5 Quick Tips on Pitching… (Instigator Blog)

When pitching investors you have a captive audience. But they won’t stay captive for long unless you can hook them.

Ben Yoskovitz’ article is centered around pitching to angel investors and venture capitalists - something that a lot of product managers may never do. But his tips apply just as well to a pitching potential customers.

There are two in particular that I think are hard for product managers.

1) Be entertaining - in a relevant way.

I think a lot of bad presentations stem from the freshman English 5-paragraph essay format: first tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em, then spend three paragraphs telling them, then tell ‘em what you told ‘em. Okay for your paper on tragic figures in Romeo and Juliet; in a conference room guaranteed to send your audiences diving for their Blackberries.

One opening that has worked well for me is:

“I’m going to start this demo by putting myself in the shoes of one of your customers, and talk about the things that frustrate me.”

Eliminating pain is the driver of success for a lot of consumer products and services. Maybe all of them. Don’t rely on features and benefits slides to make it clear, spell it out: Here is the pain. Here is how we solve it.

If you can hint at that kind of content in the first thirty seconds of presenting, you stand a chance against the Blackberries.

I don’t memorize entire decks, because I can’t do that and still sound natural. But I will practice saying my opening story, three or five or ten times on the drive to a meeting, until the right word choices and pauses and emphasis work themselves out.

Don’t overemphasize the product. For product managers, heresy! Right? Well… in large part, potential customers are investors. They’re trying to decide whether to invest more attention and due diligence, and that means buying into more than just a product:

…Ultimately investors are buying into the team, the passion, and the belief that you can execute on what you claim you can execute on.

Product is a teaser - the promise of: Here is the pain. Here is how we solve it.

Some of the most painful presentations I’ve endured are due to product managers trying to make sure their audience knows about every single differentiating feature. But first I have to be convinced that the product team understands the big picture. Before you show me features, show me that you’re qualified to choose and define features.

Once that initial investment of attention is secured, then you get to sell the product down to the last feature. But it still helps to have some entertaining stories (or really big beautiful pictures) to mix in!

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