When it comes to business pitches, everyone’s a critic, but there’s a formula to help entrepreneurs grab an investor’s attention—and hold it.
The word concise may not be a word that frequents your daily conversations, but it is certainly a tactic you often use.
When you do not have much time to explain something important, you must find an effective way to get your point across quickly and clearly.
Many businesses practice a workplace principle called “Keep It Simple, Silly” (K.I.S.S.).
Business owners, executives, and industry leaders do not have an incredible amount of time to do anything, especially listen to a new pitch.
This principle is a guiding policy, often unwritten but certainly fully practiced. Based on these principles, businesses drafted emails and responses.
Corporate communications, departmental meetings, leadership meetings, and the like are all conducted with this unwritten yet powerful principle as a guide.
Likewise, your pitches should follow this formula in spirit – keep it simple.
Pitches are not a report of detailed scientific findings. They are commercials designed to provoke the viewer or listener to want more.
Pitches are a leading force in obtaining the meeting you desire for your business idea.
Whether verbal or written, pitches need to be concise, with concise explanations:
- Social media profiles
- Government application
- Loan applications
- Email responses
- Press releases
- Video releases
These are a few places where a concise explanation is vital.
While your teamwork feverishly solves complex problems, people outside of your business could care less.
K.I.S.S. is easy to implement when the big idea governs the communication.
The big idea is the reason you started this business and identifies the following as relative to your business:
- The Problem
- The Potential
- The Proposed Solution
- The Profit
These are the areas that cause a pitch to work wonders. Remember, the goal of your business pitch is not to answer all of the questions.
The purpose of the pitch is to create intriguing questions, which demand more time to respond. Thus, the meeting you seek becomes a reality.
The K.I.S.S. principle is so influential that organizations create mottos, which encapsulate their existence in five words or less.
Printed slogans typically appear on everything associated with the business, even business cards. Your verbal and written pitches begin and end with these mottos.
They are K.I.S.S. in action, capturing the organization’s purpose in five words or less.
LEVERAGING THE WRITTEN SUMMARY
When writing a summary, even an executive summary, your business plan should be user-friendly for continued use in the marketplace.
This summary is to be leveraged, spread in various places to generate interest and provide a high-level explanation of your business.
To create this user-friendly K.I.S.S. styled summary, answer the following questions in one sentence only. This sentence is not lengthy but a concise explanation.
STEPS TO CONSIDER WHEN USING THE K.I.S.S. CONCEPT
- Use as few adjectives (descriptors) as possible. The idea is to say more with less. If you can write or say something in four words, why use ten?
- Make sure your word choice is indicative of the industry in which your business operates. These words will say much more than words outside of the industry, which will require further explanation. Industry diction enables you to answer with one sentence. If you think you need two sentences, you’re not using proper word choice.
- Be direct and creative, but above all, K.I.S.S.
The key to your summary is to be compelling more than comprehensive. Now, get started with drafting responses to these questions:
- Identify the Problem:
- Description: What is the problem you seek to solve?
- Pain: Is there a surmounting inconvenience, cost, or disadvantage?
- Key trend: What trend will your business ride to profit?
2. Engage the Solution:
- U.S.P.: What is your product’s unique selling proposition?
- Benefits: How do users of your product/service win?
- Traction: Do you have data showing consumers are enjoying your product/service?
3. Market the Concept:
- Target: Who is your audience?
- Size: How many people need your product/service, and where do they live?
- Advantages: By using another option, what do consumers miss?
4. Describe Your Business Model:
- Go to market: What’s your distribution strategy?
- Revenue model: What’s the transaction plan?
- Milestones: What will success look like for your product and organization?
Your summary should be approximately four paragraphs or a three sections conclusion. Either way, you want no more than 100 to 125 words per paragraph. If this is a challenge, then:
- Remove sentences that are least relevant to the reader
- Always lead with the problem – the big idea
A summary is for the audience. For instance, if you need a simple business summary (30 words or less) that could be videoed and or delivered in one minute or less, focus on:
- Pain
- Unique Selling Proposition
- Benefit
A summary for potential investors (50 words or less) should include:
- Description
- Pain
- Traction
- Unique Selling Proposition
- Next milestones
PITCH MASTERS ACADEMY TRAINING IS LAUNCHING NEW BUSINESSES SUCCESSFULLY
Remember, investors, business executives, and leaders are on a time crunch. They have no time to speak with you, let alone hold an extensive conversation about your business.
Therefore, practice K.I.S.S.
It will comport nicely with how many companies function, and it is a respectful way to intrude on others without derailing their agenda.
Use the K.I.S.S. principle to land the meeting you need to advance your business.
Helpful Tips in Writing and Verbal Articulation
The key to writing or verbally articulating your business is to understand to whom you address. In other words, know thy audience. You must understand what is important to those you are addressing. Pitch your business in a way that addresses the requirements of the audience.
DESCRIBE THE DETAILS OF YOUR SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
Describe your business’ product/service in terms of its effect on the market and the core problem that its creation addresses – this is the big idea.
You want to make sure you write or speak about your product in terms that make its problem-solving capability easy to understand.
Make sure customers can articulate your product as well as an employee – this results in customer retention.
Customers will feel as if they have a stake in your business and its success.
For example, customer retention of products such as Coke and Nike. Customers of Coke products only drink Coca-Cola products because “Coke is it!”
The retention among Coke drinkers is a serious commitment on their part. Nike wearers are no different. They will tell you, “Just Do It!”
They take action in their lives, and their footwear is a part of their ethos.
What does this mean? Customers who can echo a company’s motto without reservation do not purchase an alternative.
This type of loyalty comes when customers genuinely understand your product or service.
The big idea affects their lives, and your product or service alleviates that. The motto comes as a statement of truth for the consumer.
Therefore, make sure you describe the product so that users can understand and easily articulate it.
Make your business description simple to understand and easy to communicate.
COMMUNICATING TO BANKERS AND INVESTORS
Bankers and investors require a different approach. Focus your description on the investment’s financial benefit.
Be sure to convey your business model and its efficiencies. Efficiencies have a direct result on the bottom line.
Discuss margins, especially between the cost of goods sold and labor – this is the language investors, and bankers want to hear clearly.
However, do not get stuck in the details of the financials – K.I.S.S.
You may need to include proprietary production processes or confidential information. Be sure it is adequately protected.
Make sure you have patents filed, copyrights filed, and even a non-disclosure document for these folks to sign.
This level of seriousness about your process and information will communicate your worth even more. Even in this – K.I.S.S.
PARTNERING WITH OTHER BUSINESSES
Market partners can be tricky. Can your partner become a competitor? Can a partner provide synthesis? The answers to these questions will guide whom to partner with and when.
The answers may also direct you away from the partnership.
If a partnership is safe and exponential, proceed in carefully connecting processes with your manufacturing or service process.
Make sure you create seamless initiation and ongoing operation. Alos, make sure your partner knows how to articulate your product or service.
They must embrace your big idea.
GET CONNECTED WITH PITCH MASTER ACADEMY
The Pitch Masters Academy will show you how to communicate a clear, concise, and compassionate pitch.
Compelling pitches follow the K.I.S.S. principle, and the effective pitch will be the most concisely worded message.
Your pitch will communicate a big idea in a few simple, easy-to-understand words.
Remember, the entire goal of a pitch is not to answer all of the questions but to generate questions justifying a later meeting.
Visit www.PitchMastersAcademy.com to learn more about how you can master the skill you need to prepare, present, and perfect your entrepreneurial pitch.