A Great Pitch Can Win the Game
While the task of pitching your company is often used to impress financiers, a good pitch is valuable when you are presenting your company to anyone who can possibly help you get ahead.
This could be customers, suppliers, angel investors, or anyone else who would have an interest in what your company does who can help you in some way.
Getting your pitch together is not hard, but well worth the effort you put into it. You would hate to be like the entrepreneurs Guy Kawasaki is speaking about in the following quote:
As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup.
Guy Kawasaki
What does it take to make a great pitch, and impress the right people?
Keep it short
As the quote above illustrates, you don’t need to go into painstaking details about your company when you are pitching it. Let your business plan do that.
Guy Kawasaki recommends no more than 10 slides in your presentation, which cover the following:
- Problem
- Your solution
- Business model
- Underlying magic/technology
- Marketing and sales
- Competition
- Team
- Projections and milestones
- Status and timeline
- Summary and call to action
Focus on problem/solution
There’s a reason that problem and solution are #1 and #2 on Guy’s list.
That’s what a successful business boils down to. What’s the problem, and how does your business provide a solution. Craft your pitch around that idea, and present it in such a way that your audience has the same “ah ha” moment that you did when you were starting up.
Excite and engage
A main goal of the pitch is to get your audience excited about your business, and engaged in what you are saying. How do you do this? First, YOU must be excited and engaged…if you are going through the motions, or aren’t 1000% excited about your company’s prospects, your audience will feel it.
Be Realistic
As business owners it’s in our nature to believe our businesses will one day conquer the world. That is fine as an internal driver, but in your pitch be realistic about your growth, development, and projections. It’s great to be excited about your future, but saying you’ll capture 75% of the market in the next year begins to sound a little lofty, and could dilute your message.
Be Honest
Don’t make anything up! If you are asked a question you don’t know the answer to, fess up to it, but commit to find out. Remember your integrity and your company’s integrity is on the line. Don’t jeopardize that by peppering your pitch with white lies or ½ truths.
Keep these ideas in mind the next time you’re making a pitch for your company, and remember a pitch doesn’t necessarily have to be in front of a bunch of venture capitalist to be effective.
