One of the keys to success in a start-up journey is to perfect the elevator pitch.

Whether you are meeting with investors, recruiting like-minded individuals, acquiring customers or users to your start-up platform, a good elevator pitch instils the necessary confidence not just in your start-up, but fundamentally the people who are running the start-up.

Why? If you can distil the philosophy, unique selling points and execution path of your start-up in a clear and concise manner, it shows that your start-up is the brainchild of much careful planning and a clear direction.

After all, whether a start-up grows spectacularly or crashes and burns instantly is only 30 per cent the function of a brilliant idea, and 70 per cent a function of execution.

So what makes a good elevator pitch?

Know your business

It goes without saying that knowing your business inside and out sets out the foundation for a good pitch. One of the first investors that I pitched to jumped onto the idea within two sentences of my pitch.

The beauty lies in the simplicity of the pitch. In those two sentences, I explained that my start-up is aimed at allowing retailers to offer a commission to users who successfully refer customers to retailers.

The benefit to retailers is that they do not pay any upfront fees but the only reward upon customer spending (a win-win!), and the benefit to users is that they earn from word of mouth referrals and social media sharing, which are activities that they already engage in any way.

There is a clear mapping out of the benefits to both sides of the platform, and the gaps in the current market which the start-up aims to solve.

Immediately, the opportunity was clear to the investor. If private car hires are a success because they leverage on idle assets which users have, and the problem of not enough taxis on the roads when people need them, why not pay for word of mouth referrals where the idle asset is the social media presence, and the problem is not enough advertising solutions that reward for sales conversion.

Also read: The art of the hustle — in elevators, on flights, and even in the toilet

Know yourself

What makes a start-up more compelling is not just the brilliant business idea, but that the people running the start-up have a clear idea of what the flaws are, and what needs to be done to address the flaws.

A start-up that claims to have no flaws cannot be a credible one because the founders are not able to see where the risks and threats are.

Where there are these blind spots, it is very easy to be trapped in unbridled optimism and squander precious opportunities, whether it be well-meaning advice from other people in the community or areas in which partnerships could be critical to the survival of the start-up.

And no investor, employees or customers would want to sign-up with a start-up that claims to have no flaws, only to be taken by surprise and burnt when the start-up fails. Because start-ups are tough, and failure common, everyone wants to, and should, go in with their eyes open.

One of the questions I’ve had to address in my startup is knowing that as a founder, while I have a clear idea of the direction I want the company to go, I also have to recognise that I am not an expert in all the areas critical for the growth of the company.

The question is, therefore, how do I find the right people to fill in those gaps, and properly incentivise and motivate them to do their best for the company? I also have to ask myself seriously whether the market is ready for my platform.

How do I grow this new category and actively condition the behaviour of retailers and merchants to use our app when no one else is currently doing this in the market? What are the strategies that the company will need to have in place, and how is the company going to go about implementing these strategies? These questions form a big part in a realistic elevator pitch.

Know your audience

An elevator pitch may only take a few minutes, but it is still easy to lose the attention (or worse, bore) the listener if the pitch is not nuanced to the interest area of the listener.

For investors, they want to know the trajectory to growth, revenue projections and exit strategies. For employees, they want to know what the career development and mentorship would be. For customers, they want to know what the benefits are to them, and why, of all the start-up noise out there, your platform is the one they should entertain.

The struggle for the short attention span of listeners is real. Focus on keywords that you know will get the listeners to perk up. “Revenue”, “exit plan”, “training”, “scalability”, “no upfront fees”, “limited downside risks”, “ease of making cash”, “idle resources”.

These are the keywords that work in the context of my start-up. However, the same keywords do not work for all elevator pitches and all start-ups, which is why knowing your audience comes after knowing your business and yourself.

At the same time, do not throw in words that are the flavour of the month just because you think that these are what the investors, employees and customers want to hear. For example, “gig economy” and “sharing economy” – these are the hot buzz words, but do they capture the essence of what your start-up is about?

It is perhaps more important to coin a new buzz word that captures your essence than to use terms that are not appropriate. In my context, we are starting a “referral or ripple economy”. After all, it is the next new wave and opportunity that matters. Once a concept has become a buzz word, you’ll need to ask yourself whether the opportunity has already peaked, and space is starting to become overcrowded.

Also read: How to pitch your startup on Facebook without being too salesy

A final word

Finally, this is not a point for the preparation of the elevator pitch but one of implementation. It is important to make sure that the entire start-up team is clear on the elevator pitch.  I’ve had the shocking experience of finding out that a senior executive had misrepresented what our start-up is about to a customer.

This can easily happen because as a founder, we are the ones taking most of the time on the vision and business plan of the start-up, but how often do we get our own employees, and senior executives to repeat the vision and business plan back to us in their own words to ensure that they truly understand what the start-up is about?

As a founder, we cannot be everywhere all the time, and we will have to delegate. The executives represent the company and the experience has taught me to never assume that because someone has heard the same elevator pitch 100 times that the person has internalised it the same way that it is intended to be.

So practice the elevator pitch, and have your staff repeat the elevator pitch back to you whenever you can. Make sure that the people who represent you on a day to day basis are able to represent in a fairly accurate manner, or you risk undermining your start-up from the inside when there are already so many challenges in ensuring the survival of your company.

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Image Credit:  Waldemar Brandt

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