Show — Don’t Tell — in Your Pitch
Usually in a business pitch, the founder proudly states their traction, raddles of their progress, and shares their next KPI goals. Though these measurements are important, this style of pitching can all be quite transactional.
Telling — highlighting data visualizations, clear succinct numbers, and those in-your-face metrics — does have a time and place in a startup pitch, but it should not be the crutch you rely on.
Instead of splattering metrics continuously, flip the pitch on its head.
Ask yourself: what do you want the audience to be left remembering… A number or a felling?
How can you show them what you are accomplishing rather than telling them a quantified result?
Showing — providing meaning behind the metrics — can create a much better emotional and mental response, leaving the audience with that image in their head even after they walk out of the room.
So, how can you show rather than tell in your pitch? Let’s take an example.
Example: The Metric Trap
Often times, we as founders get sucked into the jargon train and distill people and impact into MAUs, DAUs, and percentages of carbon reduced. These are critical figures, but do they really show your impact in its best light?
Let’s paint a picture with these numbers to spark an emotional reaction and resonance.
I was consulting and pitch prepping with a really cool startup in the future of work space in Europe. Their founders were working on employee engagement and mental health, and they had to pitch to senior stakeholders in their pilot study about the progress of their business.
In their original pitch, they stated that there was a 40% drop in sick days with staff while teams were using their service.
Now, there is nothing wrong with saying this, but it felt very “telly.” Together we could really hit home this metric by bolstering it with a contextual meaning, especially what this meant for this HR department.
To resonate with the Head of HR and senior suite they were pitching to, we workshopped it to reframe it into a more powerful and evocative statement.
We put that meaning behind the metrics. Now, we could show the senior leaders the impact by saying, 21 hard-working employees were healthier in the workplace, and they saved the company over 168 hours in lost productivity time due to sickness.
The senior leaders could visualize in their heads what 21 people looked like in their cubicles working hard, and more importantly, being happy doing so. The stakeholders could picture the time saved and the increased productivity.
Most importantly, the audience could leave that room with a vignette in their head of this company and feel their business’s impact.
This is not a one-size-fits all, but it is a useful tip when speaking with audience that care about impact.
Now, one cannot always “show” in a pitch as there is a time and place for clear cut numbers. But, ask yourself if there is a better way to evoke emotion with your audience by showing — and not telling.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. And, if you want more support on perfecting “showing” in your pitch, register your interest for my Pitching Masterclass Series.
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