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:
- an elevator pitch;
- an executive summary;
- an investor presentation;
- a white paper; and
- a business plan.
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.
Resources:
- Video: “Business Plan and Other Communication Tools”
- Slides: “Communication Tools: How to make your idea credible and understandable”
- Blog posts: “The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint” and “The Zen of Business Plans”
- Article: “Investor engagement: Executive summary (template)”
- Article: “Elements of a pitch deck”
Want to connect?
- Join the Entrepreneurship 101 LinkedIn Group.
- Follow the conversation on Twitter: #ent101
- Get updates on Vimeo.
- Download the course schedule.