Trying to find investors and articulate your vision at a strong enough level to fund your growth is not easy. It requires first-rate patience, thick skin and visible confidence.
Whether your fundraising efforts began before or after the Covid-19 pandemic changed our world, one thing is certain: we all face a new style of meetings. Today, a majority of investor pitching and fundraising happens over Zoom, saving time that would be spent traveling as well as other associated costs.
While pitching over Zoom has its unique benefits, it’s important that you can master these virtual platforms – presenting a powerful presentation while avoiding any technical issues.
Here are some Zoom pitch tips:
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Take Your Time To Prepare Your Pitch
With virtual platforms offering instant solutions to host meetings, it may feel tempting to take an investor call as casually as you would a family member or a friend. However, as many investors still struggle to embrace the new methods of pitching and familiarize themselves with advancing software, this has a high probability of going in the wrong direction.
As you go into your meetings, you are expecting a lot from these investors. A lot of trust, confidence, and willingness to bet their reputations and years of sacrifice, discipline, and hard work.
Being able to demonstrate a great ability to communicate with others well in this new environment will go a long way towards that. Wow them here, and you’ll give them a lot of confidence in your capabilities to raise money in the new normal and for winning customers.
2. Refrain From Interrupting Others
When pitching over Zoom (or another virtual platform), it is usually difficult to detect who should be speaking when. If you are pitching alongside a co-founder or team, it’s a good idea to plan ahead of time and decide which one of you will be answering which types of questions.
If there is more than one individual on the pitching end, identify each others role(s) and the questions each should be in charge of answering. For example, the CFO of the company should answer financial questions.
And when a potential investor begins speaking, let them fully finish talking and take a breath or two before you start talking. One or two seconds of lag or connection issues can be solved with a deep breath before speaking.
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Know When To Stop Talking
Usually in-person meetings allow for more natural conversation. However, Zoom creates the tendency for founders to keep talking and ramble on.
When investors ask questions, answer them directly and then stop talking. Silence in between questions or in between different sections of the pitch is completely fine.
4. Keep Your Background Professional and Clean
Keep backgrounds simple, clean and professional. You want to keep the investors focused on you and engaged with what you are saying instead of distracted by something in the background. In fact, you might be better off avoiding fake background filters which can often be glitchy and distracting.
Find a soundproof space. Invest in good lighting. Get the key elements in place when figuring out how to pitch to investors over Zoom.
5. Ask Investor Questions To Increase Engagement
Pitching investors over Zoom presents a new and unique challenge for founders: keeping potential investors engaged. The constant distraction of SMS notifications, emails, and the like makes it even more difficult to keep them focused on you.
Pitching over Zoom forces founders to try even harder to keep investors engaged in the conversation. By asking investors questions throughout, it works to pull them back in and keep them engaged. The sample questions below are quite useful:
- Did you get a chance to look at our deck, website, etc. before the call?
- Would it be helpful if I gave you some background on myself and my co-founder before we begin?
- Have you invested in any companies in similar spaces?
- Are any of your portfolio companies using {insert related technology/software/product here}?
- How much do you know about our market?
Asking even simple questions can keep investors engaged in your pitch.
6. Show a Live Demo
Beyond asking questions to hold audience engagement, live demos are a pitching must; where investors get the chance to ask more in-depth questions on specific features.
Always be prepared to show a live demo on the call where you can expand on how customers are currently using your product and to tell customers stories as you address the features on your screen.
When performing the live demo, take your time and make sure to breathe throughout. Even if it feels too slow, you are probably going at just the right speed.
7. Keep Improving Your Sound Quality
As a majority of us found soon after virtual meetings became common practice, pitching from home or from a co-working space can get quite noisy. Before hopping on the call, consider installing a noise cancellation or echo removal tool.
These tools remove the distracting background noise.
8. Always Clean Your Camera
Before joining any type of call where video is being used, always clean your laptop’s camera.
You can find an inexpensive cleaning product to improve your appearance and help you look more professional. If you find that your laptop camera just isn’t cutting it, you may want to consider purchasing a mountable camera for even higher quality.
In either case, whether you’re cleaning the camera or upgrading, you want your image quality to be presentable. No smudges, grainy image quality, or cracks that make it difficult to see you as you present.
9. Improve & Repeat
Often times, founders get discouraged after only a few meetings. However, whether on Zoom, in-person, (or a combination of the two) founders shouldn’t take any one particular investor too seriously.
Start and continue to collect feedback from investors as you go through these meetings. Look for the common themes and make tweaks to your presentation as necessary. Then keep on pitching until you start to receive the investment you need.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully this post provided you with some perspective as you are looking into how to pitch investors via Zoom.
Whether you are new to the founder role and unaware of fundraising documents or you are a multiple time founder seeking specialized investors, our guidance can take your fundraising to the next level. 2022 will continue to offer fundraising opportunities for founders everywhere- awarding those who made the effort to educate themselves, plan ahead, and sharpen their skills.
Ensure that you are ahead of the competition and reach out to our team at MCDA CCG, where our services extend beyond just putting you in contact with investors. Our experts can help you prepare effective business documents, navigate through virtual meeting platforms, refine your pitch, and more.
Reach out by calling our office headquarters in Placentia, Orange County, California today to hear about our customized services as well as our year-end specials!
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