With investors receiving hundreds of pitch decks every year, how do you create a compelling presentation that can catch attention?
The best answer is to hire a pitch coach to help you, and Beth Susanne explains why.
Healthcare innovators and entrepreneurs pour their heart and soul into developing their medtech devices or products, knowing that these solutions can help improve healthcare, deliver better quality of care to patients, and even save lives.
But an innovative idea is not enough to succeed. If you’re an entrepreneur wanting to grow and scale, you need funding. You need to make a compelling pitch to pique the interest and capture the investor’s attention.
A study in pitching published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice revealed that entrepreneurs who showed signs of preparedness and a strong understanding of their material created credibility with investors and received more funding, regardless of the project.
Fine-tuning Healthcare Pitches
Beth is a global pitch coach based in Europe. For over 17 years, she has helped teams win billion-dollar projects. She has worked with more than 3300 teams, 350 of which are in healthcare, and has a success rate of 90%.
She became a pitch coach so she can help as many people as possible, do as much good as possible, for as many people as possible…quickly.
“There are certain signals investors are looking for. And you need to understand how to surface the key ideas that they’re looking to hear in a compelling way in order to get the results that you desire and deserve. And my key focus is to help them get the results quickly,” she said.
What should be included in the pitch?
Beth emphasizes that the following things be addressed: problem, solution and what makes it better, market, team, business model, traction, ask, and competition.
“I’ve worked in many different countries …with different cultures around the world. However, the initial three to five minute pitch, is the same worldwide,” Beth explains.
Investors are looking for ways to say no. They know that very few of the companies will be successful so their hope is to find that one company they know can bring a lot of profit.
Your pitch must be unique to stand out, capture an investor’s attention, and lead them to invest in your company. For that to happen, you have to know who you are talking to, adjust your pitch, knowing what to include, and what not to include.
Beth works with groups and individual founders. She also provides coaching by grouping different teams together and giving them time to do their three or four-minute pitches, receive feedback from her, and then have them co-coach each other. Doing this allows different teams to listen and learn from each other.
Beth works with entrepreneurs in all stages of funding, although her focus is on scale-ups, teams, founders and VC funds who are looking for two to a hundred million in funds. She coaches a broad spectrum of entrepreneurs in healthcare, from medtech to digital healthcare.
Pitch Ready, Visually Ready
Pitch meetings are not just about pitches. First impressions are important, and you want to give the best impression possible. It only takes seven seconds for people to get their first impression of you, and there are no second chances.
You want to make sure you and your presentation look the part. Supporting imagery in a presentation can provide context and communicate emotion much faster than a text heavy slide, so don’t be afraid to use the right images to do some of the heavy lifting, especially in problem slides.
Beth explains that when you attend a pitch meeting, whether in-person or online, “If you’re in a meeting, they’re judging you. They’re looking at you. The minute you come online and you sit there in your little rectangle, they’re assessing. Also, when you’re not pitching, they’re actually reading your body language, your eye contact, your lighting. They’re assessing and making decisions about you immediately.“
Beth said it is important to plan your set up ahead of time: (lighting, laptops, microphones, green screens, etc), especially if you are going to present with a teammate.
Having an incredible pitch coach like Beth can help you be more confident in presenting yourself, knowing what to say, when to say it and how to say it. Check out what her clients think about her coaching process on this page: https://bethsusanne.com/clients/testimonials/
Aside from pitch intensives and the recent addition of online pitch coaching, Beth and her team also offers sales training for teams that are ready to scale, keynote speaking, executive coaching, and strategic planning. For investors, Beth can help you connect with different tech and health companies.
With Beth’s help, you can communicate effectively and powerfully, allow your ideas to be heard clearly, deliver value to the right market, and… raise the funds you need!
For more information on Beth Susanne, please visit https://bethsusanne.com/. Listen to my full interview with her on https://outcomesrocket.health/master-pitch/2021/09/.
