Introduction: Why a Great Pitch Matters
A great pitch is the foundation for securing the funding your business needs to grow. Whether you’re seeking investments, partnerships, or a loan, your pitch deck is your first opportunity to make a lasting impression on potential investors and lenders. It’s not just about presenting numbers—it’s about showcasing your business model, highlighting your unique value proposition, and demonstrating how your marketing strategy will drive growth. A high quality pitch deck clearly communicates your competitive advantages, helping investors see the value your business brings to the market. By crafting a compelling pitch, you set the stage for building trust, sparking interest, and achieving your business goals.
Understand Lenders and Their Objectives
When you pitch your business plan to lenders, it’s essential to understand what drives their decision-making process. Business and commercial bankers, credit analysts, and equipment finance teams are focused on evaluating your business model, market potential, and repayment ability. They want to see a pitch deck that addresses their key concerns: Is your business model sustainable? Does your market analysis show real demand? Can your business generate enough revenue to repay the loan? Lenders also look for clear evidence of creditworthiness, strong collateral, and realistic financial projections. By aligning your pitch deck with these objectives, you demonstrate that you understand the lender’s perspective and are prepared to meet their criteria for commercial borrowing.
A great business pitch is a game-changer for getting the funds needed to launch your company. Here’s how to create the best presentation and get your business running.
Knowing how to make a good investor pitch is a necessary skill for every entrepreneur. Even those who aren’t in immediate need of funds will benefit from a solid pitch, as the process can help give you a thorough understanding of the business.
Mastering pitch deck essentials is crucial for all types of lenders, including real estate lenders, mortgage brokers, and other credit professionals. This is especially important for early stage credit professionals who are new to the industry. This article provides an overview pitch deck essentials and covering tips that align with lenders learning objectives, helping you build a strong foundation for creating effective loan proposals and presentations.
If you’re planning to pitch business to lender, it’s vital to get it right as early as possible. As the pitch depends on your business plan, it would be best to ensure your plan’s well-developed and thorough.
Once you’ve taken care of the basics, you can start making the best possible sales pitch for loans. Take a look at the essential methods to do just that.
Create a Quality Pitch Deck
A pitch deck is a presentation of your business plan meant to give potential investors a quick overview. It’s an essential tool when you have a meeting with lenders as it will help you showcase the main points of your plan in the short time available.
You can create a more extensive pitch deck covering every detail you’d like to present, but for the best sales pitch for loans, limit the presentation to 10 minutes or less.
There are plenty of pitch deck templates downloadable for free online, so you can find one that fits your plan and use it as a starting point. Using a pitch deck template can help structure your slides and ensure you cover all key points. Please take notice that these require some knowledge of PowerPoint, as it’s the most common platform used for this. Macabacus resources are also available to help produce sharp and professional pitch deck presentations.
A well-known example of a quality pitch deck is the presentation by Front, a company that provides shared inbox solutions. It has an easy-to-follow structure and presents the company’s customer data, growth, and financial plans in graphics and statistical charts. Applying design principles, such as limiting bullet points and focusing each slide on a single idea, can make your slides more engaging and effective. Front’s pitch deck helped them secure over $60 million in funding.
Present Your Business Model and Revenue Plan
Your business model and revenue plan are at the heart of your pitch deck. This is where you show lenders exactly how your business will make money and sustain growth. Clearly outline your revenue model—whether it’s subscription-based, transactional, or another approach—and explain your cost structure. Highlight your growth potential by sharing how you plan to scale and what sets you apart from competitors. Emphasize your competitive advantages, such as innovative products, unique services, or proprietary technology, to show why your business is positioned for long-term success. A well-articulated business model and revenue plan will give lenders confidence in your ability to generate consistent cash flow and repay your loan.
Showcase Market Analysis and Opportunity
A thorough market analysis is a key pitch deck component that demonstrates your understanding of the business landscape. Identify your target market and use data points to illustrate the size and potential of your market. Analyze the competitive environment to show how your business stands out and where opportunities for growth exist—whether that’s entering new markets or capturing a larger share of your current market. Lenders want to see that you have a clear understanding of your market dynamics and a strategy for leveraging them. Back up your claims with market research, customer feedback, and other relevant data to build credibility and highlight your business’s potential for success.
Share Financial Projections and Statements
Financial projections and statements are essential for giving lenders a clear picture of your business’s financial health and future prospects. Include a detailed profit and loss statement, sales forecast, and cash flow projections in your pitch deck. These documents help lenders assess your ability to manage finances, generate revenue, and meet repayment obligations. Use visual aids like charts and graphs to make your financial data easy to understand and visually compelling. By providing transparent and realistic financial projections, you demonstrate your business’s growth potential and build trust with lenders, increasing your chances of securing the funding you need.
Practice Makes Perfect
Once you have a good presentation in place, you’ll need some practice to pitch business to lender in the most effective way.
Speaking fluently and quickly is crucial when making the pitch, as your presentation success will entirely depend on it.
The common pitfall for many new entrepreneurs is thinking that it’s enough to understand their business and that they’ll easily present its core values when the time comes. Couple that with an impressive pitch deck, it’s almost a guarantee they won’t properly prepare for the pitch meeting.
But you’d be wise not to make that mistake.
Pitch meetings aren’t easy to schedule, and once you manage to get some time with an investor, you’ll rarely have more than 10 minutes to make the point. That’s why working on your messaging and practising the pitch is very important.
You need to make it simple and to the point. Practicing your pitch not only helps you deliver your message clearly, but also ensures accurate client correspondence and can turbo charge your turnaround times when responding to lender requests. Consider everything that doesn’t speak of your core values a waste of time and practice until you achieve a flawless delivery.
Create an Engaging Narrative
The best way to start your pitch is with a story. As outlined before, it should be short and concise, yet it must be engaging and relatable.
The story should be based on a specific problem in the market and the way in which you can solve it. This is also an excellent time to include any data you might have from market testing. When you address the problem, explain the market size to show the scope of the opportunity and identify your potential customers to spark interest. Try to approach the problem from an investor’s perspective, looking into their pain points and how your solutions could alleviate them.
Tailoring your pitch to every individual investor will take some research and additional preparation, but it could be an instant success if you get it right the first time.
Once you get to present your solution, focus on its unique aspects. Make sure to describe your product or service, how it differs from current solutions, and what sets you apart from other businesses. Explain exactly how your company will deal with the problem and, of course, keep your points short and concise.
Ultimately, tailoring your narrative to what makes sense for the investor will help spark interest and increase your chances of success.
Present a Sound Strategy
There are several essential questions your pitch must cover if you want to present your business as a serious endeavour:
- What’s your target market?
- How will you attract and retain customers?
- What does your business model look like?
- What are your financial projections?
- What is the primary purpose of your funding request, and how does your business compare to other businesses in the market?
Address each of these questions in detail and ensure you approach them realistically.
When it comes to the target market, try to narrow it down to your ideal customers and pinpoint their demographics as precisely as possible. It would be beneficial if you have user personas to present, as those will make explaining your customer strategy more straightforward.
Presenting your business plan is most often the crucial point of your pitch. The investor will want to know exactly how your business plans to make money, which could be what makes or breaks the deal. Tech companies, in particular, often highlight the strength of their team and a scalable business model to stand out when they pitch loan proposals to investors or lenders.
You can solidify the plan by showing the investor a detailed financial projection. However, you should ensure to back up every assumption with relevant data as your calculations must be as accurate as possible. Every investor will be very interested in the direction that your business will take financially and they’ll likely want to double-check your projections. Your strategy for raising money may involve different funding sources, such as venture capital funding, later rounds, or non-bank lenders, depending on your business type and growth stage.
Since you need to keep all parts of your presentation short, it would be best to have an extended financial plan on hand if the investor wants to take a closer look.
Conclusion
If you want great results and are eager to get funding for your business as soon as possible, taking feedback and working to improve your pitch would be very useful. You shouldn’t expect to have a complete picture of your presentation’s quality until you try it out.
Remember that your first pitch meetings might not immediately bring you the results you want, but don’t stress over it. Rather, use every meeting as a chance to learn, gather feedback, and refine your skills.
Are you ready to take the next step? Unsecured Finance Australia can help you with your business loan. Click here for more information.
