How to Create a Powerful Visual Pitch Presentation for your Business that Gets Results. [Invitation to a seminar in August 2017]
There are statistics that show that there are about 27 million entrepreneurs in the United States. And 80% of them fail when communicating their message, specifically when speaking about their product and the business plan.
First, I would like to explain what is a Pitch. A Pitch is a presentation especially designed for a group of investors, with the purpose of getting them to invest in your business or get interested in your product or service. For this, having a visual presentation that helps you maximize the odds of these investors investing in your business or get seriously interested in what you do is very important. To do this, you must grab their attention with a powerful visual presentation.
I will soon be offering a seminar called “How to Create Powerful Visual Pitch Presentations”; this seminar will be held at the University of South Florida (USF) at Tampa Bay, Florida in the United States, for more information, CLICK HERE. You are cordially invited to attend, if you are in Florida.
In this article, I will show you three things you must consider when creating a Pitch presentation.
1. It’s a Pitch, not a Speech
It is important to clarify that a Pitch is a short 15 to 20 minutes presentation, used to present your ideas to investors; while a Speech is a longer presentation with a 1 to 2 hours duration, even longer depending on the theme and the event. It is a more formal format used to address a general public.
The Pitch purpose is obtaining funds or investment for your business; instead, a Speech has as purpose educating, informing or motivating a general or specific public. The objective of both types of presentations is to make the audience remember you and your presentation message.
2. The 3 most common mistakes of a boring Pitch presentation
• Long presentations: there are many Pitch visual presentations that fail due to having too many slides. You must limit the number of slides of your presentation for a Pitch. I recommend that your presentation have 20 to 25 slides.
• Too many texts: When presenting their ideas, entrepreneurs tend to show too much information in one slide, thinking that the more information they show, the higher likelihood of investors investing in their business. My recommendation is that you limit the number of texts in each slide and show just one idea per slide.
“LESS is MORE”
• Too many bullet points: this is one of the most used elements in a visual presentation. Entrepreneurs or business owners use bullet points to list important message points; however, if you use too many of them, you will overload your slides with too much text.
My recommendation is identifying the key words of your message and one alternative to bullets if using iconography. See an example below.
It is important for any entrepreneur or business owner that potential investors know very well and in detail his/her idea or product.
In this case I recommend creating a document or handout where you can place in detail everything about your idea and product, and sending it by email to investors, so they can review it in the comfort of their office or home. And when designing the visual presentation, concentrate in the key words and highlight what is most important and interesting to your audience (investors).
3. The Design of your presentation (Case Study)
It is a pleasure for me to help professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners to create effective presentations for their pitches.
A case I want to share, is a presentation I designed for a client. He participated in a Pitch competition in which he won second place and obtained an important award. The presentation had fourteen slides, took just 10 minutes and at the end there was a questions and answers session. Her product was a mobile application to manage inventory in warehouses.
We worked on the message, identifying key words, and later we created the presentation using graphical elements that would best represent her product and message.
For your Pitch presentation to likely be a winning presentation, you must have an effective and attractive visual design. To make it possible, you must have the following:
• Using good resolution images and photographs.
• Minimizing the number of texts: for example, using a phrase in a slide, a few bullet points (recommended: not more than 5 or 6 bullets, or even better, none) and titles that identify the information of the slide.
• Text Fonts and Sizes: using LARGE texts. I recommend a 40-point size for Titles and 32-point for content, but for me, the largest possible, so that all the audience can clearly see the text for afar.
Regarding the text font, using the Sans Serif family styles (see image below). These fonts are friendlier to read; I recommend specifically Arial, Calibri, Century Gothic and Tahoma fonts, because they are compatible with PowerPoint, Keynote and others. If you have a PowerPoint presentation prepared in a desktop computer, and you are running it from a Mac computer, you will not run the risk that the text will change its configuration and show differently.
These days you have little time to present your idea, product or business. In addition to increasing market competition. Considering this, you must stand out with a powerful visual presentation that goes in harmony with your verbal message. Success will depend on the time you dedicate to developing your message and to the creation of an impact visual support.
Remember using less texts and bullets, using quality images and photos; your presentation should have about 20/25 slides and above all, the key is Practice, Practice.
Your pitch presentation must have a visual design that supports your message. If you are in Florida state, I invite you to the seminar I will be having at Tampa Bay, “How to Create Powerful Pitch Presentations”.
Slides design by Cavi Media.
Shark Tank Image by Business Insider.