These are pitches that you do by yourself without any tools or slide decks. This isn’t your sales proposal that you do with a sales deck in an office. This is your initial pitch that you do when you are cold-calling, when you are networking, when you are chatting about your business to those you just met. Every person needs to know how to pitch in less than 2 minutes.
Now, depending on the scenario, there are different time lengths that you want to constrain your pitch with.
- Two-minute pitch: When you are at networking events with peers, with investors or attending conferences and classes, you want to use a two-minute pitch. You are in-person and have time to discuss with the other person.
- 1-minute pitch: When you are cold-calling or chatting with friends, family and those you just met, you want to use a 1-minute pitch. You may not be able to engage that person for long, but you still need to properly explain what you deal with.
- 30-second elevator pitch: When you are in an elevator or talking to someone who has to run very quickly, you may be in line at the coffee-shop, etc. You should use the 30-second elevator pitch.
Breakdown of an Effective Pitch
With how to pitch in less than 2 minutes we recommend starting with a 2-minute pitch. Create the full 2-minute pitch first, and then to create a 1-minute pitch and a 30-second pitch, just condense down the two-minute pitch into the essentials. Now for the full-Investor Pitch, there are 6 parts (But for a Sales Pitch, there are only 5 parts).
1) Introduction (15 seconds)
2) Problem statement (30 seconds)
3) Market opportunity (15 seconds): for an investor pitch only! For sales pitches, just add the 15 seconds to any other sections.
4) Solution statement (30 seconds)
5) What makes you Unique (15 seconds)
6) What you are Asking the customer for (15 seconds)
If you are giving this pitch to an investor or a bank, you want to give them one additional piece of information, and that is the Market Opportunity. We’ll explain each section in depth.
1) Introduction
The first part of your two-minute pitch is your introduction. You want to take only the first 15 seconds of your pitch to explain:
1) Who you are
2) What business you are representing
3) What you’re selling
4) Background
5) Other businesses that you’ve previously run
For example; Good morning, my name is Fred Matt, and I’m a sales representative at Millenial, a software development company that focuses on two main products, custom software and property management. We have developed products for companies in the U.S. and Europe that have improved their operational efficiency through automating processes. Can I talk to you for a couple of minutes about our solutions?
2) Problem
The second thing you are going to talk about is the problem that your product or service is trying to address. Talk about the broad industry problem, the customer need that no one is addressing, and the pain points customers are having with existing products.
Example: ”Due to payments being done on multiple platforms, most businesses are not able to update and reconcile data in real time. They have to manually update this data into their accounting systems. Currently there are very few software companies providing applications that upload and reconcile mobile money transactions data….”
3) Market Opportunity
We won’t cover this section of the pitch as it is meant more to convey to an investor or bank what the size of the market is and what profit potential your business has. You wouldn’t want to tell your potential customer this information.
4) Solution
In this section, you are going to give the solution to the problem you just addressed. In this case, your product/service is the solution. So talk for 30 seconds about what your product/service does and how it addresses the problem and pain points you laid out. Incorporate the positioning points that address the pain points you laid out in the problem statement.
Example “Millenial provides effective solutions through its experienced software engineers based locally and around the globe. Because we believe in giving you the best, we ensure that all our products are well-designed, tested and also built capacity of the users. Unlike other soft development companies in Miami, we assign you a dedicated account manager to offer you support after the commissioning of the project.
5) Unique
After you laid out what your solution is, which is what your business does and what it does well, you are going to say what makes your solution unique. Basically, in this section you are going to talk about why your product/service is better than any other existing offering today. You want to talk about why people should use your solution instead of someone else’s.
Example: “Millenial provides world-class automation solutions through its experienced software engineers based locally and around the globe. Because we believe in giving you the best, we ensure that all our products are well-designed, tested and capacity building of the users. Unlike other soft development companies in Miami, we assign you a dedicated account manager to offer you support after the commissioning of the project.
6) Ask
And lastly, you want to end your pitch on a specific Ask. For this initial 2-minute pitch, you are unlikely to close the deal right away. You are more likely trying to introduce your business and try to set up a follow-up meeting in person or with a more senior decision maker.
How to pitch in less than 2 minutes does not end there. At the end of your pitch, you can ask if they would like a free demonstration of your product/service at their offices, if they would like to try a sample, you can ask them to come visit you at your store or office, you can ask them to download your app and explore, you can ask for a follow-up call or an in-person meeting to discuss how we can partner together. If this were an investor pitch, it is at this stage that you would ask for funding.
Example: If our solution sounds interesting to you, please check out our website for more information. I would also like to invite you to come to visit our office and meet some of our software engineers and project managers. In addition, we are having a customer event next month, and it would be great if you could attend it as well. I’ll send you an email with all of the details after this call. What do you think?
Conclusion
For someone to know how to pitch in Less Than 2 Minutes they must be clear on what they want to achieve out of the conversation. By the end of the pitch they can tell if they were successful if they have met their goals which can be a next meeting or closed sale.
