Spend Time on Your Pitch
How much time I would spent on it?
Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln
If I were to say until you get funded, you would probably say “yeah, no S**T Sherlock”. As highlighted in the quote highlighted in the beginning of this newsletter. Preparation should be given focus but not overly done, so how much time is enough? It is a never ending journey because after you’ve pitched your business to find a co-founder, you start pitching for key accounts, collaborations, funding (seed through pre-IPO). As your startup continuously form and evolves, you find yourself constantly improving, updating or changing it. What changes is the frequency of updating your pitch.
“Flawless” Pitch But Not Closing
Some would stop practising or self evaluate when they feel they can repeat their pitch for the millionth time with the same intonation and prompting the prospects to ask questions that the founders are hoping to answer. Alternatively, I would define smoothness of my pitch to the successes of fund raising (in pitching). During my early days as an investment adviser, I was out and about meeting potential investors and was able to perfect my sales pitch but no results (clearly not perfected). Since then I started self evaluating and improve on what I could have said in a better way, pitch in a better flow that led to a close.
Data Needs To Be Updated
As my pitch includes some data points, it needs to be updated frequently because it would show that I am on the ball within my industry. While you don’t have to be reading the same data over and over again until it updates, I would make it a point to find out how often the data has been updated. i.e. if said data is updated annually, setting a fixed period to update is a good start as a reminder. Such information may change the flow of your pitch as some development in the economy may give you the opportunity to frame this as the right time to invest into/use your solution.
How I would evaluate if my pitches are any good is the closing, the results, attaining the objective(s). If you are wondering how to start, you can always start with your co-founder or your team to practice evaluation in addition to the pitch. Evaluate on the reasons they didn’t invest or proceed even if their responses were positive. Ultimately, it comes down to the response (action) of the recipient of the pitch (whether it is sales, funding, or partnering).