Investor Pitching Skills

Introduction to Investor Pitching

• What exactly is a pitch?
• How to prepare and structure a pitch correctly
• Pitching vs selling: Differences and why you should never mix them up
• The big question: What is the money for? What are your next steps? Where are you going?
• Pitfalls to avoid:
  • Today or never
  • Focus on the product
  • Approaching competition
  • Pitch duration
  • Pitching the business
  • When investors see through you
• A T2V simulation introduces participants to realistic pitch scenarios, illustrating the differences between pitching and selling. You will observe examples of effective and flawed pitches, focusing on common pitfalls, such as being too 'salesy' or ignoring competition.

The Equity Story

• Investor pitch training explores the core elements of the pitch: what, who, why, and why now
• Drafting a compelling equity story based on current market trends
• The Unique Value Proposition (UVP). Main financial aspects and valuation parameters
• Simple complete vs complex incomplete equity stories
• Exercise: Participants engage in a T2S exercise to visualise compelling equity stories, comparing simple, complete narratives with complex, incomplete ones. This visual approach helps them grasp the importance of UVP (Unique Value Proposition) and current market trends in defining their pitch’s core elements.

Getting to Know Your Client (The Investor)

• Knowing your game: Why knowing the investor is so important
• Researching investor types: adapting the pitch to the ‘target’
• Types of investors by life cycle: Angel, Seed, who needs what
• Venture Capital:
  • Aims, expectations and funding rounds
  • Expected returns
• Institutional investors:
  • Mandates and types
  • Long only vs hedge funds
  • Expected returns
• Getting feedback from investors – how to get this key step right
• AAA vs AA vs A institutional investors: who and when to target
• The role of the sell side in getting the message across the capital markets
• Team exercise: Identifying investor types by their business case.

Putting the Pitch Together

• Pitch content summary
• PowerPoint vs you: setting the leading indicator
• Adapting to time: slides content based on the investor’s availability
• Pitching what you have to (not what you want to)
• Who should run the show? Story and model ownership considerations

Delivering the Pitch: Part 1

• Exuding credibility and the elevator pitch:
  • Defining the problem
  • Defining the solution
  • Delivering the UVP
• Being genuinely genuine: how to apply the 8 storytelling techniques in a finance pitch
• Psychological aspects of an effective pitch delivery
• Introduction to cognitive bias in investor pitching
• Introduction to non-verbal communication in finance
• Exercise: Elevator pitch practice

Delivering the Pitch: Part 2

• Making the most of negotiating techniques in investor pitching
• From convergence to nesting, when and how to apply storytelling in pitching
• Visual cues for advanced finance presentations (or how to avoid the average)
• Rehearsing the pitch... and again: when are we ready to deliver? Mimicking vs improvising delivery
• Exercise: T2S simulations guide participants through elevator pitch rehearsals by providing synthesised feedback on their tone, pacing, and credibility. These audio exercises enhance your ability to communicate the problem, solution, and UVP effectively within tight timeframes.

Beyond Investors' Expectations

• Pitching skills training assesses the financial aspects of pitching
• Valuation
• Extrinsic vs Intrinsic models.
• Understanding investors’ timelines and requirements
• Dividends vs buybacks vs share price appreciation
• Consistency 101: What not to change in regular investor pitching
• Easy pitfalls which investors pick up on: being most useful when the investor is the insider

Pitching Specific Transactions

• Analysis of specific requirements when pitching specific types of transactions
• Mergers, acquisitions, takeovers
• IPOs and secondary ECM transactions
• Series A funding rounds
• P2Ps/integrations
• Separations/Spin-offs/carve-outs

Redcliffe's investor pitch training specialist is an independent consultant who delivers online courses in finance, Higher Education, and Executive Education, covering Corporate Finance, Accounting, and Private Equity. With over 25 years in financial services, he has specialised in investment banking, wholesale and retail banking, capital markets, risk oversight, compliance, and regulation.

As a former Deputy Chief Financial Officer in an international financial institution with a value of more than $200bn, he is also a former Executive in the UK’s sixth-largest retail bank, and a former Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup, covering for 7 years institutional investors globally in a top-rated team. He is also a former Senior representative with financial regulators (ECB, PRA, FCA, FED) and the IMF. This includes being a senior representative at the World Bank/IIF annual meetings.

Further to this, he is an experienced advisor in M&A and capital markets programmes. He has led deals with top private equity firms and real estate investors, including IPOs, buyouts, P2Ps, spin-offs and carve-outs.

Throughout his career, he has presented over 7,500 hours of financial and capital markets content worldwide to a range of financial stakeholders. Since 2014, he has been a contributor to world-leading universities and business schools, including IE Business School, LSE, The University of Chicago, UNAV (IESE) and ESADE in both undergraduate, MBA and professional education programmes.

An experienced face-to-face and online instructor (experienced in many LMSs), this trainer is currently under contract with US and Singapore-based OPMs.

Our pitching skills training course expert makes complex concepts simple and accessible by adapting the jargon to the audience’s background. An experienced international professional ( he speaks 5 languages and has dual nationality), he is accustomed to rich cultural and diverse environments. On an ongoing basis, he has students and professionals from more than 15 countries, including EMEA, APAC and the Americas. Due to this, courses are delivered in English and Spanish.

Investor pitch training provides you with:

• An understanding of the investor pitching process and what it takes to have a successful outcome.
• The fundamental technique for designing and delivering successful and compelling pitches.
• The psychological aspects of dealing with investors to position yourself in front of the different types of stakeholders and investors.
• A solid foundation in the background and work required to support our investment pitch.

• Redcliffe's business pitch training is led by a professional with more than 25 years of international experience in capital markets, both on the sell side and corporates.
• Realistic AI-driven video and audio simulations are used throughout to replicate life-like situations. They will allow participants to immerse themselves in the subject matter.
• Using real-world scenarios fosters experiential learning.
• Analysis of real-life investor pitching and equity stories, identifying best and worst practices in investor pitching across different sectors and jurisdictions.
• Analysis of AAA institutional investors’ approach to investing as a tool to pitch design.
• Review and understand the non-technical aspects of pitching, such as emotional intelligence.
• Experiential learning sandbox: exercises which allow testing the learned concepts.

Redcliffe Training's pitching skills course covers the end-to-end investor pitching process from design to implementation and delivery.

This course makes extensive use of the most current advanced commercial persuasion and negotiation techniques, representing the core foundation for creating a winning pitch to smart investors.

While the course focuses on institutional investor pitching, you can also apply the skills to the broader investor spectrum, including family offices, corporates and private equities.