What is a Pitch Deck and What to Include in a Professional Pitch Deck

A pitch deck is a brief presentation (typically consisting of 10 to 15 slides) that businesses construct to provide potential investors a brief idea of your business plans, technology, team, target market, financial forecast, and any other relevant information that would help convince them to invest in your venture. Here are 11 slides that your professional pitch deck must include if you want to succeed.

Characteristics of a successful pitch deck

Creating a successful pitch deck is a significant undertaking, requiring careful thought and research. In addition, it should be:

• Clearly written – don’t overload your deck with a lot of words in a small font. Instead, focus on images and allow your presentation to enhance them.
• Compelling – using data from pre-tests, surveys, or citations to respected sources to support your business model and financial projections
• Organized and tailored for your audience
• Concise
• Organized
• Focused on elements that will convince your audience that this is a viable venture

Elements of a pitch deck

1. Vision and the value you promise to provide

Ideally, this should be a one-sentence overview of your business and its value proposition. Instead of using industry and tech jargon, keep this simple to understand. If you compare your value proposition to a well-known company (like saying, “We are the Amazon of retail business” in your pitch), make sure your business model is similar to the company in reference and that your pitch makes sense. Otherwise, it would ruin everything even when your pitch has several great things on offer in the following few slides.

2. The problem/pain point you aim to solve

Unless it’s a pain point you are addressing or a problem you are solving, demonstrating your business has a solid foundation could prove to be an uphill task (and an even more challenging task to become profitable). That’s because consumers don’t purchase products; they seek to solve problems and search for a solution. Hence, ask your pitch deck designer to present the pain points or issues troubling a specific consumer group and how you propose to solve them or are already solving them.

Though you can talk about other solutions (if any) in the market, it’s advisable to stay away from making a comparative analysis of how your solution is better at this point since you will have the chance to do it later on with some other slides of your professional pitch deck. To make a favorable impression on your potential investors, try to make the problem as concrete as you can so that your pitch appears to be relevant. Attempt to quantify how many consumers face this problem or will face this problem in the near future. At the same time, weave a story that not only touches upon the pain point/problem and the solution but also helps the investors understand your business and objectives better.

3. Target market

From talking about your target market and the market size (if you haven’t done so already) to explaining your plans on positioning the company to grab a share of this market, this slide is your chance to prove your product/service has a reachable and realistic market.

If you can mine some relevant data, let your investors know the amount of money people or businesses currently spend in the specific area of the market as that would give them a fair idea of the total market size and bring forward the scale and scope of problem your are solving or pain-point you are addressing. But don’t go overboard trying to define your target market as large as possible; be realistic. Instead of targeting a wide-open market, investors always prefer to have a specific market that’s real and reachable.

4. The solution

This is your pitch deck designer’s chance to showcase your product and explain how it aims to address and solve the pain points/problems that you talked about in slide two earlier. Though it’s tempting to have this slide positioned toward the beginning of your pitch, resist the urge. Follow the blueprint of classic storytelling where you focus on the problem, emphasize how it has made life more challenging for a quantifiable number of people, and finally, unveil your product as the solution. Instead of focusing on your product and proclaiming how great it is, you should focus on the target market, their problems, and how your solutions solve them. To tell a story that impresses your investors, stick to this format where the focus is on customers, not you or your offerings. Try to use images as an integral part of your storytelling since they have a more significant impact than mere words or texts.

5. Revenue model

After you have explained your product, it’s time to talk about how your business plans to make money. From your product pricing to how and by whom the bills are paid (say, by advertisers in the case of some content sites), you need to explain your business model here. It’s essential to differentiate your offerings at this stage (whether aimed at luxury buyers or budget buyers) and explain how your prices suit the current competitive landscape of the market.

6. Solution validation and milestones

If your product already has some early adopters or sales, make sure to talk about them here. Since they validate your solution (product) and minimize the risk associated with your business model, investors will be interested in them. Suppose you don’t have anything related to solution validation. In that case, you can talk about your planned milestones, any specific goals that you have already achieved, and the roadmap for achieving the planned ones.

7. Strategy for marketing and sales

From how you plan on getting your offering in front of your target market and encouraging them to make a purchase to various sales channels you plan to employ and holding onto (and then expanding) your sales figures, you need to put forward your marketing and sales strategies at this stage. In case your strategies are different from those of your competitors, drawing attention to them would help you score some valuable points with the investors.

8. Team

Focus on your key team members, their experience, and earlier successes to show why they (together with you) are the right people to start and expand this business. In case you don’t have a team in place yet, discuss the key posts that the company needs to fill and explain why they are crucial to implementing your plans and helping the company grow.

9. The financial figures and plan

Though investors will anticipate seeing your profit and loss statement, sales forecasts, and cash flow statement for at least three years (if you have an established business or projections based on data collected from reliable sources), you don’t need to include detailed spreadsheets in your professional pitch deck as the format isn’t conducive to easy reading and consumption. Instead, use charts that depict total customers, sales, total expenses, and profits. Try to be as realistic as possible while discussing the assumptions you have made to reach your sales figures. Be prepared to talk about your key expense drivers, too.

10. Competition

Every business has to face some competition. Even when there’s no direct competition, in case you are targeting a completely untouched and unexplored market, you have to compete indirectly with solutions that your potential customers already use to address their needs. You need to explain how your product performs compared to similar or alternate solutions already available in the market and the USP (unique selling proposition) that makes it different or better than the competitors. The key is to emphasize how you are different from your competitors and what would make people choose your product/service over others.

11. Investment and your planned use of the money

This is the final step when you actually ask for funds. Discuss the amount of money you plan to raise, why you need it, and how you plan to use it. Your potential investors need to know how you plan to use their funds and how the money they invest would help you achieve your business goals. If you already have some investors, this is the time when you focus on the other investors, telling them why you need their money and explaining why they should put their money into your venture.

A key element in this slide is to discuss what investors can expect from their investment, usually equity in the business and a seat on the board to help safeguard their investment. Often, these board members are worth more than the cash invested, as they are commonly business experts who can guide you away from mistakes you might otherwise make.

Investors are also interested in an exit strategy, as they don’t plan to keep their money in your business indefinitely. They want a mechanism to get their money out again so they can invest in another business venture within five years.

Conclusion

Some additional slides that you can ask your pitch deck designer to include could be the ones related to key business partnerships, exit strategy (as discussed earlier), and a demo of your product prototype or your service screenshot (in case they are applicable).

Go ahead and design your professional pitch deck from Slides IQ – A Presentation Design Agency along these lines to become successful in raising money from potential investors.

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