Improve Your Winning Business Pitch with a Business Coach or Mentor

18th Oct , 2019

You may have excellent products or services and be a long-standing business, or maybe you’re an up and coming start-up, but unless you can reach your customers and sell the benefits, success may elude your business and feed your competition.

Fortunately, a business coach or mentor from International Business Mentors can help you. Our mentors and coaches have successfully run their own businesses and know and understand the importance of delivering a winning pitch.

Getting the attention of potential customers and delivering your own powerful and enticing pitch is a common blockage for business growth, and one that our business mentors and business coaches are often asked for assistance with. They are willing to share their business knowledge with you and help push you to succeed.

What Can Make or Break a Pitch?

As part of business growth strategies, a winning pitch is a vital component, and one that is often neglected. Sometimes the winning pitch is suboptimal, as the business leaders:

• Are too focused on the products or services themselves
• Miss how customers may perceive what is on offer
• Are not confident in delivering the best message
• Are affected by a combination of the above

Whether you are a business owner, CEO or senior executive, delivering a business concept with clarity and conviction is imperative to attracting and retaining your customers.

Feedback from our business mentors and coaches highlight some of the areas where they have offered valuable assistance in this pitching space. A start up business may be pitching for investment, whilst an established business may want to expand its customer base. In some instances, the pitch may be delivered by one person or two or more representatives, or by a team, but there are some factors common to all scenarios.

Some of the more common aspects of addressing this important subject, as reported by our business coaching professionals, include:

• Know your product or service inside out. In one sentence, explain what your business offers i.e. the “what” and “why” of your products or services.
• Do your research and understand who your customers are and what are their needs and problems, and how you meet or solve these.
• Consider what marketing supports you need to promote your products or services e.g. slides, photographs, testimonials, brochures, and social media content such as articles, blogs etc.
• Focus on your value proposition. Include the use of case studies or examples to make it more compelling.
• Emphasise “why now?”. Explore how industry and customer demands have changed over time and why this makes your offering now even more compelling to customers.
• Focus on how you can compete in the market and why you have a unique competitive advantage.

There are many variations to creating a pitch. A very technical product or service will need to have considerable technical detail, whilst a less tangible product, service or concept needs an attractive descriptive approach highlighting how it can help your target customer.

Improving Your Delivery to an Audience

Practice, practice, practice to get your pitch to the point where it’s pitch perfect, but be relaxed and natural in your delivery. You should also display your belief and passion in your products or services.

Be aware of your business, products or services and your own strengths and weaknesses. To improve your delivery, a well-matched and experienced business coach or mentor can help you with the desirable competencies and delivery, and work with you to capitalise or improve them.

Demonstrate your unique selling point clearly and how it can benefit your customers. Command attention and trust, and make it clear that you mean what you say and believe in your products or services.

Business pitch is only one important area that your business mentor or business coach can assist you with. However, it is relevant to all businesses, as all businesses have customers and competition. Having a winning pitch will give you an edge towards your business success.

A business coach or mentor from International Business Mentors has broad business experience, including expertise in helping individuals to develop and deliver their winning pitch. Call us to organise business coaching or mentoring to help you with critical aspects of improvement in your own business performance and success.