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How Do You Impress Potential Investors Before, During & After Your Meeting?
“You should have seen the look on Gill’s face,” Barry, the Chairman of the Board of my company said to me. He was telling me about sitting in on a pitch to Gill, our lead investor’s, fund.
“Gill gave me this look about five minutes into the pitch,” Barry said, laughing. “He just wanted this thing to end because it was a waste of his time.”
The reality is that most CEO pitches fall flat. But your pitch doesn’t have to fall flat. Here are some steps you can take to make sure your pitch will be a success and you can impress investors.
Before your meeting:
A. You should rehearse your pitch.
There’s nothing worse than watching a CEO that’s given a one hour time period to pitch run out of time. There’s just no excuse for that. Ever.
Great CEOs never run out of time because great CEOs rehearse their pitch over and over again. Let’s say you have a one hour meeting with an investor, but the investor only has 30 minutes. What will you do?
A great CEO already knows how to handle this event. The slide deck is seamlessly reduced to fit the new constraint without feeling rushed.
