You’re preparing to pitch your business. What do you need to focus on?

When preparing to pitch your business, focus on clearly defining your value proposition, understanding your target market, and articulating your unique selling points. Tailor your pitch to address investor concerns, highlight potential growth opportunities, and demonstrate a solid business plan. Additionally, practice delivering your pitch with confidence and enthusiasm, ensuring clarity and engaging presentation to captivate your audience and garner support in business development efforts.

Conduct thorough research on your audience demographics, industry, and specific interests. Utilize sources such as company websites, social media profiles, industry reports, and press releases to gather insights into their business priorities, challenges, and current initiatives.

Ensure you tailor your content to reflect the specific purpose of your pitch and the audience. Check before how much time you have for the pitch - use the time but don’t overrun. Encourage questions - don’t be defensive, if you don’t know the answer say so and offer to find out. Take every opportunity to practice making a pitch. Try and enjoy the process - it’s an amazing opportunity!

It's not only knowing your audience, it's also knowing how to talk to them. I always look at messaging, see what gets the best traction. So how do you effectively explain how your product or service fix their pain.

Target Their Needs: What problems do they need to be solved? Align your pitch to address those directly. Speak Their Language: Use industry terms and jargon they understand, avoiding confusing them. Consider Decision-Makers: Are you pitching to the final authority or an influencer within the company? Anticipate Concerns: By knowing their challenges, you can proactively address potential objections.

The whole essence of pitching is to understand the customer's pain and how your solution resolves it. Spending time on pushing YOUR business is negative and will potentially leave you in a place where you face having to answer objections as you may have missed the customer's issue. Pitching your business is NOT about you!

Clearly define the problem or pain point that your target audience is facing. This could be a specific challenge, inefficiency, or unmet need within their industry or workflow. Provide context and evidence to support the existence and significance of the problem.

The Problem: Clearly state the specific issue(s) your target audience faces. Quantify it if possible (lost time, revenue, etc.) Your Solution: Explain how you directly address the problem. Don't just list features, focus on the benefit to them. Unique Value: What makes your solution stand out from competitors? Is it faster, cheaper, more innovative? Proof: Use brief examples, customer stories, or data to demonstrate your solution actually works.

Conduct thorough market research to understand the needs, preferences, and behaviours of your target audience. Utilize surveys, interviews, focus groups, and secondary research to gather insights into market demand, trends, and competitive landscape.

Market Need: Don't assume a problem exists. Use data (surveys, industry reports) to prove potential customers want your solution. Customer Satisfaction: Metrics like retention rates, repeat purchases, or NPS scores demonstrate value. Testing & Iteration: Show that you've tested features, pricing, etc., and can adapt based on feedback. Data-Driven Decisions: Numbers show you track your progress and are accountable for results. Why This Matters Validation builds trust by: Minimizing Risk: Investors/buyers want proof, not just enthusiasm. Demonstrating Savvy: Shows you're analytical, not just blindly passionate about your idea. Highlighting Adaptability: You can pivot based on real-world feedback, not stubbornness.

Introduce key members of your team and highlight their expertise, relevant experience, and passion for the project. Emphasize how each team member's skills and background contribute to the success of the venture. Showcase your customer base, including notable clients, partnerships, or early adopters. Highlight testimonials or quotes from satisfied customers that endorse your product or service.

Team: Briefly spotlight key members' relevant experience. This demonstrates you have the right people to execute. Passion Matters: Don't just list credentials, convey a shared belief in your mission. Early Wins: Sales numbers, user growth, notable partnerships – all build momentum and credibility. Visuals Help: Client logos, brief testimonials, or growth charts make this tangible. Why This Matters: Have the Skills: Ideas are great, but a strong team gets things DONE. Understand Your Market: Traction shows you're not operating in a vacuum. Are Invested: Early success demonstrates commitment, reducing investor/buyer risk.

In my experience it's vital to have a sales structure in place. Make sure you have a relevant pipeline setup with steps that guide your organisation and prospective buyers through the process. This will help you and your team stay on track working your leads and prospects and it will help you do expectation management efficiently, improving the customer journey.