What is a pitch

Introduction

The success or failure of a project or business depends not only on the team that develops it but also on who you surround yourself with. To get a good investment that allows you to start your project, expand your clients and surround yourself with business partners that enrich your project, you must know how to explain what you are doing clearly and specifically while hooking your interlocutor, and you make him/her want to know more about what you're doing.

Once this lesson is completed and approved, learners will be able to:

1. Discover what a pitch is.

2. Understand the main objectives of a pitch.

3. Distinguish the main elements of a pitch.

Through this lesson, we will learn what the objective is to be achieved with the presentation of a business pitch and some basic tips to develop it.

1. The objective of the pitch:

The pitch is a means to capture the attention of investors, clients or partners.

To make a good pitch we have to be able to show what we do, what problems we solve and who we are (and that we are capable of doing what we are promising).

The possibilities of closing a contract, or finding a great business opportunity during the initial conversation with the investors is practically impossible. What is possible to achieve in that first conversation is a second conversation, and that is the short-term objective of the pitch: to get a later meeting where we can discuss our project in depth.

Therefore, throughout the pitch, we must ensure that our listeners are attracted by what they hear, make it clear what the project is based on (providing real data: turnover, metrics ...) and above all, we will have to capture the attention of the interlocutor and persuade him so that, at the end of the conversation, he wants to know more and sends you to a longer meeting in which to talk in-depth about your project.

In summary:

1. Try to be reminded: although your pitch has been very well worked, if the next morning your interlocutors don’t remember anything, you will have failed.

2. It’s not only important that you be professional, but that you look like it. The way you dress, your way of speaking and stand, and the design of your presentation are some of the things you should take care of to create a good image.

3. Reflect on what they might ask you and have a good answer ready.

4. As we have said before, the main objective in presenting your pitch will not be to get out of there with a signed agreement but to be called back to have a second conversation. Try to end your speech in such a way that they want to know more about your project.

2. Some basic points that your pitch should include:

Throughout the following lessons, we will delve into the structure of the pitch, the audience and the message.

The different elements shown above are the typical ones to be included in a pitch. Those can be presented in this order or in a different way, to be adapted accordingly to the objective of the pitch and the project characteristics.  In the second topic of this course, we will present these main contents under a different structure, so the learner can enlarge his/her vision and use these lessons to create his own adapted format:

• Introduction to the project

• Introduction to the team

• Problem – (existing incomplete solutions) – Solution

• Business plan

• Request

What we want to show here are the basic elements to be approached. From this, each one should work on a personalised structure adapted to the specific needs of each project.

To summarising, here you can find some basic points:

• Know your audience: investors, clients or business partners.

• Give your project an attractive name that is easy to remember.

• Prepare a good introduction that creates an emotional bond with your interlocutors.

• Make sure it’s clear what the project is about, who it is aimed at, what objectives it has and how you are going to achieve them.

• Study your competition, and highlight why they should choose your product and not another with similar characteristics.

• How is your business going to make money? Remember that if you are preparing the pitch for investors, they will be interested in knowing, with data and numbers, if investing in your project will be profitable or not.

• Don’t forget to introduce the team and their professional careers, carrying out a project or a business is a task that is carried out as a team, and investors, clients or future business partners will want to know it.

• What are you going to ask them? At this point, you should clarify how much it would cost to carry out your project and how long it will take you to start making a profit. It’s the final point and the hardest part of your pitch. Don’t give it too many laps, your investors already know that you are going to ask them for something, otherwise, you wouldn’t have prepared your entire speech. Expand the information released so far with data on how much it would cost to carry out your project, and how long it would take to make benefits.

Conclusion

Having a good business pitch requires important preliminary work, and practising the presentation until it’s perfect. It is worth this investment of time, as part of the success of a project depends on how it is communicated.

The investor pitch: set the right objectives(retrieved on November 12th, 2020)

Here you have the contents of the lesson in PDF: