By: Sarah Roche
Last week was a busy one. I saw a lot of pitches; from Sandbox teams to Startfast teams to high school students’ pitching their ideas for businesses based on 3D printing technology. I love watching pitches, but more than that I love fixing pitches. When you have been working so hard on your business it can be really difficult to make sure you are communicating the information your audience wants. In fact, it’s something Platypus TV is always trying to perfect.
In everyday life, pitching is one of those skills where you rarely have the opportunity to get really good at. In startup life, it is one of your main tasks. Just getting into the Syracuse University Entrepreneurship ecosystem can give you enough exposure to pitching to make you good at it. With IDEA Juicers, RvD Awards, and telling others about your business you have a number of opportunities to get better and better at communicating what needs to be said.
Even if you don’t continue with your business or you find a career passion elsewhere, being able to effectively pitch your ideas and yourself can drastically improve how you are perceived by others. I’ve seen many people who can pitch confidently and effectively who are able to get pretty far because they can sell people on themselves and their idea. I’ve also seen incredible ideas struggle to stay alive because the founders aren’t successful at communicating to others what they do.
That may be one of the main reasons that I enjoy watching pitches so much. Not only do I get to see what about your idea you think is most important for me to know, but by seeing how so many other’s present themselves and their business, I can always pick up tips on how to better present my own pitch. Since I’m fresh off of watching all these pitches and the Sandbox Demo Day and Startfast Demo Day are coming up, I thought I would share some tips.
Design Matters
It really does. Not as much as the content and delivery, but a significant amount. Your fonts need to match. Your colors should look good when projected on a screen. Images need to be simple and clear. It seems like this is obvious, and to all the other people pitching around you, it is. Because design standards are now commonplace poor design is very noticeable, especially when compared to the pitches around you. You don’t have to have a designer on your team to make a good looking pitch. Keep it simple. Bear in mind that Prezi, although it can be very pretty, can make people prone to motion sickness unable to watch your pitch. Yeah, really. That, and it crashes constantly. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your design is if it can’t play on the random laptop that is displaying your pitch.
Look Like You Love It
If you hate being up there it is painful for your audience to watch you. A good number of people in your audience are also incredibly intimidated by public speaking, so they are stuck feeling bad for you, while the ones that don’t mind speaking in front of a crowd are wondering why you won’t just stand up straight and enunciate. Your audience usually doesn’t expect you to be perfect, and they can be very forgiving, but you have to show some passion for your idea. If you can’t muster up looking like you like talking about it, then why should any of us care?
Practice
I actually am of the opinion that if you haven’t run through your pitch until you are comfortable with it, you are doing your audience a disservice. I love watching pitches, but most people don’t. You have people taking time out of their lives and their own projects to learn about what you are doing. This is not a time for a first run through, this is not a time to experiment. No one in the audience wants to hear excuses or apologies, especially when it is obvious that a bit of practice would have solved the problem. Not being prepared doesn’t show that you have been working non-stop on your idea, it shows that you don’t value the time of those around you.
Smile and Say Thank You
This lets people know your pitch is over and helps to curb the adrenaline rush you have just experienced by giving your pitch. And no matter how bad or well it went, throw a smile on your face. It will relax you and the viewers.
Every single pitch is different and each team’s content is so specific to them that it takes individual analysis to decide what needs to be in your deck and how you communicate it. These three tips are really low hanging fruit. If you can’t get these right it will be the first advice you are given and what those who are offering feedback are noticing. That means they aren’t noticing if your content doesn’t match your audience. You need to make sure you are solid on these three tips before you can start getting better feedback.
Do you have any pitching tips? Tell us in the comments!
