Pitch perfect: Five elements of a great pitch

Photo: Rick Klau

One of the joys of running the Partnerships team at GV is watching entrepreneurs tell their story to potential customers. The best entrepreneurs understand that the pitch is a chance to show the customer that they understand the customer’s challenges and have a solution that will impact the customer’s bottom line. Too often, though, the entrepreneur sees the pitch as a chance to show off how hard they’ve worked, to show how proud they are of a clever solution to a thorny usability challenge.

Recently, the Google Docs team asked if I’d help them build a ‘pitch’ template for Slides — a blueprint that will help entrepreneurs build a presentation when pitching investors or customers. While I’m generally not a fan of one-size-fits-all approaches to what should be thoughtful presentations, I think that the template is a good starting point for building a strong pitch deck. The best pitches tell a story — my pitch template is designed to help you focus on the key elements of your story to build a great pitch:

1. Mission. Why does the company exist? What’s different once the company’s successful? The best mission statements show a sense of purpose, give a clue to the company’s larger ambitions, and help the viewer understand generally how to think about the company they’re about to see. (Note: if your mission statement includes the words ‘leverage’, ‘synergy’, or ‘holistic’, you might just want to skip the mission slide altogether.)
2. Problem. Do you understand the customer’s problem? Prove it. Clearly articulate the problem, and include metrics that quantify the scale of the problem that this customer (and others like them) has. When done well, you’ll see lots of nods around the table, along with gratitude that at last someone understands just how serious this issue is. If you can describe the problem they have, they’re primed to believe that your solution will be compelling.
3. Solution. Now is your chance to talk about your product. The context is the key: while you’re talking about the product, your real focus has to be the customer’s problem. Otherwise you’re just showcasing bells and whistles. Remember the metrics you identified in slide #2 above? Show how your solution improves those metrics.
4. Team. If I’m in the audience and you’ve convinced me that your company solves a large problem, I need to know you’re the team that can actually deliver the solution. Highlight the team — have you worked together before? Do you have deep expertise in this space? What is it about your team that makes you uniquely suited to solve this problem?
5. Appendix. Anticipate questions your audience might ask, but don’t cover every one in the slides themselves. Give your audience a chance to feel engaged (and heard) — then show that you were prepared by covering the answer in one or more slides in the Appendix.

With a good pitch deck in hand, here are a few suggestions for what to avoid when delivering your pitch:

• Don’t show off every last feature. It’s great that you A/B tested the words on that button that increased feature engagement by 75%. It really is. But now is not the time to talk about it. If you’ve covered the points above, you will have earned the audience’s trust that you know what you’re doing. Diving too deep into every nook and cranny of your app risks losing your audience and you’ll look like you’re showing off.
• Don’t digress. The pitch is not your chance to talk about the long hours the team has put in, or to brag about the many clever choices you made along the way. You’re telling a story: if a slide isn’t about the story you’re telling, leave it out. If the point you really want to make distracts in any way from the story you’re telling, skip it. Remember: the story is about the customer and the problem you’re solving.

The story is not your product. The story is not your company. The story is not you. The story is how your customer’s world will be better when your product has solved their problem.

• Don’t leave empty-handed. Go into the pitch with an idea of what you hope to accomplish. Whether you’re looking for investment, a commercial arrangement, a partnership, or something else: make sure to ask the audience for it before you leave, and identify who in the room you should follow up with after the meeting.

Here’s a blog post from the Google Docs team talking in more detail about this template; you can create your own pitch using this template by clicking here.

Good luck!