Hello, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be talking about
how to show the target customers in a pitch deck. Before we get started, make sure that
you hit that Subscribe button, and this way, you will never miss out on any of the videos
that we roll out every week. Putting the people that you’re going to
go after on that pitch deck, on that document that you’re using to raise money is going
to make it or break it because it’s going to help the investor determine whether or
not you’ve done your homework and how well you know your customers, and knowing your
customers is absolutely everything. In today’s video, we’re going to be breaking it down
for you, giving you all the insights and actionable steps to make it happen. So with that being
said, let’s get into it. The number one factor for success is listening
and listening to your customers. That is going to help you understand how you can ultimately
bring a solution to whatever problem that they’re experiencing and essentially hit
what people call product/market fit. That is when you come up with something valuable
that you can’t even keep up with the demand that you are experiencing – product and
the services literally flying off the shelves. I can’t stress enough how many times I have
heard of entrepreneurs that have gone to pitch an investor, and they were with their feet
up, they were looking at their phones, and all of a sudden, when it was time to talk
about the customers, you could see people putting their feet on the floor, putting their
phones down, and listening. Knowing your customers is absolutely everything and the number one
thing that is going to determine whether or not you’re going to find your direction
to succeed. When you’re positioning your target customers,
the investor is going to want to see what kind of overlap your product or your service
is having with other larger players because those larger players are going to ultimately
acquire your business and give that investor a return on their investment. Is your service
targeting certain customers where maybe a Google or a Facebook or an Amazon may be interested?
Those are essential things that you want to keep in consideration, especially in your
narrative when you’re pitching the type of customers that you’re going after and
also how you’re showcasing it on your own pitch deck.
The use of funds is also something that goes hand-in-hand. As I have said multiple times
on some of my other videos, it’s all about the flow and the structure that your pitch
deck is moving along with. For example, in this case, you want to know how this is going
in line with how much money you’re going to be requiring to get in front of those customers
and to close them, and to get them excited about what you’re doing.
So, the use of funds, whatever amount of money that you’re going out to market and saying
that you’re raising, it needs to be in sync with the amount of money that is going to
cost you, as well, to get those customers to hear about you, to be excited about you,
and to take action to buy your product or your service.
When it comes to defining your own customer, you want to be as detailed and as specific
as possible so that the investor, when they see it, they’re going be like, “Wow! They’ve
done their homework. They know exactly who they’re going after.” So some of the ingredients
and the different things that you want to look out for are the following:
Job title Income
Education Net worth
Pains and aspirations Brand affiliations
Which communications do they use? What time of day or month they take certain
actions Favorite colors, fonts, devices, etc.
Obviously, this could be a little bit broad, but you want to be as detailed and hyper-focused
as possible so that it comes across when you’re pitching the investors and telling them how
you’re defining the customers that you’re going after. And, believe it or not, they’re
going to ask you, and they’re going to be paying a lot of attention when you answer.
When it comes to actually positioning the target customers in your own pitch deck, you
want to be very simple; you want to use beautiful visuals that are exactly showcasing what those
types of customers look like, and maybe the other things that you want to add of additional
interests or data points that you want to include in bullets and in text. So you need
to have the nice balance between the text on the one end and then also the visuals.
But the visuals, right away when they actually land on that slide, it needs to tell them
exactly the type of customers that you’re going after.
The market slide is also going to go in sync with your target customers. You want to talk
about numbers; you want to talk about the total addressable market; you want to talk
about how that’s growing over the course of time, like the compounding annual growth
rate that goes with that. You can find that online with a simple Google search that can
help you with that. You don’t need to pay thousands of dollars for a report.
Then, the other thing is how big it is. Here, investors want to see amounts in the billions.
If it’s not over a billion, then don’t do that. You’ve got to keep looking. There
has to be a bigger market. You need to think big when it comes to the market because ultimately,
the market is going to justify the risk of the investment, of the investors, and it’s
going to also potentially limit their own investment. Investors would prefer to invest
in an average team that is executing in a massive market versus investing in an incredible
team that is executing in a small market because that is ultimately going to limit the potential
outcome. On the problem slide, you’re going to essentially
determine what is exactly the pain that your customers are dealing with? The more detailed,
the more relatable that you can make it, maybe like that investor themselves directly have
dealt with that problem – maybe their father, mother, sister, but it’s something that
they had direct or indirect exposure to, which is going to make a big difference if you position
it in that light. The solution is a continuation of that. Again,
honing in another time on your target customer is a really nice flow or follow-up to the
problem slide, and you want to go into detail as to what you’re bringing to market.
With that being said, I would love to hear what you guys are up to. Put it on the comment
section below. Hit a Like, and then also Subscribe to the video so that you don’t miss out
on all the videos that we’re rolling out every week. And if you’re raising money,
shoot me a note at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com. We’d love to help out. Thank you so much
for watching.