Kristin Luck
Whether you’re an entrepreneur going out to look for funding in Q1 or a sales person looking to drive higher conversion rates in 2020, pitch decks are paramount to whether you close a round or a sale. Here are our top tips for successful pitching.
1. Keep It Short and Sweet
Good pitches shouldn’t be more than 20-minutes in length and your deck should ideally have no more than 10 slides.
Why so short? This is an in-person presentation and you want to leave ample time for discussion and, in the case of sales folks, co-creation of potential solutions to a client's business problem.
2. Don’t Lead by Talking About Yourself, Your Management Team or the Awards You’ve Won
Focusing too much on yourself at the beginning of a presentation can lead to a loss of attention from your audience. Instead, kick things off by first presenting the industry problem, then present the opportunity to solve the problem, then your competitive moat (what makes you special and different). Once you’ve ensured that you have your audience’s attention you can then spend the second half of the presentation validating your proposed solution through your experience, case studies, etc.
3. Practice, Practice, Practice
Too often founders and sales execs think they know their product or service so well that they don’t need to practice for a big pitch. Verbally running through your pitch in advance can help avoid mid-meeting panic-induced “blank out” and issues with presentation flow.
Working on your investor pitch deck? We’re big fans of Guy Kawasaki’s framework (although we do believe you should be prepared to answer questions about exit strategy!)
In a sales role and trying to increase your meeting effectiveness and decrease time to conversion? Check out Carmen Simon and Memzy’s brain science tactics to ensure that customers won’t forget your content.
Still stuck and need some guidance to pull your pitch deck together? Reach out to us.