7 PITCH DECK SECRETS: Why you should take your deck seriously

An Investor looks at 100s if not 1000s of Pitch Decks. They spend on average four minutes on each deck.

Most of time investors will read your deck without you there.

Why take it seriously? Why is it critically important to make your best first impression?

Bottom Line: Because a Great Pitch Deck will make or break your ability to raise capital.

There is no faster or cheaper way to explain your business idea than to create a compelling, professional pitch deck.

The Pitch Deck can attract a potential investors’ attention long enough to explain what your idea does and why it’s a good investment.

That is all you are trying to do, get the investors attention, long enough to show them how your product or service will make the investors money.

If they don’t see a way to make money from your Pitch, they will not call, they will not set up a face to face meeting...they will not invest.

Here are 7 Secrets I learned raising money for my companies, and my clients....

#1: KEEP IT SIMPLE (and SHORT) STUPID

Investors are Drawn to the Projects they can UNDERSTAND the Fastest.

That means solve one problem at a time.   

Entrepreneurs that try to solve 2-3 problems underestimate the time and money it is going to take to execute on the plan. 

#2: FOCUS ON YOUR ADVANTAGE

What is your secret sauce that drives your success?

Cost, Brand, Technology, Service, How are you different?  

The best investor pitch decks focus relentlessly on their unique advantage.

Demonstrate how your advantage is used to leverage the business’s success

Do you have a value ladder profitable funnel? ...where your competitors only sell one product?

Do you know how to drive profitability in a dispensary?

Do you have the first mover advantage?

Successful companies leverage competitive advantages in the marketplace to achieve high levels of performance.

Take a look at GreenBroz Value Ladder...

#3: BE CONSISTENT AND FOCUS ON BEING CRYSTAL CLEAR

Sight is our fastest sense. Good design communicates your story more easily and effectively. Graphics, design and consistency. Don’t let amateur design work drag you down

Take your pitch deck seriously. Make a great first impression. Spend time with it or outsource it to someone that has created pitch decks and that have raised money. 

Like a movie trailer that puts people in seats, a pitch deck can make a break investor interest.

Give the investor reason to keep looking at your deck - Send crap and they will delete the email.

#4 TELL A STORY TO CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

Tell a story. Stories connect people. 

Tell an exciting story about how you started, where the idea came from. How you overcame an insurmountable obstacle.  

Telling a Pitch Deck story is like a writing MOVIE SCRIPT...With a hero and villain.

Where You are the hero and Status Quo or Competitor is the villain.

The hero’s journey involves a protagonist who goes on an adventure, meets a mentor, meets his enemy, wins a decisive victory after a crisis, and then returns home transformed.

If that structure sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve undoubtedly heard it a thousand times before. From Beowulf to Star Wars, the hero’s journey seems to resonate deeply with the human psyche and transcends time and culture. Incorporating the Hero's Journey into your deck makes an otherwise boring story seem interesting and helps people to connect with our mission on a deeper level.

The hero’s journey framework makes things personal, relatable, and interesting.

Telling stories connect people. Stories are how people remember who you are.

#5. IDENTIFY OR RELATE TO A TRUE PAIN

Pain comes in many flavors: my computer network keeps crashing; my accounts receivable cycle is too long; existing treatments for a medical condition are ineffective; my tax returns are too hard to prepare. Harvesting is still mostly done by hand. 90% of all sales are made at the budtender... 

You are in business to get paid for making big pains go away.

Change or Pain is synonymous with market opportunity. The greater the Change or Pain, the more widespread the pain, and the better your product is at alleviating the Change or Pain, the greater your market potential - the greater the investor interest.

A great pitch deck places your solution firmly in the context of the pain being solved.

Here is the Big Pain with cannabis harvesting..

#6. KNOW YOUR F’ING NUMBERS

Sales, Cost of Goods, Cost to Acquire a customer, Gross margin and Profit margin.

Know your numbers better than anyone else.

Your financials should be constructed from the bottom-up, and then validated from the top-down.

A bottom-up model starts with details such as when you expect to make certain sales, cost of sales, can cost of sales be brought down and can it scale.

Top-down validation means that you examine your overall market potential and compare that to the bottom-up revenue projections. Ever watch an entrepreneur on Shark Tank say, “The market is worth $1 Trillion, are going to sell to 5% of that market”. Don’t do that - you will immediately show you novice card….and laughed at. Investors are smart and aggressive.

Projecting a “hockey stick” is not believable.

Develop realistic assumptions that you can support - that you can prove and defend. Refrain from using the words “conservative” or “aggressive” in your plan.

Investors want a return - financial forecasts are a litmus test of your understanding of how investors think. 

#7. TO SELL THE INVESTMENT, YOU NEED EVIDENCE

Even if you’ve laid out the story perfectly and even if your product changes the world, investors will still be skeptical because Investors are selfish.  They are investing their own money or someone else's. All investors follow 2 Rules; Rule #1 with Investors is don't lose money, Rule #2 is don't forget Rule #1.

Your job is to present evidence that you can turn $1 to $10 by: 

Demonstrating how your background and unique experience makes you a safe investment.

Or

How your current sales and profits and how your forecasts will translate into big rewards for investors.

(ideally you have both of these characteristics)

The investor is primarily thinking about their own risk and reward. Your Team and Financial slide will provide evidence that will mitigate the risks.

Take a look at IONIC Brands Inc super team...

Conclusion

Every detail you explain in your pitch deck should be tied to how the investors will make money. Focusing on these 7 Secrets shows investors that you’re serious.

About Jon Stoddard

I help entrepreneurs raise capital. The first step is to tell a compelling story. Like a trailer for a movie, a great trailer will get movie goers in seats, your story will make or break your ability to raise capital. If the entrepreneur has a great story, we help the entrepreneur raise capital through Investor Advisory Services such as: Investor Introductions, Asset Lending, Equity Investments, General Solicitation, Crowdfunding, Small Cap Shareholder Stock Growth, Customer Value Optimization Funnels, CashFlow Strategies and Mergers & Acquisitions.

To learn more or get in touch, visit: www.PitchDeckSecrets.com or www.BigSkyInvestorGroup.com