Are you speaking the right language to your customers?

Are you speaking the right language to your customers?

“In five minutes, people decide if they are interested in you, just as in bars and nightclubs.”
— Guy Kawasaki, Reality Check

When you’re ready to hit the pavement and start talking about your idea to potential customers and investors, it’s important to ensure that you have them engaged or the conversation will end before it even begins.

At last week’s Entrepreneurship 101 lecture, “Business plan and other communication tools,” Veronika Litinski, senior MaRS advisor, introduced us to the five essential documents for entrepreneurs:

These tools are necessary for taking an idea and turning it into a product as they help to communicate what you want to do before you can show it. You can use these documents to speak the language of your audience (your customers, investors, partners and employees) and to translate a product’s technical features into benefits.

Most importantly, these documents answer the question “So what?” for every message that you’re trying to convey.

  • What do you do?
  • Who cares?
  • How do you make money?

Learn how to create these communication tools and how to write a story that takes your audience on a journey: Give them facts, show them you can organize your thoughts well and show them that you’re building something that they can’t live without.

Veronika breaks down each of these tools at the end of her detailed slide presentation.

Brainstorming your investor communication tools can help you gather ideas. Watch the lecture video for more on why you need a toolkit and how to get started building one.

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Want to connect?

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  • Download the course schedule.