Business Pitch

A 2-Second Business Pitch that Worked

April 30, 2012

Last Thursday I’d just spoken as a guest to a class in entrepreneurship. As the class ended I was anxious to go because I was late for my grandson. The professor was thanking me and three students waited to talk to me individually. I didn’t want to be rude and I like talking to students, [...]

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Watch This Excellent 1 Minute Elevator Pitch

April 19, 2012

Although it doesn’t take an MBA to do it, one of the things business schools teach more often these days, as part of the entrepreneurship curriculum, is the elevator speech, also called elevator pitch. The one embedded here, from the Rice Business Plan Competition last week, won first prize in a contest that included 42 [...]

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Tell Your Story Well: Resonate

December 13, 2011

This last Sunday I bought three copies of Nancy Duarte’s book Resonate and sent one each to three adult children. That’s the best review I ever give a book. I’m sad to admit that it happens rarely. But I love this book. If you ever – ever – get up to speak to a group [...]

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Don’t Confuse Optimism with Business Potential

December 8, 2011

Overheard: I love your optimism. What I don’t like is the complete lack of experience that’s causing it. Ideally, a business pitch is exciting because the business potential is exciting. Optimism ought to be a combination of potential market, product-market fit, scalability, defensibility, and management experience. Better yet, early sales, initial growth rates, proof of [...]

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1 Great Tip for Better Story Power for Business

November 2, 2011

Here’s a great tip for anybody presenting anything to an audience: Skip the boring preamble. Many times we feel like we have to do a lot of prefacing, but four minutes goes by quickly. If you spend two minutes on background, you’ve lost an opportunity to grab attention. Far better to leave the identifying bits [...]

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True Stories: One Good and One Bad Answer to Investor Q&A

October 18, 2011

We talk about the slides, and what they cover, but some of the more important moments in business pitches I’ve seen are not about slides, or plans, but rather about the people themselves, and how they respond. For example, I posted last week on gust.com about two radically different ways to handle questions about financials. [...]

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Pitching Your Business: How Not to Answer A Tough Question

April 19, 2011

Imagine a meeting room in a hotel. You’re an entrepreneur talking to five potential investors. You present their new business with a slide presentation. This is your pitch. The pitch goes perfectly well until it gets to the financial projections. They’re bad.  They are embarrassingly over optimistic. They cast doubt over the entire presentation. So, [...]

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Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes #9: Pitching Without Planning

October 19, 2010

(Note: this is the second of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, the most important.) I’m guessing that the idea of doing a pitch – meaning a slide deck driving a presentation, about 20 minutes’ worth maximum – instead of [...]

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When Selling is the Hardest Part of Consulting Biz

August 10, 2010

Looking back on my consultant years, I know that one reason I focused so hard on repeat business was I wasn’t good at sales. Doing the work, yes; finding new clients, no. I was reminded of that yesterday reading Perception is not reality. Author Mike McLaughlin, co-author of Guerilla Marketing for Consultants, tells a good [...]

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Business Plan Contest: You Be the Judge

November 11, 2009

Five very interesting young businesses, five excellent presentations, six judges with questions, and all of it available as online video, where you can watch the whole thing and vote for the winners. What I like best about the Forbes annual $100K Boost Your Business contest is that it is open to everybody. I love being [...]

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