Improve your offer using these two strategies

Effective communication about what your company does and why it matters is crucial for entrepreneurs trying to raise capital and attract investors. But today, with most founders getting their pitching advice from the same few sources, every pitch has come to sound generic, with the same tone, structure, and insight.

Today I would like to debate two tactics my clients use to boost multi-million dollar enterprise capital that are not “common practice” and immediately help them improve their offering, making it brighter, stronger and unique.

1. Using the perspective system

99% of offers start with a problem. You often hear founders delving into a problem they or those around them are experiencing, explaining pain points to an investor. The problem is that if an investor cannot discover with the problem, he or she immediately becomes discouraged. This is not only an statement; data back.

Behind Harvard University, 11% of investment partners at VC firms are women; as a result, 13% of enterprise capital dollars go to startups with women founders. Basically, when a woman presents a solution to a problem that girls face, most men don’t understand the problem unless there is a female investor there to listen to it. The proof is in the data, because when VC firms increase the variety of female investors, these firms suddenly see higher returns and more exits from female founders.

So how do you solve this problem using the perspective module?

The person creating the perspective must be the first content slide (second slide after the title slide) in the presentation. It should tell the investor look at the remainder of the deck. The goal is to get them to look at your company not through the lens of their very own experiences and biases, but through the lens that best showcases its potential and impact.

Here’s an example of somebody creating a perspective from a former client:

“Have you latterly been sent a news article or seen a link on Twitter and clicked on it only to be hit with a paywall? If so, you are not alone. Every day, billions of individuals like you can not read the news.

Do you remember this headline? Have you shared this with anyone else? Have you been able to ascertain if this is true?

Currently, 76% of publishers use paywalls. They are encouraged to make use of clickbait headlines to extend purchases. These headlines innocently shared by billions of individuals such as you are fueling an epidemic of misinformation that is causing political instability, promoting violence, and over the last few years, contributing to the deaths of tens of millions of individuals.

If someone could change incentives for publishers and make complete news articles available to everyone, it could not only revolutionize the $36 billion news industry, it could solve a serious social crisis.”

This prospect creator immediately modified the way investors would analyze a business. They will now not see the news subscription service and will now not determine to take a position based on their personal interest in using the product. Instead, they saw a company solving a huge social problem in a huge market. The remainder of the deck is interpreted based on their ability to resolve a social problem and capture the market, not an investor’s probabilities of becoming a customer.

2. Present your offer

The biggest problem I see with many pitches is that regardless of how great they are, they all the time find yourself feeling like the entrepreneur is begging for money. It rarely looks like an investment opportunity that cannot be missed, and as a substitute I feel like I’m being asked to finance another person’s dream.

The reason for this is simply that entrepreneurs have been conditioned to formulate their offer in an “ask” format. In the world of enterprise capital, it is common practice to even name a slide “The Ask.” This puts the founder at a great drawback. No one asks if they will provide help to make money; they offer help in earning money. They ask for money when they need it.

Instead of asking at the end of your presentation, remember to present your offer. What is the difference?

• Don’t portray your company as “needing” money to realize anything. Use an lively tone to present your company, discuss the way you’re already on the path to a billion-plus dollar business and that these funds will speed up that process (but you may get there regardless of what).
• Use the trends around you to create the fear of missing out. If you give the impression that this chance will only exist for a short time period as a result of technological advances, legal changes, social trends, etc., then this time-pressured investment seems more like a smart opportunity than a donation.