4 Ways To Make A Strong Pitch Pitching is not just for entrepreneurs to seek funding. In our work life we all pitch in one way or another, such as pitching a new system to your team or a proposal to the board. Every time we put our best foot forward to encourage our coworkers to adopt our ideas and give us the go-ahead.
By Kavya Pillai •
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Pitching is not just for entrepreneurs to seek funding. In our work life we all pitch in one way or another, such as pitching a new system to your team or a proposal to the board. Every time we put our best foot forward to encourage our coworkers to adopt our ideas and give us the go-ahead. These pitches can be the most nerve-wracking part of the idea creation process.
In business, a pitch usually refers to the concept of pitching your ideas to an investor or group of investors so they can determine if they should fund your company. In this type of pitch, it's important to ensure that you convey just enough key information that will grab attention and make the investors want to learn more.
A successful pitch involves knowing your products or services and target audience inside and out so that you'll have confidence when delivering the idea. You'll also want to include plenty of information on why there is a clear need for your product or service and show that you've done market research. Financial projections are often a must, and consider mentioning your team as well to help inspire confidence in your company. Here are four ways to create a strong pitch.
1. Get to the point fast
It's become popular to say that attention spans have been shrinking. Whether it's the length of books, blogs or videos on social media, generally everything is getting shorter (although podcasts are a welcome exception). From the outside, provide your audience with succinct and compelling propositions, and you'll find that you may be better at capturing your listeners' attention at the crucial start of your pitch.
2. Create a winning pitch deck
Over the past decade, the general trend in venture capital pitching has been 'keep it brief'. Back in 2013, Leonhard Widrich and Joel Gascoigne, founders of Buffer, used 13 slides to land $500,000 in three months, which challenged the 'thorough-is-better' mentality that at the time many had followed as conventional wisdom. And if you're thinking about re-working your pitch deck, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. There are many existing templates from winning decks you may consider starting from available across the internet.
3. Establish the need
Often, one of the questions that goes through your listeners' minds when they set out to listen to you is, "What problem are you trying to solve?" Take the time to define that need. Give them a definite, concise statement of the problem, with an example or two illustrating the need. Show them the ramifications -- i.e., how it affects people. Then follow up with your solution to address the need.
4. Use a message map
This idea comes from author Carmine Gallo. As he puts it, "If you can't tell me what you do in 15 seconds, I'm not buying, I'm not investing and I'm not interested." The message map is a tool to help pitch a complex idea, simply and quickly. It helps you explain your idea visually – on one page – in 15 seconds. This involves creating a Twitter-friendly headline, followed by three key benefits to support the headline. It ends with a reinforcement of the three benefits through stories, statistics and examples.
