Pitching To Win
Step-by-step: Making pitches that make a difference
You have 60 seconds to tell me how to make the world a more energy efficient place and convince me to invest. Go!
Does that sound terrifying or invigorating?
Just before Labor Day, I heard six companies make their best (and fastest) cases for their work. I was a judge and coach in an “elevator pitch” workshop organized by Cleantech Open Northeast. Cleantech Open Northeast is an accelerator that helps cleantech startups sharpen their business acumen and compete for up to $20,000. The elevator pitch workshop is meant to simulate an environment where you have a short period of time to answer these critical questions:
- What is the problem that the world needs to have solved?
- How are you uniquely equipped to solve it?
- How should someone be a part of what you’re doing? (i.e. being an investor or joining the team)
During the workshop, businesses participated in two 60-second exercises where they pitched the group from memory and tried to engage a judge one-on-one. It was a blast!
To develop content of your own pitch, there are a few hooks you can use to really catch your audience’s attention:
- Track record: If your product or service is already active in the field, talk about the positives of what you’ve learned from customers or testing. If your work has been put to use, it’s already miles ahead from a good idea that sits on the shelf.
- Expertise in your team: Highlight what’s special about your team that makes you so skilled for this challenge. This includes your team members’ previous work experience and where they studied, especially if there are particular names or projects that are well-known in your sector.
- Proprietary patents or technology: This will indicate that you’ve done your homework to prove that what you have is truly unique in your field.
Finally, when it comes to how you deliver your pitch, remember that people are more likely to remember how you made them feel than what you said, so it’s important to be pleasant and be positive. Breathe, speak with a smile, and make eye contact.
Practice pitching with the energy (pun intended!) you want to receive in return: excitement and confidence, not frantic anxiety. Attend meetups to test your pitch with peers and, as you gauge how people respond – refine, rewrite, repeat. In New York, #CleanwebNY and Impact Investing NYC host ongoing meetups and NYC ACRE offers a great community and resources for cleantech startups.
Good luck to Adapt Ready, Air-Value, Brimes Energy, ClearGrid, SimplyGrid, Wattlots, and all the great companies I met that day!
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This post originally appeared on bureaublank.com. For more about strategic communications for organizations focused on public systems, visit our blog “Ideas & Execution”.
