Structuring Your Pitch

Presenting: The secret to starting a business quickly. (And why you don’t need to wait for business cards to start.)

This article contains the most IMPORTANT SECRET of business. Close the curtains, turn off the lights, shield your screen from prying eyes. This secret is for you and for you only.

Are you ready? Here we go…

The number one secret to starting a business quickly:

Sell something to someone.

That is all, thank you very much and goodnight. *Alan & Simon retire*

Ok, there’s a little more to it but when you strip everything back, this is the most important element of your business and it often gets lost in the thrill, excitement and seduction of logos, websites and business cards.

Most people who are starting a business put sales off to the end rather than starting with it.
Why do they do this? Because sales scares them, because getting rejected scares them, because it is uncomfortable!

Most people don’t make much progress when they start because they spend most of their time on making sure the logo is right, the business cards are designed beautifully and the website is perfect. If you are doing this, then you are avoiding the most important part of starting a business, which is sales.

Let’s look at how you pitch your business when you are starting.

When we ask people about their business and they’re still talking after 10 minutes, we start looking for the exits. Actually, we probably switched off nine minutes and thirty seconds ago.

Most people miss the chance of sales, or introductions to potential customers because their pitch is either INCOHERENT or BORING. We want to help you structure your pitch clearly, level up on excitement (if you’re not excited about your business no-one else will be) and then add some pixie dust to make it really come alive!

Why you need a clear and exciting pitch:

If you’re not CLEAR about what you’re doing, no one else will be.
It helps keeps you FOCUSED on what you’re supposed to be doing.
Most people talk for TOO LONG and bore the pants off their audience.
If you’re not EXCITED about your business, no one else is going to be.

This next section is CRITICAL to your success.
It will help you to ENGAGE, EXCITE AND SELL your business to yourself, your friends and family and COMPLETE strangers.

WHAT you sell and WHO you sell it to.

Here’s what to do:
First, you need to be clear about who you are selling to.
Remember, if you try and sell EVERYTHING to EVERYBODY, you’ll end up selling NOTHING to NOBODY.

It costs thousands to reach ‘anybody’ with marketing messages via TV, billboards, sponsoring major events, however, you can reach specific customers for free using incredible tools on social media, through networking and other sales/marketing activities.

If you’re not getting the results you want, it’s for this reason: FOCUS.
What we’re about to give you is the next level of focus and it is CRITICAL to your success. If you don’t have a focused sales message, if you don’t have a focused target market, if you don’t focus your activity, you won’t make progress.

You need to write two sentences:

Sentence one: describe your product or service
Sentence two: describe your TARGET customer – this is the customer who is MOST LIKELY to buy from you.

Remember, if you’re tempted to describe your customer as ‘anybody’, you’ll end up selling NOTHING to NOBODY. Here are some questions to help you define your TARGET customer – they might not all be relevant so choose the ones that help you and try to be as specific as possible:

What is their age range?
Be careful with this, the temptation is to be too broad. Like John, who was selling women’s clothing online and said his target customer was women in the UK aged 18-45. Too broad! Are you telling me an 18-year old would be as excited by the clothing (and model pictures) as a 45 year old? Of course not! (Although we’re not here to judge) He eventually figured out his target was actually 40 to 45-year old women.
Are your customers MOST LIKELY to be male or female?
Where do they live?
Be as specific as you can! What city? Which neighbourhood? We were helping one gentleman launch a grounds maintenance business and he identified the 100 homes closest to his house to be his target customers because he wanted to walk to work. Knowing that, gives him a target and helps him to start selling immediately. Remember, it’s the customers who are most likely to buy; these are the ones to TARGET. If someone outside of your target group emails you and says they want to buy something, what do you say? YES!
What products, services, movies, or music are they fans of?
If you can work out what your customers are into, you can work out where they hang out and how to get to them!
Where do they work? What businesses are they from?
If you are selling business to business (B2B), then you need to identify what type of business is going to buy from you and who within that business you need to talk to.
We sell our courses mainly to housing associations and the people we need to talk to within those businesses are Head of Housing, Head of Communities, or Resident Engagement.
Knowing this makes it really easy for us to find people’s details on their websites, LinkedIn etc. and then contact them directly. The more specific we have got about who we are pitching to, the easier it has become for us to win business.
The key is to get as focused as possible on who your dream customers are.
What are you selling and who are you selling it to?

This process forms the basis of your pitch and the more specific you are, the more successful you’ll be.

Here’s the version we had in the early days of the Rebel Business School:
“We sell inspirational start-up training events to housing associations to help their residents make money doing what they love.”

Jade from Leeds UK is a graphic designer. Her style is influenced by Cath Kidston so her version is:
She sells beautifully designed accessories to women over 35 who are fans of Cath Kidston products.