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How to show your expertise when pitching
Read time 1.8 minutes.
One of the most common pitching tips that you’ll hear from me and many others is to avoid complexity in your pitch.
We’ve spoken about the founder’s curse and how many founders know their business so well that they can’t speak about it at the basic level from which investors and the general public are approaching the company.
Despite this advice, there are times when showing your expertise can be very beneficial.
A client of mine, Jack Benzaquen, is the perfect example to show how using industry lingo and complex terms can actually enhance your pitch when done correctly.
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Jack is the CEO of Duradry (check them out here). Duradry has combined the best ingredients from all-natural deodorants and clinical deodorants to create a highly effective deodorant that is also healthy for the user.
In his pitch, he needs to discuss the problem; here is how we layer his problem to really ensure it connects with investors:
People Sweat
When you sweat, you become self-conscious, and your self-confidence falls. Studies show for many, it negatively impacts their mental health, even leading to severe depression.
This can’t be solved just by grabbing existing deodorant
Clinical deodorants are full of horrible, unhealthy chemicals
All-natural deodorants don’t work
People are being forced to choose between their mental and physical health (if you aren’t consciously making this choice, then odds are you are covering yourself in chemicals without even knowing the harm to your body)
This is a pretty straightforward layered problem; it’s a few simple, logical steps that can be communicated in 30 seconds to create a massive problem (mental vs. physical health).
So how can this be improved?
One of the things Jack does in his pitch is that after the problem has been clearly communicated, he goes in-depth for 30 seconds about the specific ways that deodorant harms you. This allows him to do two things: (i) show his expertise and (ii) invoke fear (a powerful motivator).
By spending 30 seconds talking about all these chemicals I can’t even pronounce, the many diseases they cause, and the percentage of deodorants that have them, not only does he look like a genius who could engineer a deodorant from scratch, but he has asserted domain authority so VCs won’t question he knowledge/claims of the engineering or composition of deodorant.
Takeaway
You don’t want to use complex language to deliver key parts of your story or pitch. What you can do, however, is take 15-90 seconds during your pitch stop on a technical issue and discuss it in depth. This will allow you to show you are more than just a salesperson. You are the CEO who can not only stand in a boardroom but get into the trenches and do the hard work of engineering, coding, developing, etc.
Do you strategically add technical talk in your pitch? |
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Onwards and Upwards,
P.S. Are you ready to take the next step in raising venture capital for your company? If so, you can book a 1:1 strategy call with me to help get you going in the right direction!
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