GIST
Forget, “I think. Therefore I am,” For entrepreneurs, the operative phrase is “I pitch. Therefore I am.” Pitching isn’t only for raising cash—it’s for achieving agreement, and agreement can yield many good results, including sales, partnerships, and new recruitment.
Question: How on earth can you know if a businessman is pitching?
Answer: Look in his eyes!! Everything would be clear.
By this discussion, you’ll learn how to pitch your entrepreneurship and product in way shorter, easier, and more attractive, and efficient ways.
Remain attentive——Always!!
Yes!! If you find zero projectors available when you go for a meeting, it’s your fault. If your laptop and the projector don’t work side by side, That’s your mistake!! You cannot blame someone else for the mistakes and carelessness you project. If the projector bulb fuses out in the middle of your pitch, it’s your fault again. If you seemed dull, confused, seem disorganized, and lose interest, it’s your fault once again. Are you seeing a pattern?
It is complicated to hold it together from a bad start, so get there before someone else would and set the stage for good. Bring your own projector for your benefit. Always Bring two laptops updated with your presentation. Bring two VGA adapters. Bring a copy of your presentation on a USB drive. It would be best, classic, and handy to bring printouts of your presentation if nothing works.
DO IT YOURSELF—SET THE STAGE
When the meeting starts, you should set the stage for the rest of the pitch. The thing to ask is, “How much of your time do I have?” This question shows that you respect the value of the audience’s time by not running over your limit. It also makes the audience commit to a minimum allotment of time. If you set the stage so that everyone has the exact expectations, you’re a pro in the game.
Then you ask, “What are the most important pieces of information that I can provide?” You do your homework and firstly, find out that they know in advance or believe in something that you were going to try to communicate, so you can skip that. And you may find out that you can’t cut something that you thought was understood.
Finally, you declare, “May I urgently go through my presentation and hand over questions at the end?” You’re trying to make the audience commit to not disturb you so that your pitch can flow smoothly.
You should have gotten this information before the meeting from your sponsor, but getting these answers should take about five minutes, and if you set the stage so that everyone has the exact expectations, you’re simply a pro in what you do.
Make Yourself clear in the Sixth Minute.
I’ve never sat through a pitch and wanted that the speaker had spent the first fifteen minutes gushing about her life story and then another fifteen minutes giving me the complete account of every team member in the conference or meeting.
Sadly, many entrepreneurs believe that a pitch is a narrative whose opening chapter must always be autobiographical. These personal tales are supposed to convince the audience that this is a great company or group. Meanwhile, everyone is wondering, What does this agency do? To use an aviation analogy, the presentation feels like a 747 rumbling along for two miles. Instead, you should emulate an F 18 catapulting off a three-hundred-foot aircraft carrier deck.
By no later than the sixth minute of your presentation, you should thoroughly elaborate on what your entrepreneurship does. (Remember that the first five minutes are to get answers to the three questions mentioned above.) Once everyone present in the meeting has learned what you do, they can quietly listen to the rest of your pitch and focused minds.
Don’t go mad with statements along the lines of “patent-pending, curve-jumping, enterprise-class, scalable, revolutionary, first-mover advantage, paradigm-shifting, customer-focused solutions.” Use three- to five-word statements like these instead:
“We sell software.”
“We sell hardware.”
“We teach underprivileged kids.”
“We prevent child abuse.”