The Flow of a Winning Startup Pitch
By Milestone|3 January 3, 2022
Pitch Your Winning Idea.
As an entrepreneur, having an outstanding offering is a great start. You’ve probably even gotten some traction in generating revenue and have created a small following. What’s next? Raising more investment funding is conventional. Pitching to new clients is inevitable. So how do you increase your chances to win audiences over during your pitch?
In every pitch, catering to the audience is fundamental, and relating to how they will be thinking throughout the flow of your pitch will engage their thoughts, feelings and support. Whether your audience are investors, potential clients or future business partners – throughout the beginning, middle and end of your pitch – the audience will go through 3 stages of thinking:
1/ What?
2/ So What?
3/ Then What?
Audiences want to know what you are pitching, and how it relates to them. Moreover, they want to know what would change with your offering, and what they need to do after your pitch to make that change a reality. To cater to their thinking, the following pitch flow would capture their thoughts and logical reasoning:
Firstly – Be Interesting.
Start your pitch with an example, analogy, mini-story or a reference to a current event – so the audience can quickly engage with your offering. Share something which can provoke their thinking or curiosity, and draw them closer to be interested in what you have to offer. As this is the beginning of your pitch – speak with passion and share the energy that you want the audience to have while listening to you. If you want the audience to feel eager, speak with animation! Be interesting, if you want them to be interested.
Secondly – Be Understandable.
Far too often, entrepreneurs speak too technical or share information which it too complex. That’s when the audience is lost and your opportunity diminishes. If you can make an elementary student understand – that’s when you are able to explain well. Use simple language which your audience will frequently hear.
Ask yourself “What do I want the audience to do after my pitch?”
With that answer, present only content which will convince your audience to do that.
Speak about the change your offering will create. Guide them to see how their own lives could benefit. Relate your offering to their lives, or to the lives of someone in their world. Speak so they understand, for your offering to be understood.
Lastly – Be Exciting.
If your offering can create a change, opportunity or revolution – how can the audience be a part of it? Sharing with the audience your offering’s benefits is important, and showing them what they can do to get that benefit brings them closer to action. Be clear as to what you are asking from the audience – whether it be investment, purchase or endorsement, etc. At the end of your pitch, some presenters like to mention a point which they spoke about at the beginning of their pitch. That would be one way of a creative ending – “full circle”, as we call it. Tying back to the story you told at the beginning of the pitch, relating your offering to how a recent situation would have had different outcomes – these are different ways to end “full circle”.
Having an outstanding offering is a great start – let the pitch be your beginning to bigger horizons.
