For the next two weeks (11 to 22 July 2022), over ten days I will be joining the team of Bart Jenezon from 1inspring to help entrepreneurs start their entrepreneurial journey.
Over the course of two weeks, more than 10 experts will come together to help you as entrepreneurs tackle each part of your journey and teach you the expertise you need to gain in order to succeed in your journey.
For my part, I will concentrate on your communication skills. The first part of your journey starts with you communicating your idea, selling your product to prospective clients and buyers, and selling your idea to those who might be interested in investing in that future.
Each of those is a separate message and each message needs to be clear and concise. What’s more, each message needs to be tailored to the medium in which it is being used. Email, Facebook, WhatsApp, and live pitch presentations, are all different mediums. You need to be able to distinguish each one and master the art of communication, speaking to your audience. Note the last key word here “Audience”.
Before you start writing your message, you need to ask yourself a few simple questions:
— who is my audience?
— What is my final objective for this communication?
— What would the audience need to hear in order for me to reach that objective?
The last question is a tough one. You don’t decide what the audience wants to hear, but you have to really change shoes, put yourself in their place and ask “What problem am I solving for them?”
In case you are fundraising and your audience is investors, stop for a second and ask yourself the question “What problem am I solving for the investor?” is it that they have a problem where they need my solution?
Do I need to repeat the above? It may be that the investor can identify with your problem and it is even better if they identify with that problem because then they can see the need more clearly, however more than often the investor’s problem is something else. The investor has money that he/she needs to invest in order to get a better return. Banks give you a very low rate of return, funds and other type of investments are also limited although more interesting than banks.
More than often a business can give a healthy Return On Investment (ROI)and depending on the product the return on investment could surpass traditional investment offers.
In simple terms when you pitch to an audience of investors, you need to arise their excitement about the opportunity of a feasible and healthy return on investment. And this is where the second keyword comes in #feasible.
If you can work on communicating your message to your audience, excite them about how you are going to solve their problem, proving that it is feasible and that they get a return on their investment then it does not matter whether you pitch to investors or end-users, you will always be able to achieve your objective. It is simple and it starts with the three simple questions I posed above.