How to Incorporate Traction
Talking about Traction
When it comes to pitching your business to investors, having a solid understanding of your sales traction is essential. Sales traction is a measure of your business's ability to generate revenue and acquire customers over time. By incorporating your sales traction into your pitch, you can show investors that your business has a proven track record of success and is poised for growth.
Why Sales Traction Matters in Your Pitch
Investors are looking for businesses that have the potential for high growth and profitability. When you have sales traction, you can demonstrate that your business has a product or service that customers want and are willing to pay for. This is a powerful message that can help you stand out from other businesses that are still struggling to gain traction in the market.
If I were pitching this company to investors, these numbers would be on the second slide in the deck, and I’d be shouting about it very loudly indeed
Everyone knows to put graphs and charts in a presentation but knowing what to highlight is especially important. As highlighted in one of Pitch Deck Teardown by TechCrunch, “If I were pitching this company to investors, these numbers would be on the second slide in the deck, and I’d be shouting about it very loudly indeed”. This came after highlighting the impressive growth numbers was not given enough attention. I concur because I believe in persuasion not informing. I feel that showing the growth rates is also a way of explaining the potential ROI instead of a slide that goes “Bam! ROI at X!” Personally, instead of prompting your investors to question you to prove to them and you start justifying the numbers after, why not use the numbers as a way to lead to the ROI?
Poised for Growth
Pitching about traction can be further enhanced if you explain how your business is poised for growth through other important information such as adoption rate, changes in political, economical, societal, technological, legislative, and environmental factors that will fuel demand to your business/solution. Followed by how the funds will be used to feed that demand in the near term benefitting your investors along the growth story. One thing that I would personally avoid is going into too much or dense information about the data or traction (i.e. going through your stats, too much details about how you get to these numbers or even the whole equation on your presentation.
To sum up, it is good to have traction and just remember to put all of these factors together in a compelling story to conveying why your business is poised for growth and attracting the resources you need to take it to the next level.