5 tips for your next business pitch

5 tips for your next business pitch

From trying too hard to over-impress to not trying to impress at all, it is sad – almost shameful indeed – that many intending entrepreneurs have no idea what it takes to properly pitch business ideas to an intending investor.

I got to know that an investor recently offered, via his social media handle, to invest 40 million nairas in various small businesses and asked his followers to send their business pitches to him. Trust me, you don’t want to see the quality of business pitches he received.

It occurred to me then that these youths could do with a little help on what a business pitch should look like. I mean, you don’t need to attend a business school to be able to pitch. I think of it as the one-minute debates we used to have back in schools where you were trying to convince the audience to agree with your point of view, in a 1-minute presentation.

I have done a live session on LinkedIn recently on how to pitch, so if you are an entrepreneur, you can also go take a look. In the meantime, I want to share a few tips you can keep in mind when next you want to do a business pitch.

Tell your business story

Every business idea or startup idea has a story behind it. For Ola Orekunrin Brown of Flying Doctors Nigeria, her business idea could be traced to the point she lost her sister because there was no available aircraft to transport her to where quality medical service was available.

For Piggyvest, it was the story of how a woman saved N1,000 every day of the year in her local piggybank, and only had N365,000 at the end of the year. No rewards or interest in developing and maintaining a savings culture.

I can go on and on, but I will stop here. Every business idea was inspired by an experience, the need to solve a problem, or a personal burden to make life easier for others. Ensure to tell your own story in your pitch.

Know your numbers

It is okay that you are out to solve a problem and you have beautifully narrated the story behind it. But how does this translate into profit? Unless you want to start a non-profit organization, there has to be a way your product or services will bring in money to sustain the business.

Knowing your numbers means that you should be able to tell a potential investor that every N100,000 invested in production or service delivery, will deliver about N30,000 in profits every month for the first 5 months, and N50,000 in profits for 7 months after.

Do you remember our earlier article on feasibility study? it will definitely come in handy here.

Know your USP

I have earlier published an article on competitive advantage (aka USP) so I need not dive much into this. You can read up more in my previous article. It is important that you know, and also tell the investor what you will be offering that is different from what is available in the market already. Tell the investor why you think you are in the best position to solve the problem and customers will be willing to pay for the solution you are bringing to the table.

Timing is key

It always feels like there is so much to say, but you must try to dish out this information as aptly and in the shortest time possible. Keep it Short and Simple (KISS). For practice purposes, try capturing all of this information in 60 seconds or less.

If you start right, you will get the investor’s attention but you must conclude before it gets too long and begins to bore your listeners. Remember what they say about taking a bow when the ovation is loudest?

Demonstrate some business acumen

While you want your listeners / potential investors to know that you are professional in the field where you want to solve a problem, you also need them to see that you possess business acumen. Why? You may need to be a professional to solve a problem in a field, but you need business acumen to make a successful business out of it. Business acumen is a whole discussion all by itself, so watch out for it.

My advice: Watch any of the Dragons Den series you can lay hands-on and see practical pitches so that you can learn from the successful pitches and also see what the other guys did wrong. I will be waiting in the comment section to know what you think and other tips you may have for intending entrepreneurs.

Questions are welcome too.