You’ve drawn your business plan, perhaps have a minimal product ready and you are ready to fundraise, but you have no clue how to pitch to investors like a pro or something close. Pitching is a pressure-packed moment, and you need to be in your best state. Your pitch is the single thing that could either get your business off the ground or plunge your idea into eternal oblivion when you need funding. Even if you have money in the bank, there’s going to come a point when you simply have to get additional funding to grow your startup and start scaling up. Here are some of the amazing tips to get effective pitch ideas for your business.
- Prepare your elevator speech: Your elevator speech is a 30 second or less summary of what you do. It should explain everything someone would need to know when they first meet you. The goals of your elevator speech are to be able to succinctly describe your idea or product and get the other person interested enough to ask follow-up questions. It should cover what you do, what problem are you solving and why are you different.
- Turn your pitch into a story: Storytelling is the best way to engage the audience. Use traditional storytelling methods to illustrate how your product works. Create a protagonist and an antagonist for your story.
- Timing is critical: The less time your pitch takes, the better. A time limit can be used to your advantage if you implement the right strategy. In many cases, investors aren’t really sold until the question and answer portion of the pitch when they get to inquire a bit further.
- Do your investor research. You should find out as much as you can about your angel investor. Investors don’t all have the same goals, objectives, perspectives, experiences or backgrounds. Knowing what is important to them will give you the opportunity to tailor your pitch accordingly.
- Explain your revenue model. Investors invest because they want to make a return on that investment. An investor will care about your pitch if you can answer this question: How will my company make you rich? The answer, in investor-speak, is your revenue model. Specifically identify which type of revenue model you are embracing, and how you intend to apply it.
- Take care of due diligence upfront. It takes most investors 3 months to do due diligence on your idea. Make sure that it is not a waste of their time.
- Negotiate a term sheet offer. Lack of experience can make this a very painful part of the whole project.
- Develop a Great Pitch Deck: Strengthen your pitch by developing an amazing pitch deck that helps the audience follow your presentation and helps them visualize your message. Your pitch deck must create a harmonious balance with your pitch. It should have enough words to summarize the message, but not so many words that the audience gets caught up in reading the slides instead of listening to your presentation.
- Follow up: Even if you aren’t getting the response you hoped for or expected, keep following up with updates if you really want those investors in. Some may not get in this round, but they may seek you out in the near future.
