It seems like there’s some difficulty getting started on a “pitch” so here’s a suggestion.
Rather than suggest another “template”, think about your pitch as “telling your story”. Every business is unique – at least in some aspect – so there’s no “one-size-fits-all” template that is the best vehicle for telling your story. However, the story should answer all or most of the following questions:
- What’s the idea?
- Does it solve a problem, or create an opportunity? (BTW, to a great extent an opportunity can always be expressed as the inverse of a problem J ).
- Who has that problem?
Can you describe a typical customer? Organization?
- How many people/organizations have that problem?
- What is your solution? Can you make money from it?
- Would they be willing to pay to have the problem fixed?
- How much would they pay? (If the answer is $0, then where will your revenue come from?)
- Is there anyone else offering a solution to their problem? Who? How many are buying it? What’s the price?
- Why would they use/buy your solution instead of one of these others?
- How are you going to identify and reach these customers?
- How are you going to convince them to use your solution rather than someone else’s?
- How many will you sell, and how much revenue will you generate?
- Finally, why is this team going to be able to achieve all of the above?
I like to think of pitches as a story that answers these questions. The order is somewhat important, but only as an aid to the telling, and the uniqueness of every business will result is a uniqueness of the order.