When promoting your business idea you will be faced with the prospect of pitching to different audiences. “The tendency is to have a one size fits all approach, however, it is advisable to change your approach, depending on who you are pitching to,” says Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp and founder of Pitch Polish.
Below are some guidelines and recommendations when pitching for a new customer, an investor or banker.
Pitching for customers
Lots of entrepreneurs do a good job talking about their product or service, but aren’t really able to connect with potential customers. This is because their presentations are focused more on their business or product than on the needs of the customer. Presentations are useful in sharing something about a new company or service, but the focus should be about enabling a customer to see how the product or service will benefit the customer. Here are a few tips on your approach when pitching to potential customers:
• Make a proper effort to understand who you are pitching to. Do your research. Make sure you know all about them from their management down. Be so thorough that you can incorporate the “intersections” between their operation and yours into your presentation. If possible even go so far as to use their language and corporate jargon in your presentation to illustrate your points. There is nothing more powerful than using your potential customer’s words to describe what sort of value you can offer them.
• Create a business case that makes sense. You need to show them why your particular product or service is the best one in the market to fill their need. This can take you from simply selling them a product or service to being “one of the team”.
• Know exactly what it is you are after. Be as specific as possible with your proposal. You must know exactly what the relationship that you are trying to form looks like. Your certainty will paint a clear picture of how you will fit into your potential customer’s world in a mutually beneficial way.
Pitching for investors
There are many types of investment opportunities available and there may be a time when you will need to seek some investment to take your business to the next level. Consider these points:
• Keep it short and sweet. If you can’t explain your concept in a short and concise way, you run the risk of losing your audience.
• Facts as foundation. Most investors seek out low-risk businesses with managers in place and a measurable track record.
• It is hard to sell pie in the sky! Avoid presenting unfounded graphs predicting revenues and turnovers that are not supported by factual data.
• Give them bang for their bucks. In times of recession and belt tightening, you need to demonstrate financial responsibility and controls.
• You have to start the engine before you can drive. Investors generally avoid over-eager businesses that seem destined to bite off more than they can chew.
• Don’t be a wise guy! No one knows everything so don’t pretend that you do.
• Show the scalability. Illustrate the areas of anticipated growth and expansion for the business.
• What’s in it for me? The investor needs to know how the investment will benefit in the short-, medium- and long-term. Highlight this in a simple format.
Pitching to bankers
Bankers need solid evidence that your business has the means to pay a loan back. Detail your track record in employment and business and quantify the skills and experience you will bring to ensure the success of your business. By all means show the banker your passion for your business, but back it up with evidence of the unique skills you can bring to it. When presenting to a banker, the kinds of questions they need answered are:
1) What is your business idea?
2) What are you development plans?
3) Who are your customers?
4) What does your marketing strategy look like?
5) A view of the competitive environment?
6) Funding needs?
7) Future goals
8) How is the sector you are competing in performing?
9) Would it be more cost effective to buy an existing business than to start one from scratch?
10) What is your credit history?
11) What capital do you already have?
12) Assurance that you will be able to service a loan
13) What assets are you able to offer as security for the loan?
If you cover those questions carefully and clearly the banker should be able to extract the viability of your request.
For entrepreneurship to flourish, entrepreneurs need to hone their pitching skills in order to build successful, viable and sustainable businesses. Training seminars such as ENGEN Pitch Polish bring the platform and skilled facilitators to entrepreneurs in smaller towns and cities to guide them in building the foundation of their business pitch. The pitch, that when polished, will open doors for them.
URL: http://www.pitchandpolish.com
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Author: Jodi Karpes from GreenQueen Communications. Originally distributed by MyPR.co.za.
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