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Can you shorten your pitch?
I recently had a very interesting conversation with a subscriber about the length of their pitch. This specific individual didn’t feel comfortable delivering long pitches. They didn’t love public speaking and felt that they struggled to keep people engaged for long periods of time. Instead, they wondered if it would be possible, even when they have a 1hr meeting, to deliver a 5-10-minute pitch and leave more time for questions.
This conversation was interesting to me because, to the surprise of many, I actually much prefer conversations to pitching. While I can nail a pitch, I am extremely persuasive in 1 to 1 conversations. I’m a lawyer who spent years honing my skills, and the back and forth is something that I personally thrive on. I also find that with my specific skillset, I can easily read the intentions and will of investors during a conversation and continue to refine my answers to optimize for the person I’m speaking to. So I actually dealt with this issue firsthand. So lets’s dive into what I did and what I would recommend.
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If you don’t like pitching, then don’t do it for any meeting that is 30 minutes or less. If the meeting is over 30 mins then you NEED to deliver a pitch that is at least 5-10mins. But for meetings under that time you can do something that is 90s to 5min and still communicate the key parts of the business effectively. In fact, many of the clients I work with feel extremely confident about the 30-90s scripts I give them and prefer to use them as much as possible.
No matter the situation, start with some form of pitch. Even if it is just a 90s pitch, you need to start with the pitch. If you start with a conversation, then you can lose control of the narrative. I see many founders spend months perfecting their narrative and story, then they go into a pitch, and within the 60s, they are telling a different story because they never got to start with their own script. Don’t take the bait. Investors will often try to get you talking for a few minutes even before you pitch; this is to force you to speak authentically about the company and avoid being reliant on what you’ve prepared. Instead, keep any conversation about the industry, yourself or another topic early on and don’t get into your company until you have enough time to start with your own 30s-90s script at a minimum (if it is a longer pitch, then wait till you can do your 5-20 minute pitch).
Don’t go shorter than 30 seconds. If you are shorter than 30 seconds, then you are really leaving something out. Ideally, 2 minutes is perfect for a 10-minute meeting. You should only rely on something that is 30 seconds if you catch someone at a conference, networking event, etc. This shouldn’t be your standard practice.
In short, you can shorten your pitch if pitching isn’t your strength, but there are limitations to how much you can shorten it. You also need to ensure if you do shorten your pitch that, you have a well-prepared Q&A document on your computer somewhere and that you are preparing your answers as much as others are preparing their pitch because your Q&A is replacing large portions of your pitch.
How long is your standard pitch? |
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Onwards and Upwards,
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