How To Pitch To Investors – An Expert Guide

How to pitch for investment? What’s the best way to pitch investors? What do you do when pitching investors? What are the top pitch presentation tips for investor pitches?

Master The Art of Pitching to Investors

Will you soon be pitching investors?  Are you feeling completely confident? If not, don’t worry – it’s perfectly normal. Here, we’ll guide you through our expert tips on how to pitch to investors successfully, from making a great first impression to delivering a winning pitch presentation.

These essential tips for fundraising success are equally valid whether you are an established private equity fund raising Fund VI, or if you are a mid-market company pitching for scale-up capital.When you pitch investors, you want to be successful.  But how do you pitch to investors convincingly?  What do investors look for in a pitch?   That’s where our pitch presentation tips become valuable. Learn how to win a pitch.

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TL;DR – How To Pitch to Investors

Avoid common investor pitch mistakes: keep your story clear, be confident, address challenges openly, and speak the investor’s language. Practise like an athlete, not an actor—continuously refine your pitch and team presentation. Remember the pitch is about the investor, not about you. Read our 11 top tips for pitching investors below.

After pitching, always follow up. Thank investors, provide any requested details, and keep them updated on progress. Even if you don’t secure funding immediately, learn from the experience and improve for next time.

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Pitching to investors is a hard-won skill. 
The greatest challenge most people face is that they only present to investors a few times in their career.  Or if you are pitching to investors regularly, you probably learned on the job. Whereas we’ve been helping firms improve their investor pitches for over 15 years.

We help private companies, private equity-owned businesses, fund managers and public companies improve their investor presentations.  

We know how to pitch to investors.
We’ve seen what works. 
And we can help you too

First.  A Pitch Presentation to Investors is More Than the Pitch Deck. 

When we say ‘investor pitch’ we mean your investor story, your pitch deck and how you and your team comes across in investor pitch meetings – the whole package.  Every element needs to be right to win the investment you want.  

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Your Investor Pitch Development Best-Practice Process

To creating an effective investor pitch presentation you should follow a structured process. In our experience, this requires clarity, storytelling, and refinement. A strong pitch presentation captures investor interest, builds confidence, and leads to funding discussions.

Based on our 15 years of experience writing investor pitches, here’s how we go about developing winning investor pitches:

1. Identify Your Core Investor Messages

Before crafting your pitch, define the key messages you want investors to remember. These should highlight your company’s unique value, market opportunity, competitive edge, and growth potential.

Talk about what makes your business investable—traction, revenue potential, strong leadership, or disruptive innovation. Keep your messages clear, concise, and backed by evidence.

If you do this well, you can summarise your entire investor pitch in no more than 3 or 4 lines. This is often the toughest part of creating a powerful investor pitch, and that’s why we have created the BBA Messaging Cracker Process.

2. Create a Compelling Narrative

Investors connect with stories, not just numbers. Frame your business journey as a compelling narrative. Explain the problem you solve, why now is the right time, and how your solution stands out. Bring in real-world examples, customer testimonials, or data points that reinforce your story. A strong narrative makes your pitch memorable and persuasive.

3. Develop a Powerful Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a short, impactful summary of your business. In under 30 seconds, you should be able to explain what your company does, who it serves, and why it matters. Keep it simple, engaging, and enthusiastic. This pitch sets the stage for deeper investor conversations, so make sure it sparks curiosity and interest.

4. Develop Your Pitch Deck

Your pitch deck is a visual tool that supports your verbal pitch. It should be concise, well-structured, and visually engaging. Key slides to include in your pitch deck frequently include the problem, solution, market opportunity, business model, traction, financials, team, and funding ask. Avoid information overload—each slide should reinforce your core messages without overwhelming investors. Learn more about creating winning pitch decks

5. Practise Investor Meetings

Pitching is a skill that improves with practice. Run through your presentation with mentors, colleagues, or a professional investor pitch coach. Simulate investor meetings, answer tough investor questions, and refine your responses. Practising in different settings helps you stay confident, adaptable, and ready for real investor interactions. Read more about how to prepare for investor meetings.

6. Keep Getting Better

Investor feedback is valuable, even if you don’t secure funding immediately. Listen to investor concerns, refine your pitch, and iterate based on what resonates. Track which parts of your pitch generate interest and which raise doubts. Continuous improvement will increase your chances of success in future meetings.

A well-prepared investor pitch not only increases your funding prospects but also sharpens your overall business strategy. Keep refining and improving until your pitch is as strong as your vision.

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Whether you are pitching regularly to institutional investors, or pitching your business to a trade buyer or you are raising money from an external investor, you need to be compelling when you pitch to investors. We’ve been creating investor pitch decks and coaching teams to pitch investors for over 15 years. These are some of our top tips:

Now, let’s review each of these pitch presentation tips in more detail:

Tips for Pitching Investors

1.      Understand your investor

Before you start crafting your pitch, it’s crucial you understand who you’ll be presenting to. Research the investment firm: what industries do they often invest in? What deals have they done recently? What have they said publicly? Who are the key decision-makers? What’s their investment process like? Knowing this will help you tailor your pitch to their specific interests.

To be really persuasive, you need to know why an investor should be interested. You may think an investor wants to make money. But making money is often not enough. After all, there are many ways to make money.

Instead, you want to uncover what else your investor is looking for. For example, What is their risk appetite? How important are ESG concerns to them? Does this investment confer some sort of status by association with other investors?

Because every investor is different, there is no single, cookie-cutter approach to this. So you need to run your investor pitch meetings in a way that you can discover what your investor is really looking for. And when you understand your investor’s motivation, you’ll find it much easier to persuade them because you will be talking to their concerns.

However, the most effective pitches go one step further. These pitches are based on extensive research about the people on the other side of the table:

1. What are their investment goals?
2. What are their backgrounds?
3. Why might they want to buy into your investment?

If your entire investor pitch is oriented around these questions, you’ll have a much greater chance of success.

How do you achieve this?  One powerful techniques is to ask questions.  For example:

• ‘Have you seen this before?’
• ‘Does that make sense?’
• ‘What are your thoughts on what we’ve shown you so far?’

Once you understand your investor, you’ll find it much easier to pitch an investor effectively.

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2.      Put your investor at the centre of attention

When you pitch for investment, what role do you take? And what role does your investor take?  Get this right in your investment pitch, and you have a much better chance of success.

Shakespeare wrote that “all the world’s a stage”, and on that stage, you want your investor, not you, to take the starring role.  Perhaps it’s not surprising that one of the most common complaints we hear from investors is that those pitching haven’t tailored what they’re saying to the people in the room. Typically, investors don’t want to be ‘taken through’ a generic presentation.  Your pitch should be tailored.  For example, you can ask investors what they’d like to focus on, then build your presentation around that.

Of course, adapting your pitch on the fly is not as easy as performing a pre-prepared monologue. It requires that you know your material inside-out. It demands more preparation and rehearsal. You’ll need a coach to help you get there.

HOW TO PITCH INVESTORS SUCCESSFULLY

If you want to be really successful when pitching investors, call us today to discuss our investor pitch coaching. Our team has been supporting investor pitches for 15 years and we’d be delighted to help you.

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Why Pick Benjamin Ball Associates for Your Investor Pitch Coaching

At Benjamin Ball Associates, we’ve been coaching business people to improve their investor pitches for over 15 years.  Our coaching is fast and effective.  We work with individuals and with companies, one-to-one and in groups.  Call us today to learn more.

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”

Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

Our most popular training courses include:

• Presentation Coaching
• Public Speaking Coaching
• Investor Pitch Support and Coaching

Trusted by some of the most successful companies globally

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

Speak to an expert. Get a free consultation

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3.      Describe what’s special about your investment opportunity

You need to explain what’s different and specific about your investment opportunity. What do I mean by this?

For example: Imagine you have invented an improved mousetrap. What is it about your mousetrap business that makes it special?

• Is it cheaper?
• Does it capture mice unharmed?
• Does it catch more mice?
• Is it more reliable?
• Are you selling a service rather than a product?

All of these may be true, but to explain your idea – and get the investors you want – you need to be clear about the one big idea that makes your pitch special.

For example, recently we helped a large SaaS business that provides services to banks. They save banks money, save time, and are highly scalable. All of these are relevant problems for banks. But with our client, we worked out that their service gave a bank a competitive advantage. This was because the service also created a much, much better customer experience. And this was the “killer” difference, not those other benefits.

To transform your investor pitch, make sure you have uncovered what makes your idea really special. If you have not yet worked out the one brilliant idea underpinning your pitch, speak to our team and ask about our Cracker Programme that will uncover it for you.

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4.      Make an impression that sticks

An essential strategy you want to deploy when pitching investors is to be more memorable. If you have a memorable investor pitch  you increase your chances of progressing beyond “just a first meeting”.

It’s a real challenge to make a memorable investor pitch. Investors see countless pitches and have more investment opportunities than ever. So, if you are pitching to investors, it’s much harder to stand out.

Here’s how to make a strong first impression:

• Build Rapport: When you Introduce yourself, aim for a connection. Find common ground with your investor to build rapport. Perhaps you know people in common, perhaps you went to the same school, perhaps you used to work in the same city.  Any connection can help.
• Show Passion: Your enthusiasm for your business is contagious. Let your passion for your idea, team, and industry shine through.
• Be Yourself: Authenticity is key. Investors are looking to back people they believe in, so it’s important they see you as genuine and sincere in your presentation.

Much of the work we do at BBA is to help funds and businesses craft their investment propositions so that they are memorable and therefore more investable.  For example, one technique is DON’T BE BORING. If your pitch sounds just like everyone else’s, you’ll be forgotten quickly. Instead, intrigue us and appeal to our natural curiosity. Is there something counter-intuitive about your approach? Get investors thinking (but not too hard) and they are more likely to remember you.

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5.      Craft your pitch carefully

Your pitch should be clear, concise, and engaging. Here are some key elements of your investor pitch to work on:

• Elevator Pitch: Perfect your elevator pitch, a 10-30 second summary of your business that can grab an investor’s attention. Explain the problem you solve, your solution, and your target market. Make this compelling.
• Presentation Structure: Structure your presentation logically, taking your audience on a journey. Cover essential points like the problem you solve, your value proposition, your target market, your competitive advantage, your financial projections, and your funding request.  See below for more details on possible presentation structures.
• Slides: Use visuals strategically. Limit your slides to 10-12 with clear and concise information.  Don’t drown them in PowerPoint. Have a look at our pitch deck audit to improve your pitch deck.

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6.      Use stories when pitching to investors

Facts get forgotten; stories get repeated. Turn your pitch into a story. Tell stories within your pitch. Get away from the dull “deep” dive into detail on every page and instead help us understand the big picture. Then you can fill in the details where we need them.

When you use stories in your investor pitch, you can bring to life complex, hard-to-grasp ideas.  Stories help investors understand and stories make it easier for others to talk about you.  Uncover your stories and learn how to use stories in your investor pitch.

Weave a compelling story around your business. People connect with stories, so use storytelling to make your pitch memorable and effective. How do you do that? While you are meeting, share stories about your business; discuss what works and what’s still to do; help them better understand you and your plans. Like this, you build trust and understanding during your pitch meeting.

 

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7.      Simplify your pitch even more

If your pitch presentation to investors is easy to explain, it’s also easy to remember. But creating a simple investor pitch is hard. One challenge when raising money is to strip back your investment pitch to its bare essentials. If you are too complex you become forgettable.

For example, you should make the abstract concrete.  You can do this with metaphor, analogies and clear examples. When Steve Jobs launched the iPod he talked about “1,000 songs in your pocket”. That was concrete. No MB, no Hz, no bit rates, no hard drives. You can do the same – even with the most obscure complicated hedge fund strategy.

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8.      Deliver your pitch with passion

When you pitch investors, forget about “giving a PowerPoint presentation”. If you want to start a two, three or five year plus investor relationship, you are not going to achieve that by hiding behind PowerPoint.

In the logical investment world, it’s easy to forget the critical role that emotions play when making decisions. If their gut says yes, then your investor may well take a second look, even if uncertainties remain. How do you harness emotions in your investor pitch?  You can use stories, appeals to greater things and make it personal. For example: do you offer investment returns, or do you offer security in retirement.

So, plan your pitch meeting as a meeting of minds. Aim to make your investor feel really comfortable with you – make them so comfortable that they want to meet you again, and again, and again!

Here are some tips for delivering a successful pitch:

• Keep it Short and Sweet: Respect the investor’s time. Aim for a max 20-minute presentation followed by Q&A.  But be prepared for 3 minutes.
• Focus on Benefits: Don’t just present facts and figures. Explain how your business will benefit investors.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Use visuals and data to support your claims.
• Be Prepared for Questions: Anticipate potential questions and prepare clear and concise answers.

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9.      Demonstrate credibility when you pitch

If your business plan has you with ‘just’ a 5% share of a $50bn market in 5 years, you’ll lack credibility. Help us believe. Show (don’t tell) what you have done, what you are doing and what you will do so that we can all have faith in you. This rule also applies to your pitch book: everything you say must be credible and push your story forward. 

There’s a real art in making future projections sound credible and from showing your investor not only that you can write a great business plan, but that you know how to execute that plan and build a large compelling business. 

Credibility is key in all aspects of your pitch.  Whether it’s consistency in what you say; making sure that everyone in the team echoes the same story  or that you always deliver on your promises, and never over-promise – this is how you build trust with potential investors.

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10.   Avoid the mistakes others make when pitching investors

Good news: because people have been pitching to investors for hundreds of years, the biggest investor pitch mistakes are well known.  These are some of the biggest mistakes we regularly see in investor pitches.

•     Your story is too complicated
•     You undersell yourself
•     You are not transparent about challenges
•     Your future journey is unclear
•     You do not come across as professional enough
•     You are not speaking investor language
•     You are selling too hard
•     Something feels wrong

The most practical way to get better at pitching investors is to practise.  That means for every investor meeting, every question, every bit of presentation, you try it and improve it.   I don’t mean ‘rehearse’ – that is what actors do when they already have a great script.  I mean practise like a tennis player, so you continually build your skills to improve what you say and how you say it. 

You also polish how you look as a team and improve the impact you make with your investor. The best management teams always practise.

Investor pitch rehearsals are the perfect way to make sure your team does not make mistakes and that they have fine-tuned their pitching skills so that your investor comes away happy and excited.

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11.    Follow up with your investor

After your pitch, follow up with the investors. Thank them for their time and reiterate your interest in their investment. You can also use this opportunity to seek feedback on your presentation and to give them additional information they asked for.  And keep them updated about progress in your business.  If you closed a deal 2 months early, tell them.  It will add to your credibility. 

Remember, pitching to investors is a skill that takes practice. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get funded on your first try. Learn from your experience and refine your pitch for future meetings.

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What Next For Your Investor Pitch?

If your investor pitch needs improving, polishing or completely transforming, give us a call. We’ll be delighted to share with you some ideas that have worked for other firms, from global market leaders to regional start-ups.

We spend every day helping companies perfect their investor presentations. We make it easier for them to convince investors, to win investment and to build loyal shareholders. Speak to our client services director Louise Angus today on +44 20 7018 0922 or info@benjaminball.com

Contact us today to transform your investor pitch

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Why Choose Us:
Transform your pitches and presentations with tailored coaching

We can help you present brilliantly. Thousands of people have benefitted from our tailored in-house coaching and advice – and we can help you too.

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”

Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

For 15+ years we’ve been the trusted choice for leading businesses and executives throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East. We’ll help you improve corporate presentations through presentation coaching, public speaking training and expert advice on pitching to investors.

Some recent clients

Unlock your full potential and take your presentations to the next level.

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

Speak to an expert. Get a free consultation

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How to Pitch Investors – Frequently Asked Questions

Top mistakes when you pitch investors

•     Your story is too complicated
•     You undersell yourself
•     You are not transparent about challenges
•     Your future journey is unclear
•     You do not come across as professional enough
•     You are not speaking investor language
•     You are selling too hard
•     Something feels wrong

1. Is your story too complicated when you are pitching investors?

If your business sounds complicated, it will also sound difficult, risky and unattractive. As the CEO of a business, you probably suffer from the curse of knowledge. You know so much about your firm that it’s often hard to put yourself in an investor’s shoes.

What an investor wants is a clear, simple story to share with other people.  Your job is to simplify that story so that a potential buyer has a clear picture of the investment you are offering.  

It is very tempting to include more information in your management presentation or your investor pitch, but the more you include, the more diluted the important information becomes.  A weak investor pitch includes extensive information but fails to shape that information into a compelling story.

Simplifying is often the hardest part of creating a powerful investor presentation.  So the best firms use external advisors to simplify their investment story.

2. How to pitch investors – don’t undersell yourself

    You are successful; there is a reason for that.

    You have loyal customers; there is a reason for that.

    You attract and maintain great talent; there is a reason for that too.

But do you talk about these things in an easy-to-understand way?

Too many firms are happy to lay out data and information, then fail to tell the compelling story behind the data.  But investors don’t buy data.  They buy the story, the potential, the thing that makes you different and successful.

You want to get your buyer to not just hear your impressive story but also to feel it and believe in it.  When they believe in you, they are more likely to invest in you.

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3. How to pitch to investors – be transparent about the challenges

Every business has difficulties – big and small.

It’s always tempting to play down your problems. But by downplaying them, it may feel to a buyer that you don’t fully understand your business. Worst of all, if you don’t mention challenges and these crop up later in the sale process, it may look like you are being dishonest.

So, be open about what problems your company is facing, and talk about how you’re addressing them.  If it’s clear that you are good at thinking about the future and planning for uncertainty, you add credibility.

By being open, you can turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Contact us to improve your pitch to investors

4. Pitching investors – Is your future journey clear enough?

It’s easy to talk about what you have done.  But the value of your firm to a potential investor or buyer lies not in the past but in the future.  It helps when you can share a clear vision for what comes next.

Are you facing uncertainties? You can describe this as giving you options.  Are you addressing change in your market? You can show how you can adapt to those changes.  Have things gone wrong? You can show how resilient you are.

What is important when you pitch investors is that you demonstrate that you know how to continue growing and improving your business.

Your future story should make up most of your investor story.  The clearer that future feels to an investor, the more value they will place on you today.

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5. Do you look and feel professional enough when pitching investors?

If you have a high-quality business and an impressive team, you want to be sure your pitch is equally reassuring.

This means more than hiring a good graphic designer.  A professional investor pitch involves all elements of your interaction with potential buyers.  You want your buyer to see a team and a business that give them a warm, joyous feeling from every contact.

If you achieve this, you can feel more confident about building a long-term positive relationship with that buyer.

6. Do you speak the language of investors when you present to investors?

Many companies talk regularly to customers, but rarely pitch to investors.  Customers and investors are different animals and need to be treated in different ways.

And depending on the type of investor or buyer you have, you’ll treat them differently too.

When we prepare management teams to pitch investors, we role-play extensively so that the team feels comfortable flexing their style to match different types of investor.   And we also help teams avoid the temptation to ‘give a presentation’.  A good investment meeting is a 2-way conversation, with as many questions as answers.

Once you practise this, you’ll look impressive and feel so much more confident.

Help me improve my investor pitch

7. Are you pitching or explaining in your investor presentation?

Few of us like being sold to; but we all like learning something.

Too many investor pitches sound like a hard sell, or a 1-way presentation.  The best pitches we work on become conversations between a management team who know their stuff and an investor who knows how to invest. Those two groups then work together to find the perfect fit.

What this means in practice is that the pitchers become teachers, helping the investor understand their business.  They also demonstrate their curiosity, wanting to know what the investor thinks and how they could work together.

This fresh approach to pitching creates a positive feeling and makes it much easier for the investor to know what it will be like working with this management team.

8. Does something not feel right?

This is probably the main reason that investors don’t invest. ‘It does not feel right.’  It isn’t a perfect excuse – but it sums up years of experience in investing.

What can you do to create a better feeling when pitching to investors?

The most practical way to generate a positive feeling is to practise.  That means for every investor meeting, every question, every bit of presentation, you try it and improve it.   I don’t mean ‘rehearse’ – that is what actors do when they already have a great script.  I mean practise like a tennis player, so you continually build your skills to improve what you say and how you say it.  You also polish how you look as a team and improve the impact you make with your investor.

The best management teams always practise.

If you need help, we’ve been writing successful investor pitch decks for over 15 years

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