This document provides guidelines for an effective elevator pitch or business presentation. It discusses several key points: 1) Investors primarily consider market focus, sustainability, and entrepreneur characteristics. An elevator pitch should engage the audience in 30 seconds to 2 minutes. 2) Effective presentations start strongly, maintain attention, and end with a vision. Rehearsal is important to ensure a smooth delivery that highlights the main message. 3) Connecting emotionally with the audience through confidence, questions, and memorable phrases is important. Presenting ideas with passion and engaging emotions can make a big difference.

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THE
ELEVATOR
PITCH

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Communicating the business idea
Sources:
 Colin Clark “The Impact of Entrepreneurs’ Investor Forum Pitch Presentation Skills on
Business Angels”
 Danilo Ballota, Public speaking and presentations a critical review: The caring
speaker, Lisbon, ISCTE, 2009
Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other,
so we can have some conversation
Mark Twain
The “Elevator Pitch” – How Investors Think
To make a great presentation or business pitch it’s important to consider how the investors’
mind works, and which are the main aspects that they usually consider to approve or reject
projects. According this research the main subjects that investors (venture capitalists, business
angels, private equity, State funding agencies, benefactors) take in consideration are in the
table 1 and 2 below.
An elevator pitch (or elevator speech or elevator statement) is a short summary used to
quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition. The
name "elevator pitch" reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the
time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes. In The Perfect
Elevator Speech, Aileen Pincus states that an elevator speech should "sum up unique aspects
of your service or product in a way that excites others." (Wikipedia)
TABLE 1: Type and frequency of Business Angel’s presentational comments

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TABLE 2: Frequency of Business Angel’s positive and negative presentational comments.
Considering the Business Angel’s mind‐set, it is important to create great presentations, with
clear and supported ideas, with a focus in the market with a sustainability business model.
Therefore, it is also important to expose your entrepreneur characteristics, and how you
should prepare a pitch session to investors.
Pitch session guide lines
1. Prepare and rehearse
I am easily satisfied with the very best
Winston Churchill
To make a great elevator speech, you must find the core message, with a great engage story,
and only then go on details. Choose the right words, to small and very well comprehensive
phrases, with an effective beginning and end, spotting the right place for humor, and using an
appropriate body language to the situation. It’s highly recommended to make a good
rehearsal, which will probably inspire you and gives you high confidence to “touch” the
audience. Be sure about how many time do you have, and Keep you on time, focused in
relevance information, and well synchronized with the presentation. If you have lot of
information and few time speeches, leave some smart questions inline to be asked by the
audience in the end of your speech – it will be a strategy to get some extra time. Prepare also
these answers.
 Key point: Take the time to prepare carefully each speech and rehearse
2. Start with a ‘bang’ end with a vision
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
In my end is my beginning
Thomas Carlyle, Mary Queen of Scots

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3. Care about connecting
It is very important to make a connection with the audience, showing confidence,
applying rhetoric questions, create a mental structure with the main ideas, expose a
clear mind‐set about the subjects, making some pauses to emphasizing, which means
that is important a certain degree of acting, but be sure the audience see it as
communication propose to telling the true, not to foist ideas.
 Key point: When speaking in public don’t present, just talk to people
4. Engage with emotions
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion
Dale Carnegie
To promote a connection between speaker and the audience, don´t just provide data
or information. Let the emotions flows, and make the difference between a great and
vibrating speech from just another one. Engage you public with emotions. “If you're
trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use
their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. (David
Ogilvy).
 Key point: Let emotions go
5. Presenting being present
Eighty percent of success is showing up
Woody Allen
The speaker must be conscientious that the audience is there to listening you and see
what you have to show them, and it must be your propose too – to present new idea
or proposals, to add more knowledge or to make a challenge to the audience, and at
last, if you don’t have any important to tell, you must entertain the audience at least.
In any situation, the speaker must communicate with a non‐verbal language as much
as the verbal. It is important to establish eye contact with the public, mind the posture,
use facial expression and gestures, take the space as a stage, and if possible, walk and
get close with the audience (Whiteford, 1999; Reynolds 2005; Gallo, 2005;).
 Key point: Talk slowly, pause and look at your public

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6. Learn to use some techniques
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men
Plato
Using rhetorical devices in communication, increase effectively the capacities of the
speaker and enlarge the possibilities to create empathy with the audience, and create
more impact, to spread his ideas. Thus, considering the audience, the message tone,
and the context of the presentation, the speaker may use some of the rhetoric devices
like: Rhetoric: analogies, simile, anaphoras, metaphors, etc..
 Anaphora: I have a dream (Martin Luther King)
 Chiasmus: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees
the opportunity in every difficulty’ (Winston Churchill)
 Analogy: The iron Curtain (Joseph Goebbels or Winston Churchill)
 Metaphor: All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players
(Shakespeare)
 Compare and contrast: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you
can do for your country
 Key point: Adapt your style to gradually integrate rhetoric, visual images,
stories and the rule of three
7. Humour works
A joke is a very serious thing
Winston Churchill
Some authors consider humor as a way to persuade the audience, even if it is in
advertising, education and business (Heinecke and Wallinger, 1997 in Lyttle, 2001;
Antion, 1998). However, it is very important analyze the atmosphere in the room, the
kind of the audience is in front of the speaker, and be sure that using humor will be
helpful to generate a good interaction and to break some ice, especially at the
beginning, because it helps the speaker to get some space in the stage, and create
additional motivation form audience. Using humor is not similar to pretend to be
funny. This technique must be used as a strategy to engage the audience, but
shouldn't go beyond of the reasonable situations. Indeed there is nothing more
embarrassing that trying to be funny in front of a glacial public (Audrieth, 1998).
 Key point: Humour works when speaking in public, but not always, not
everywhere and not for everyone

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8. “Kiss” with your public
I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one
Mark Twain
KISS – Keep It Short and Simple.
Don’t lose the audience in considerations without relevance. Nobody can retain large
messages with a lot of details, especially if most of them are insignificant. If the
audience is mostly potential investors, or potential clients, speak about your idea or
business, tease and persuade them until the climax point, and let them ask you to
become partners and if they can be part of it. This will be the best return that the
speaker could have from an audience on a business pitch session. If it doesn't goes like
this, that means you probably had failed your propose.
 Key point: Just give them the essential and never, never run too long.
The Elevator Pitch Guide: 45 presentation tips for startups
If you want to see more about this subject, you’ll find “The Elevator Pitch Guide: 45
presentation tips for startups”, with entrepreneurs testimonials in video, that may be
useful if are preparing your pitch session. Follow the link:
http://www.presenterimpossible.com/presentation/startup‐pitch‐how‐to