This is again under the Startup Gyan Section which is certainly the right mix of practices for all the budding startups.Do take care of each and every point mentioned in the article because if any missed or messed , you will end up losing the deal.
“Here It Goes”
Tips on effective pitching
How do you turn a pitch from a monolog to a sale? Make sure every point you
make connects with your audience. Keep your text very, very short. Really.
Please. Use charts and pictures if you can. And engage your prospect. Ask
questions. “Do you think this market opportunity is interesting?” “Have you seen
anyone else addressing this problem?” “Do you think CIOs would be interested in
a solution like this?” You may get some tough responses, but you will know a lot
more about what is going on in the investor’s mind, and you will be engaging
them in your story—instead of letting them play with their Blackberries under the
table.
Some additional tips to improve the effectiveness of your pitch:
- Make sure that everyone in the room is introduced. Rarely do entrepreneurs
ask the investors in the room to introduce themselves. While it is appropriate
to be familiar with each investor’s bio (assuming it is on the web), it’s fair to
ask something like, “What investments have you been looking at recently?”
And if there are some other faces in the room, you should absolutely have
them introduce themselves and provide a little background.
- Don’t use a feel-good, visionary “Mission Statement” on your overview slide.
Mission statements have also become a joke in the venture industry. It’s like
saying, “Our projections are conservative.” Focus on making sure your
statement of your company’s value proposition is crisp, clear, and unique.
- Prepare good use cases. Sometimes, no matter how simple and clear the
description of a product, what the investor really needs is a concrete example
of how people will actually use it. In some cases there will be multiple different
use cases. You may need to explain these to get your point across.
- Drop names, early and often. If you really have some brand names involved
in your company—as customers, as partners, as members of the team—don’t
keep them a secret for the first nine slides; make sure the investor knows
about them early in the presentation. But be prepared for the investor to
contact every single name you drop—whether it’s a person or a company. If
you are going to drop names, they had better be real.
- Make sure you can tell the entire story in 10 to 15 minutes. Even if you have
time, your total presentation should be no longer than 20 minutes. You want
to have time to engage the investors and discuss their questions or concerns.
If you think you have additional critical points that have to be made, prepare
“pocket slides” that you can put up if the topic arises.
- Average entrepreneur pitch: 38 slides. Average VC attention span/cranial
capacity: 10 slides. Do the math.
- Learn how to control the flow of the meeting, without seeming inflexible or
anxious. Watch and listen. Body language and questions will tell you if you
are okay deferring a point or if you need to address it immediately. If you let
your audience take over the flow, you will probably wind up creating a
confusing, incomplete impression of your company. But if you don’t address
the “burning questions” early and effectively, the investors won’t hear
anything else you say.
- Don’t lie. You would think this goes without saying, but in their enthusiasm for
their creations, entrepreneurs tend to slip across the line all too often. Please
do not interpret our exhortation to “sell” as an endorsement of hype,
exaggeration, misrepresentation, spin, or lying. The best salespeople are
credible and trustworthy. It is more important that investors trust you than that
they understand every nuance of your business.
- Pitching investors is different than pitching customers. If you have a sales
presentation for customers, do not think you can simply modify it slightly for
pitching to VCs. Start from scratch, keeping in mind with every slide that an
investor has a very different perspective than a customer.
- You don’t have to be “conservative,” but you do have to be realistic. Almost
every entrepreneur fails to be realistic about how long things take in the real
world (vs. the spreadsheet world). Whether it’s the time to complete product
development, or the time to close the next ten sales, entrepreneurs are
pathologically optimistic. As with your financials, find examples of comparable
challenges addressed by other companies, and use that data in your model.
- Never ever put so much text on a page that the investor has to read it.
Everything should be short, content-rich bullets in a font large enough to read
without squinting. The words are simply reinforcement of the points you are
making orally. Pictures, graphs, and charts should be uncluttered and make
clear, compelling points. If they have to be deconstructed and explained piece
by piece, you will lose focus and momentum.
- And never use your presentation stack as a standalone document. It is
perfectly okay if it is not readable when you are not around. That’s the job of
your executive summary or your business plan.
A good pitch is very rare. It is so hard executing on everything else that has to be
done to build a successful company, pitching often suffers. But the ability to pitch
is a key indicator for investors—if the entrepreneur doesn’t know how to sell, how
can he or she build a great company?
At Garage Technology Ventures, we appreciate how hard you have worked to
get to where you are, and how hard you have worked to craft your investor
presentation. We wish we could work with all the great entrepreneurs we meet,
but unfortunately we can’t. Please help us get to know you better by telling your
story clearly and concisely.
If you have any questions about this article, or about Garage, you can contact Bill Reichert,
Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures (email: reichert@garage.com).
This Article was found on Garage.com the Original Source : Garage
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