If you are a newbie entrepreneur, who has to attract investors to join your startup, a powerful elevator pitch can put you in the spotlight. Whether you are pitching for funding or just to bring your business to the market, and impactful pitch showcases the inside and out of your business.
The type and format of pitches differ from business to business such as it could be a 5 pages documentation of a fiscal performance or an in-depth analysis of how you are standing out among other competitors. It’s up to you how you showcase your business’s worth, uniqueness, and value.
However, when it comes to pitching for angel investors and venture capitalists, you are just provided with few minutes to speak for your case. This blog is a comprehensive guide on how to make a successful pitch in a matter of no time.
Always go for a presentation
No one has time to go through your 10 pages file or boring speech. You have to make efforts to create an aesthetic pitch deck in form of a sales ppt presentation. It should be highly creative and innovative that it makes the investors excited about your business.
The ppt should be visually compelling and short enough to get delivered within the provided 10 minutes. But, also prepare an extended version that includes the nitty-gritty of your business, for later access to the investors.
Keeping practicing
To make your pitch presentation best of all, you need to practice each of its elements, unlimitedly. Your practice will allow you to speak quickly and firmly, without getting stuck and confused in the middle.
Just by knowing your business in every aspect and having an eye-popping presentation, you can’t go unprepared with over-confidence. Keep practicing every slide and every single line with simple words. Note how much time you are taking to effectively deliver the complete slides. Keep the turnaround time 10 minutes.
Begin with your story
The investors are interested to know why did you initiate the startup. For this, begin with a compelling story of how this business will be benefiting the people and what problems it will be addressing in the world.
You can share your analysis or sample test results to prove your statistics. Investors are more interested in a business that is a solution to the common public’s problems because, in the end, it’s the general public who are going to use the product or service.
Research on your investors
Conduct research on the life, career, and job history of your investors. It will help you in relating your presentation or business story to their interest and struggles. Look for what startups they have invested in the past and what problems they suffered in their past entrepreneurial life.
Know your target market
Even if you are delivering the services or products to the international market, the whole world is still not your audience. Strategically plan your audience into TAM, SAM, and SOM approaches. This will be easier for you to work effectively for each group and address them as per their respective markets.
While presenting, create a user persona about your target market. The powerpoint design services suggests that, focus on a specific group of customers rather than a wide demographic target audience. The investors can also better understand the scope of your business for the potential customer base.
Develop the marketing and sales strategy now
Most of the entrepreneurs neglect to add the marketing and sales strategy in the pitch presentation. Your business plan must include, how to reach the target audience, the cost associated with it, and how will you evaluate the success.
The investors want to know your plan of action. Make a separate slide on the customer acquisition strategy, marketing channels, and user engagement methods.
Don’t forget to welcome your team
Investors are more likely to invest in entrepreneurial projects which have a rock star team of career-oriented people. Your team adds credibility to your project and convinces the investors to trust your startup.
Share the brief profiles of your team and their contribution to building the startup. Spot out their critical skills and expertise. Make sure you have an all-rounder team who have brilliant expertise in financial management, management expertise, marketing, sales, and other important operational domains.
Highlight your competitors
Another significant part of the pitch, your presentation should speak loud about why you stand tall among the competitors. The best way to throw light on this section is to create a slide based on the competitive matrix format.
In this, you have to list down your competitors on one side and mention your top features on the other side. Place checkmarks below every feature for every competitor and place tick for which company has that feature. The low number of checkmarks will clearly present your competitive advantage.
The investment you need
Once you are done with the complete presentation about your entrepreneurial startup, now comes the main part. You should clearly mention how much investment you have made in building the brand, ownership percentages, stakeholders, and how much more amount is needed to elevate the business.
You should be directly quoting the exact amount you will be needing with other vital details such as the number of financing rounds and the form of financing required, be it a convertible note or equity-based funding.
The takeaway
Making a pitch for potential investors is a hard nut to crack. The only way to get your command on pitching is by actually doing it. Don’t stress out, just practice each slide and avoid mentioning the irrelevant details. Even if you fail to secure the pitch, you will gain immense learning experience from it. Apply that learning experience to every zone of your startup to make relevant betterment.