What’s it like to pitch for millions of Euros investment? And which tools do you use to convince investors of your business?
Startups are leading the way in presentations today. They break complex stories down into pitches of between 5 and 10 minutes, and convince they have an addressable problem, a product that solves it, and a market that’s big enough to grow the business into.
Whether you are working in a Startup, or are a professional in a larger company, you can use some of the leading Startup pitch techniques in your presentations too. Here are three secrets you can work with straight away.
1. Make an announcement of success
A presentation is invariably a persuasion: a pitch to convince your audience that they can have confidence in you and your project, product or service. Making an announcement about a recent success can be a powerful tool. Tell the audience about your new customer, a recent award, quote from a prominent satisfied customer.
This builds trust and belief in your proposition and a feeling that this is already a success train.
2. Give them a surprising statistic.
Here are some examples from Startup Bootcamp recently. “Can you imagine: the average person spends over one year of our lives searching for parking.” (MobyPark.) “90% of small businesses don’t have a website optimised for mobile.” (TagTagCity.) “IBM says that 30% of purchases are influenced by Social Media.” (Tag’By).
The brain enjoys surprising yet believable facts that connect with the real world of your proposition.
3. Tell something personal about why you are doing this.
Every person in the audience is a human being – even investors, bankers and your boss! Tell them your personal reason why you care about your product or service, why you are putting time into making it work and delivering value to customers. An example:
“I used to work in my father’s small company and saw it go out of business. I want to ensure small businesses have the tools they need to compete with large competitors and survive.” (Geoffroy Simon, CEO TagTagCity.)
By connecting your own passion and personal connection to the subject, you help the audience connect with it too: and when they care about it, they’ll buy into it.
