How to Successfully Pitch to an Investor

How do you successfully pitch to an investor? The advice generally is to understand:

• Your market!
• What is it you’re providing that market? A key solution? Unique Product?
• Your Unique Selling Point (USP)
• Your business model and revenue streams

The list is not exhaustive as you need to be concise.

But, what makes the perfect investment? What will make you ready to pitch to an investor and secure funding?

You obviously need to stand out! Therefore, understanding three key concepts to successfully pitch your business is crucial.

1. The best sale you will make

You are selling a business. In order to gain investment, you need to package your idea as a product.

When you pitch to an investor, it is a complex process, and potentially the biggest sale as an entity you will likely ever make. Remember, people buy from people. They are investing in you as an individual, as well as the business concept.

Ultimately, investors will be buying into your vision, your team, your commitment to make it work. What is it about you that they will want to buy into? You need to identify the main questions they will ask, and ensure you have those answers.

2. What is the investor bringing to the table?

You need to balance the sale, and understand what it is you want from the deal. What does the investor bring? How will the investor assist in scaling up your business?

• Funding
• Contacts
• Infrastructure
• A skill-set

3. Are you prepared to share your business?

The deal will evolve. Are you prepared to concede on certain management decisions?

You need to know your worth. Be prepared to say no, because the deal has to work for both sides. You need to be prepared to walk away if you do not feel comfortable with the deal.

Preparing for the pitch

By now, you should have already tested your idea out to find out the strength of the market for your product or service. You will have got feedback from friends, family and business experts. So, the next step is to make sure you can clearly explain your business idea.

Preparation is obviously vital. You need to be able to convince your potential investor that your idea is a viable business proposal. Find out as much as you can about the person or organisation you are pitching to and what they will be looking for.

Think about your business idea – can you explain what it is and how it can work in just a couple of sentences? If you can’t then you are not going to be able to pitch it successfully to anyone.

Practice makes perfect, so read, cut back on the waffle to ensure its succinct.

Be ready to answer questions about yourself and your business and prepare questions that you may want answers to beforehand.

Make sure you know your idea thoroughly: understand the strengths of your idea and make sure you are aware of any potential weaknesses.

Now that you've seen our simple, yet effective tips, do you think you will be ready to pitch to an investor?

Roy Butcher specialises in the SME sector and corporate finance. Contact him on roy.butcher@raffingers.co.uk or call him on 020 3146 1607. You can also follow him on LinkedIn.

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