and let investors determine your ability to become a key player in your niche.
Demonstrate how the product is competitive in the market and show your industry knowledge regarding possibilities and obstacles.
Ensure to quantify the product benefits you plan to include in the competition slide. For instance, you can say that your product is 3 times powerful than the competitors’. And don’t forget to prove that!
List your product benefits in priority order based on your business’ value proposition and customer needs.
When creating your competitor slide, make your differentiators as straightforward as possible. For example, if your startup has a crucial benefit but competitors don’t have it, mark its column and leave those of competitors unmarked.
Ensure that your power grid competition slide looks clear to investors during the presentation.
Use a competitor matrix to understand your market, learn about competitors, and create excellent business strategies.