How to prepare for a great pitch

Engen’s Pitch & Polish project creator and Raizcorp CEO Allon Raiz shared tips on how to prepare for a good pitch.

The project is a free entrepreneurship workshop and competition, sponsored by Engen, Nedbank, Raizcorp and Caxton Local Media.

“While a lot has been written about presenting a pitch, there is little information about how to prepare one,” said Raiz.

Below are key factors to consider before preparing your pitch:

Who is the audience?

Understand who you are pitching to.

Pitching to a group of varsity students and pitching to seasoned bankers has to be different. The tone, content and focus of your pitch would be different for these two audiences.

Good questions to ask yourself are what are the audiences’ values and what is important to them?

Do as much research as possible in order to understand who your target audience will be.

The structure of the pitch

A good pitch needs to tell a story, starting with the problem and how it affects your potential market.

Then move on to your solution and how your solution solves the problem at a profit.

Talk about why your organisation has the ability, as well as the credibility, to deliver the solution.

Entrepreneurs make the mistake of talking only about the product, its features and offering a puffed-up version of their own credibility.

The pitch versus the clarifying questions

The pitch and clarifying questions are not the same.

The trick is working out what to put in your pitch and what the likely clarifying questions will be.

If you can create enough of a tease in your pitch, you can almost solicit the questions you would like to answer in more depth afterwards.

For example, by mentioning one of the three most important unique points of your pitch due to lack of time, you will prompt the curious investor to ask for clarity on the other two.

Headline financials with detailed understanding

Only mention the main headlines.

Expect investors to ask for the details behind the headlines during their clarifying questions.

You need to ensure that these details are ready to roll off your tongue with a sense of confidence and humility.

Prep the skeleton

Prepare a broad skeleton of your pitch with a strong sense of your timing rather than the verbatim words you’ll be using.

A great example of this is how Steve Jobs pitched a new Apple product with the phrase, “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

He would have used this phrase deliberately, having prepared it in advance, but would not have predetermined every single word of his pitch.

For more information visit www.pitchandpolish.com.