Love them or hate them as a CEO the Pitch is something you must conquer. Last week I attended part of the Montreal Startup Camp where entrepreneurs get a chance to learn about and practice their pitch. This article is about the Do’s and Don’ts of making the pitch so jump in with your comments and help us all learn from each other.
If you are responsible for financing or selling a company you may have to do hundreds of these and they are critical to the business so you may as well plan to excel. There are some cardinal rules and priorities as far as I am concerned and they are these:
1. Know your audience as much as possible. If the audience is an investor then research them as much as possible to get a picture of who they are and who they represent, their expectations in terms of size of return and timing, as well as things to emphasize and things to avoid or de-emphasize in your pitch. Know before hand if your target audience has an interest in this market space. Know their business and respond to their needs in your pitch.
2. Don’t just throw slides at them with stats and strategies. Tell them a compelling story. Tie the story to real world realities and make it personal to them if you can. You are SELLING your plan to them but never over-sell.
3 In terms of content; if they are to invest money their primary concern is not losing it for avoidable reasons so they want to have confidence in the person and team they are financing. Make sure you have the key bases covered with a great story on the top 4 or 5 positions in the company. (At the Montreal Start-up meeting someone asked if you could hire a professional presenter to do the pitch for you - my answer is never because the investor wants to hear from the person who will be controlling their cash. Painful lesson: I was asked to build and present the pitch for one company - the result was the investor added a condition that I take over as CEO which eliminated a great potential investor for the existing team, so don’t try it.)
4. Second thing they are looking for is the opportunity - is it real, is it interesting and is the potential return big enough for the gamble they are being asked to take.
5. And what is the niche - what unfair advantage, market insight and offering, business model etc do you have that is worth getting excited about. Why are you uniquely positioned to exploit this opportunity?
Now the actual flow of the pitch is quite different but must win all of the above points as well as others. All of the above must be turned into a concise, credible and exciting Story. Concise, credible and exciting only comes with LOTS of practice so it is better not to go after your high value targets first and to take every opportunity to rehearse and get feedback in front of people who have seen pitches before or know the market space you are tackling.
Some other rules:
· If you use data or charts make sure the attribution is included, from credible sources etc.
· Be prepared to answer these questions:
· Why has this not been done/offered before - what makes you so smart
· Who competes or will compete and how - how will you win in the presence of competition.
· Are there barriers to entry and what are they
· What are the risks to your plan and what contingencies do you have.
· Use PowerPoint slides for only the highlights not a full business plan - that comes later
· On you slides use a combination of graphics/pictures and text - some people ‘get it’ in the words and others in the block diagrams and the pictures. Make it professional but don’t try to win the academy award for neat PowerPoint tricks in your presentation.
· Focus on only 3 take away messages - 1. This is a Great market/opportunity 2. We have a unique plan to exploit it. 3. Our team can make it happen.
· Have a 10 slide, 20 slide and 40 slide version for the first pass, the second pass and the detailed Q&A pass.
· The 10 slide version must win them over in the first couple of slides in the first meeting.
Customize your presentation for every audience - never introduce anything that is tangential to today’s audience.
· Do the presentation yourself. You can have another Team member or two in the room to show depth or answer expected questions but never outnumber the audience.
Lastly, the most important ingredient of all is CONFIDENCE and ENTHUSIASM and that only comes with building your Story, believing in it and rehearsing it until you could do a stand up routine anywhere, anytime and answer every question with a real zinger.
Now your thoughts - post a comment and get the discussion going. What has worked for you and what has not? Tips, war stories and successes please.