The goal of any pitch is to open the door to a future conversations or opportunities. In order to ensure that you get your message across concisely, accurately and in a timely manner on UberPITCH day, you should follow these four steps of a winning pitch.
STEP 1: “Short, Sharp and Shiny”
The first 60 seconds of your pitch is all about explaining who you are and what you do in a way anyone could understand it.
You need to tailor your pitch to your audience. But the goal here is to introduce yourself and what your business does in plain language.
As you only have a small amount of time to make an impression, this is where you should use the common pitch using sound bites such as:
- “I’m Bianka and I run sales for xx the worlds first…. x”
- “We are the xx for xx industry..”
- “I’m Bella, I work for x, we help small businesses make more sales
STEP 2: “Compel not sell”
The second step is about how you uniquely address a pain point, your unique visions with the objective to create curiosity for the target.
The objective is to make your business feel big and to entice your audience to want to hear the full story. Depending on your audience you might like to choose between step 2a or 2b or decide to deliver both.
On Step 2a of the pitch you should give some key data points that support the claim you have made in Level 1.
- “We have a proven method to solve (pain)…”
- “Our proprietary matching system guarantees you an expert sales person in three clicks…”
- “We specialise in..”
- “We are recognised as the leading…”
On Step 2b you would reveal more about the vision or customer pain points on mass scale to wow the target that this is a big problem with money attached to i. Data points are highly important.
- “90% of small businesses say that they don’t have enough leads, leading to a loss in sales of $xbillion a year for small business”
- “85% of small businesses say that they lose sleep in finding a qualified sales person”
- “Our big vision is to support…”
- “We believe all SME’s should have access to a first class sales person”
STEP 3: “Relate and Reassure”
Step 3 is about your solution, your industry traction or customer proof. It’s important for you to create a win win solution that absolutely zero’s in on the main pain for your target audience.
On Step 3a you are looking to provide the solutions to the pain points you have raised above as well as potentially addressing the target market.
- “Our solution will have you source an expert sales person in three clicks and for less than a cost of a cup of coffee per hour”
- “We match SME’s and qualified sales people in three clicks. We have more than 80% of freelance sales people on our platform”
Step 3b of the pitch is about reassuring your audience. This is where you might talk about your risk management or operational side of things within your business. Be careful not to oversell here, you still want to leave them wanting more!
- “When you call our customer service line you speak to a real person in three rings”
- “Our online chat is powered by people who are your single point of contact ”
- “You are appointed an Account Manager who will listen to your brief and..
STEP 4: “The Clincher”
Step 4 is about your ask and the recommended next steps, your pitch is leading up to get a yes for both of those.
This comes after you have sold the audience on the idea or concept and they are ready to hear the full story. This is likely to be in the form of a future meeting for a longer pitch. You need to be clear about the outcome you want before you begin your pitch.
- “ We’d like to ”
- “This looks like (immediate value you can bring)”
- “In our next meeting I will share valuable insights to… How does next Thursday or Friday suit”
Posted by Andy