7 Tips to Present in Front of Your Investors

Pitching your investment ideas is no simple feat. It takes an in-depth understanding of your objective in presenting to your investors.

Usually, entrepreneurs have to delve deeper into every little detail about their own business and that of their competition. It’s information like this that helps businesses create presentations that make potential investors sit up and listen.

In this article, we’ll share the top seven tips to present in front of your investors. We’ll also look at what goes into a pitch and how to structure the presentation.

So, let’s dive in.

1. Know Your Investor

The first step to a successful pitch is knowing your audience. It’s essential to understand what interests your investors and how it connects to your business.

For better planning, ensure that your research covers all aspects of your investor and why they’re interested in your company. You must investigate every relevant bit of information from career, financial standing, network, and your investor’s availability.

From your results, you can decide whether it’s viable to go forward with your plans. If there’s a connection between your business and the investor, then you can move to the next step of developing a presentation. Knowing your investor also makes it easy to demonstrate the value of your business.

2. Clearly Understand the Products/Services

Most entrepreneurs fail in their pitches before they even begin. This is because they deliver presentations that don’t clearly define their brands. At times, business presentations are packed with colorful images but miss the most important details. It’s common to find product images that do not indicate how the brand fulfills customers’ needs.

If you want to capture the attention of the investor:

• Describe what your brand offers.
• Include graphics that clearly illustrate the features of your products and services.
• Give your presentation more credibility by including case studies and testimonials.
• Remember that in all this, you have to keep it short and concise to avoid losing the attention of your audience.

3. Define the Competitive Edge

Defining your competitive edge demonstrates that you know your market. It’s a clear show of how you have researched your customers’ needs. By defining your competitive advantage, you demonstrate proof of confidence in your products and services.

Luckily, presentation tools like Powerpoint offer features that let you show where you stand with your competition. You can use graphs, charts, graphics to show comparison figures. Such tools are also relevant for indicating your wins in sales, customer numbers, and periods.

Comparison features are also excellent for forecasting. When you use the relevant software, you help the investor visualize their future gains if they invest in your company.

4. Prepare the Pitch

If you want to succeed in your pitch, you must prepare for the speech. You must organize your information in such a way that your words flow smoothly throughout the presentation. For example, when introducing a concept, it’s only convenient to start with history before discussing other aspects.

When presenting in front of your investor, remember that your body language speaks a lot. If you show confidence, the same can be seen with how your investors react. Remember that you are talking to build trust. So, every word you speak should convince the investor to connect with your business.

As you prepare the pitch, remember to practice your speech over and over again. Start by practicing all by yourself to enhance word composition. Later on, you can practice in front of a team to get a feel of how things will be.

Throughout the practice, encourage feedback. Feedback will help you know your strong and weak areas, so you know where to improve. In all this, remember to include eye-catching visuals. Attractive images will keep your audience glued to your presentation until the end.

5. Sharpen Your Presentation Skills

It’s not enough to prepare for a presentation if you do not take the time to sharpen your skills. Honing your skills involves more than just practicing your words. It entails reading books and watching online seminars to build confidence. Thanks to technology, some free videos and articles help improve presentation skills.

When sharpening your presentation skills, remember that you also need to learn how to create appealing presentations. Paid software such as PowerPoint is excellent for developing outstanding presentations. The tools are also useful for communicating complex topics, so they are easy to understand by the investors.

If Powerpoint is slightly out of budget for you, consider using free tools. Tools such as Google Slides are free if you have a Google account. You can download Google Slides themes from the internet and use them to quickly create your presentations.

This can save you time and the effort of designing your presentation since there’s bound to be a premade theme that will fit your presentation.

6. Show Them the Money

The most important aspect of an investors’ pitch is showing the financial projections. Investors are there for the money and want to know where your business stands and where it’s projected to go. If your presentation does not include your team, business model, and financials, the investors quickly lose focus on every else you have to say.

To clearly show where the money is, indicate monetary figures in your presentations. Make the statistics memorable by including colored charts that differentiate aspects. If your charts have future projections, remember to explain how you arrived at the figures.

A much better way of making the presentation enjoyable by prompting investors to use their calculators. This way, you make them part of the money conversation. With this trick, you stand better chances of improving engagement and closing the deal.

7. Be Ready for the Q$A Session

No matter how detailed your presentation is, investors will always have questions. They’ll want to know where you stand in all the business deals. They may ask if you are looking for a merger and acquisition or want to sell part of your shares?

They’ll also check for gaps in your presentations and ask questions to answer their concerns. Often, issues about various sections of your presentation that were not addressed may arise. For these and other questions, make sure you are well prepared with the right details.

To stay prepared, make sure you get detailed information about even the most obvious aspects of your presentation. Always look at your presentation from the investors’ point of view and see what some of their concerns might be. Alternatively, have a list of questions prepared to help you figure out how to answer upcoming questions.

Final Thoughts

Planning, preparing, and delivering are the three basic elements of a successful presentation. If you want to present in front of your investor and get the best results, ensure you carry out thorough research. Remember to always create your presentation with the investors in mind.