Perfecting your Start-Up Pitch

Perfecting your Start-Up Pitch

Your start-up pitch is a big deal for your organisation. It gives you an opportunity to make a positive first impression, and explain your company to a potential investor or customer. Start-up pitches are successful when there is excellent pitch presentation, a clear use of data and when the presenter is personable and uses appropriate body language. There are useful pitch tips that the professionals use and this blog will explain.

Research

In your start-up pitch, you need to ensure that you’ve done proper research on your audience. For example-what do your audience know about you at the start? What do you want them to know afterwards? Have you gathered all of the data needed to support your pitch or presentation? Can you answer any questions in a personable and persuasive way-or will your body language betray you because you are saying it for the first time?

Timing

A good pitch tip on timing is to understand that an audience will only engage with you early on if there is something in it for them. Does your start-up solve a problem that a customer may have? Does it offer a benefit? You need to get this point across early on in your presentation by making it clear what the audience can expect. Another pitch tip is that if you flood your audience with too much data, such as lists, they will tune out. Offer one or two well practiced examples that you can deliver in a personable way-tell the story as you would to one person.

Tell a Story

Audiences love stories. Tell them a good story and they can then tell your story again to another audience afterwards. Stories can convey data in an understandable way. Make your audience part of the story. A good pitch tip is to get an audience to imagine an idea or a concept-then tell a story to make it real. If you are practised at telling a story, you will be more personable and be able to use body language to better effect.

Presentation Tips

For your start-up pitch, think about your audience and what you want them to remember or do after the pitch. Have gathered and researched all of the data that you will need to persuade that audience. Practice out loud-a good pitch tip is to say it out loud several times until you are comfortable with what you are saying. Then make sure that your body language and eye contact emphasises what you want to highlight in the pitch. Your presentation skills, and your ability to deliver an effective start-up pitch will improve.