The Secret Behind High Quality Pitches

(3 minute read)

Improving your Pitch Performance

Pitching has become one of the main means for startups to present their ventures to a broad audience. However, many startups still perform poorly on stage. So why? And how? And most of all, how can their performance be improved?

This article shows my secret sauce. It explains the two fundamentals I've been using throughout my most successful pitches, and inlcudes a 5-step methodology that has been used by over 350 successful startups to promote their ideas.

Problems with most Common Pitches

 As an entrepreneur I have pitched on many of the larger stages in Europe. But as an accelerator designer and program manager, I found it hard to support my startups in their pitch preparations. I found that they mostly use the same approach that will NOT make pitches appealing. They:

• use prefixed deck templates defining the contents and story line.
• start by designing slide deck slide number one instead of designing a core message.
• use the same pitch any- and everywhere instead of tailoring to the audience.
• get coaching focused on occassional appearance instead of based on fundamentals.

On the internet you will find dozens of posts like “these 10 slides were used by xyz to raise their seed round”. Although such examples offer valuable insights, their concepts can’t be copied to any given startup in its specific situation. Additionally, starting your own deck by opening powerpoint and designing slide 1, and then improving your way until you meet the time limit will not make your pitch authentic and appealing. Not even if you use external coaching. And finally, different audiences will need different stories, so using the same pitch everywhere will not be effective.

 My thoughts on this topic let me to some baisc questions:

• How can startups use a structured approach to develop a pitch?
• How can this approach ensure they perform authentic and effective on every occasion?
• How can this approach enable modular deisgn to tailor a pitch to any audience?
• How can startups coach themselves, to find the incremental improvements they should be able to discover themselves without coaching?

Two Fundamentals of any Pitch

Be authentic

The first acknowledgment was that authentic pitches are mostly the best ones. So what does a pitch need to be authentic? Well, pitches mostly seem out of place or off topic if the Story that is told and the visuals presented do not meet the occasion they are told or presented on. Slightly more abstract this means, if the accoustics and visuals do not meet the environment, a pitch will seem unauthentic, sometimes even akward.

Sell your "Why"

The secondly, any pitch needs a “why”. As @simonsinek taught us, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. Therefore, a Pitch must include some reasoning between the startup’s team and the problem they solve. Such reasoning will make the story even more authentic as well. So it’s NOT just all about the slide deck.

Five Phases of any Pitch

After analysing thousands of pitches on occassions across the globe any successful pitch consists of a set of messages. They compine to a storyline if each message is designed properly. Mostly this set of messages covers 5 basic concerns of any audience.These concerns might appear unconsciously, however in my experience the audience' attention definitely wanders off if these concerns are not met. One after the other an audience tries to answer these questions:

• Who are you? Are you OK? Do I like you? Can I like you?
• Why are you here? What are you doing here? How do you concern me? 
• What is in it for me? How does this help my current situation?
• How do I know you will help me? How do I know this is true? Can I trust you?
• What do you want from me? What is it you need me to do? How can I gain access?

Based on the above I have designed a theoretical framework offering strategies for each of these five concerns. Therefore each concern is covered in one of 5 stages within a typical design of a startup pitch.These stages each have a different purpose. They serve the unconscious concerns of an audience during your pitch. So each of the following stages contains a message to serve the relevant concerns:

• Impression: the first impression you make; are you likable?
• Relevance: your relevance to your target audience.
• Benefit: the gain your target audience gets through you.
• Trust: why they can and should trust you.
• Contribution: the contribution you require.

The Toolbox

To cover each stage properly, I have designed a toolbox. The toolbox contains tools to develop a strategy to design a message for each stage of the framework. It helps to influence the first impression you make and contains methods to show relevance to your audience. It shows you how to communicate your benefit to the specific audience you choose to address, and teaches how to build trust in seconds. And finally, a set of tools is used to make your audience contribute to your startups goals. 

I had the chance to test the framework with over 350 startups. Some of these used this framework to develop award winning performances on stages across the world. Amongst those are television and video broadcast shows like #2minuten2millionen, #h?hlederl?wen, or #xcite. Additionally pitches based on the methodology where seen on stages at #websummit, #tnw, #wolvesummit and #4gamechangers. and finally, some startups using the framework where picked by well know accelerators like #500startups, #ycombinator and #plugnplay.

If you need any more information, or want to get to know the strategies for each stage, just send me a personal message or leave me a comment.

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