How to Prepare for Investor Pitches (EXPERT FRAMEWORK)

I have seen too many business owners lose out on pitches. I've been there before, prepared the wrong way and ultimately got the wrong result. In this video, I'm going to lay out the first 2 parts of my 3-part pitch prep guide. 

🎯 Grab the free Pitch Prep Guide: https://talk-to-chris-miller-2.kit.com/8fa64ac712

I've used this two-layer system I use with executives, founders, and business leaders to engineer high-stakes pitches — from investor rounds to board presentations to enterprise deals. It's the same framework I've used to coach over $20M in real pitches.

If you have a pitch on the calendar in the next 30-60 days, this is the strategic prep work most people never do.

📩 Have a specific pitch you want to talk through? Reach out: coach@talktochrismiller.com

Transcript

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In this video, I'm going to show you how to prepare for a high stakes pitch sales conversation, pitch competition.

Maybe you're about to meet with a client who could change your business forever.

I would rather you not lose this moment.

I'd rather you win this moment.

And we want to do that sooner instead of doing it later.

0:18

So by the end of this video, you will know how to properly prepare so that you can ace the moment.

Most people who lose pitches, they prepare wrong, so the result they get is the result they should get.

It's the wrong result.

So we want you to prepare right so you get the right result.

0:34

My name's Chris.

If you're new to my channel, I create content about communication, particularly for business owners.

I want you to win more with how well you can communicate.

I believe business is about your ability to articulate your core thought and your core idea to the people who matter most, which are typically your customers or your investors, your stakeholders, your partners.

0:56

Your ability to communicate will determine your ability to win.

The better you communicate, the better outcomes you'll receive.

And to this is put on display whenever it comes to a pitch, whenever you have to actually share your business to a potential client and get them to commit, get them to pick the story you are trying to give them.

1:16

Whenever I was 22 or 23, I was a junior in college, I auditioned for my first ever oratory competition.

It was a MLK oratory competition.

I submitted a video online, I did a in person audition, and then I showed up to the final.

1:33

This was a big moment for me.

Two weeks prior to this, or two months prior to this, they advertised all over the university.

My face was everywhere, on billboards, on digital ads, at the coffee shop, on the wall.

They really advertised this oratory competition because it was sponsored by a corporate sponsor and there was money on the line.

1:53

It was a big deal.

Now, whenever I showed up, I remember being incredibly nervous because whenever I prepared, I memorized my speech.

I recited it 1,000,001 times.

I had dedicated so much time preparing for this one moment.

2:09

And then when I got up there, I forgot my speech halfway through.

And just like the AB CS, if I were to ask you, hey, could you start the AB CS on the 13th letter, It would take you a while because you would have to jump from the very beginning all the way to #13 And that's how I memorized my speech.

2:26

So I had to start my speech over embarrassing.

I, I got last place, but I left with $500 because I made it that far.

And that was a moment that taught me, one, I can be paid for, how will I speak?

And two, this lesson that I learned I'll be able to take to give to others, but also to prepare better for everything that I do.

2:47

A year later, I moved to North Carolina and I started teaching public speaking and studying communication.

And since then I have advised hundreds of people whenever it comes to how you well, you can communicate.

And in particular, I've advised dozens of pitches.

I'd say over $50 million in valuation, but something you'll understand in this video, the number of the pitch doesn't matter.

3:10

Sure, $1,000,000 has more gravitas than 10,000, but the principles are the same.

Your ability to win over your audience, it's to deliver the right message is going to be the same.

So I'm going to share with you the playbook that has those exact principles.

3:27

If you're new to the channel or this podcast, be sure to subscribe.

If you want to become a better communicator and grow your business with the power of communication.

If you know of someone who has a very big pitch coming up, be sure to share this episode with them.

We want others to win, and this could be a great chance for you to help somebody else win their pitch and nail the moment and feel even better about where they are.

3:51

All right, buckle up.

So the core philosophy about this preparation style is that communication is not performing.

It's not about you going out there hoping, hoping you nail it, hoping you break a leg.

4:08

It's not about you having the best night of your life, rather it is about engineering the result and engineering a certain decision.

There's this idea of control, the controllables, and what we don't realize is most moments of communication, particularly planned communication like a pitch, has several different controllables.

4:29

We just need to figure out what they are so that we can actually pay attention to them.

Most communication coaching I disagree with because it starts with delivery.

They're going to tell you, make sure you look at the person, make sure you look right in their eyes.

If you're nervous, you could look at the forehead.

4:47

Be sure to scan left and right.

Don't move too much, don't wobble.

All of this is important.

It can be distracting.

You may not connect with your audience if you don't nail this, but it's not the first place to start.

That's actually the last place to start.

I'm really not going to give you much delivery advice in this video.

5:04

I'm only going to talk about the preparation and getting to know the context.

So rather than most communication coaches, make sure you have the proper tone of voice.

Make sure you don't say UMM or use filler words.

That's not our focus because that's where most people mess up when preparing for pitches.

5:21

What you need to focus on is how you can engineer the decisions for the actual pitch.

Delivery matters, but it's only the final layer.

So every high stakes conversation follows this three-step process.

The first step here, this is when you can start taking notes.

5:40

The first one is called Sam S AM.

Just think of someone named Sam.

If you have someone in your life named Sam.

I have someone in my life named Sam.

He's a great guy.

He's hilarious.

I enjoy being around to him.

He's always a fun time.

We just went and we watched during the World Cup, we went to Kansas City and we watched FIFA World Cup at one of the fanfests Food Truck.

6:05

Really good time, Sam.

Sam is a good guy, but it's also a good acronym and it's how we are going to start preparing for the pitch.

So who is Sam?

What does Sam mean?

Sam is an acronym and this acronym is going is going to help you understand the situation.

6:23

So every pitch, every communication moment is considered a rhetorical situation.

So someone could ask, hey, what's the situation?

And typically you would tell them these three things.

You would say who the speaker is.

So that's the S for Sam, who the audience is, that's the A in Sam.

6:43

And then what the message is or the mission.

The message or the mission.

S AM Sam.

What's the situation?

Well, here's the speaker.

Here's the audience, here's the mission.

We need to know these things very, very well.

6:59

Sometimes people don't think about this because they think it comes naturally.

Who's the speaker?

I'm the speaker.

OK, cool.

But that's just part of it.

Yes, you are communicating, but there's a lot more questions than just who are you?

It's who are you in this moment.

7:16

For instance, right now I am educating you on YouTube or on a podcast, wherever you're finding this.

You may not know me.

I could just be a random guy sitting with purple lights behind me in a Shark Tank image on my computer screen, kind of a bright light.

7:32

You may not know me, but the more I tell you, the more you'll get to know me.

I told you a little bit earlier on that I was in an oratory competition and that I taught public speaking and I've advised hundreds of people $50 million in pitches.

So you know a little bit more about me, which is great.

7:47

I'm a little bit more credible whenever it comes to who am I, who's the speaker.

The second thing, what credibility do you already possess?

This is going to be different with whoever you're pitching to.

Most pitches are never like Shark Tank.

Often times we think about Shark Tank.

8:04

People walk in.

Hi, nice to meet you.

My name's Chris.

Oh, let me tell you about my product.

And then there's the ask. 0.1% of pitches are actually like that.

More than likely you already have some type of relationship with whoever you're about to pitch you.

I hope you do.

8:20

And if not, if you haven't met them directly, more than likely they've done some research about you, right?

So thinking what credibility do I already possess is going to be really helpful.

What communication strengths should we amplify you as a speaker, you have certain communication strengths.

8:38

Maybe in the past people have commented on this.

You are so funny.

You are such a great storyteller.

You really can command a room.

You really get people to pay attention.

You have such a good tone of voice that people lean in.

Whatever it is, I'm sure you've seen it.

8:55

You've seen great public speakers, but they do it differently.

I see this all the time.

So what community strengths, what communication strengths do you have?

This is something helpful to know.

What communication habits should we avoid?

Often times, whenever I'm getting nervous, sometimes I touch my lips.

9:12

I say the words and, and so a lot.

Because I was taught not to say umm or ah, I replaced those with and, and so these are things that I need to know about.

I could care less if you had some filler words in your pitch.

9:29

I think that's as long as it's not too much.

That's really not what I'm too worried about.

But the more we know about your communication habits, the more we can say, hey, let's avoid those things.

And then lastly, what role should you play as the speaker?

9:46

Are you going to play teacher?

Are you going to play guide, coach, visionary, challenger, friend?

There's different, we call these vocal archetypes ways that you can speak.

I would say in a pitch, you typically want to make the audience the hero and you are the guide rather than you being the hero.

10:07

Often times in public speaking, we would want you to create the problem and then you solve the problem and you're the hero.

But pitches or big client meetings, those are one of the rare, one of the rare moments where you want to engineer something and you want to make the audience feel empowered to make the decision and to make a decision that feels like a no brainer.

10:26

So if you write these things down, this is the preparation phase.

So it's a lot of writing down.

This really boils down to focusing on a few different things.

It's going to focus on your voice.

So how you're speaking, what you're speaking about, your presence, your non verbals, your confidence in your authenticity.

10:44

So the more you know, who are you in this moment?

What credibility do you already possess?

What communication strength should we amplify?

What communication habits should we avoid?

What role should we play?

This is going to be super helpful and this is going to help you give a pitch that's going to be unique compared to anybody else.

11:03

And that's one of the best ways to give a great pitch is if you stand out.

If you're in a position where there's going to be a lot of people pitching to a certain client or in the competition, you want to stand out.

So you need to know your edge and then we need to lean into it.

That's a part of the speaker.

11:19

The S and Sam, the A and Sam is the audience.

The best public speakers, the best communicators, they typically have a progression.

Initially, they are going to make it about themselves.

They are going to convince the audience that they are someone.

11:36

I did this whenever I felt like I was a better communicator than my peers and whenever I started to get positive feedback.

And then I found myself getting into business because I felt like I could sell really well.

Initially, I wanted to convince other people in the crowd that I was someone and that my product was someone or my product was something, something that they needed to buy or get into.

12:00

But what you'll find and what I've recognized is the best communicators, be it an executive or a pastor or a professor, whoever it is, they are convincing the audience that they are someone rather than convincing the audience, me, I'm someone.

12:18

No, you, you are someone.

The way you do this in a pitch is we're going to create things in this pitch to where your audience will be able to solve or be a part of.

We'll get into this more a little bit later, but just imagine, we call this deliberative rhetoric.

12:39

You are deliberating about the future.

Just imagine creating a future for them that they can be a part of.

That sounds enticing.

And at the end of the pitch, they say, why wouldn't we want to be involved in this?

We would hate to miss out on this.

We can do this by creating a little bit of urgency or scarcity or relevance or just being really good at knowing your audience.

13:01

So audience, who must make the decision, questions to ask here, who is listening?

And whenever we ask who's listening, I'm talking actual who's listening, who isn't?

What are their names?

Who's going to be in the room?

13:16

As much research as we can do.

If it's a pitch competition and there's judges, who are the judges?

If it's a certain investing board and you're about to present to these investors, who are the investors?

Who is this client?

Who's listening?

13:32

What matters most to them?

If you have maybe someone you could talk to to get a little more information about what matters most about them, it's going to be important.

What problem are they trying to solve?

What are they afraid of?

For instance, are you afraid of wasting money?

13:48

Are you afraid of negative perceptions?

We have a lot of talk about data centers around here.

I know people on either side, people who are leading the project for the data center.

I know people who are leading protests for the data center.

If either of them were to come to me, then we could really do delve into the what are people most afraid of?

14:07

What objections already exist?

You need to know the cracks in your plan, and it may not be you have a bad plan, but it may just be the room you are pitching to.

There is objections.

We don't know what they are yet, but we need to do research.

14:22

What are the objections?

What motivates the people you're pitching to and what would success look like from their perspective?

This is unique.

I've worked with different people on this to where typically you would think success would be ROI.

They want to invest certain money or the client wants to come to you with their money and make more money.

14:43

But I've seen motivations different from ROI.

I have seen motivations about public press.

They want to be associated with something good.

I have seen motivations of they want someone to win from their hometown.

They want a hometown hero.

I've seen programs give out big awards and they don't even need to make money back.

15:05

Rather they just want a success story.

That way they're going to get ROI for more people entering the program later on.

There are different things to think about.

What would success look back from their perspective?

Often times they're going to leave bread crumbs for this and you'll be able to figure that out.

15:21

You could always ask someone, maybe on the outside, but just doing a little thought of like what does success look like from their perspective?

Here are the focus areas that this will boil down to.

It'll boil down to the audience's needs, their fears, incentives, decision criteria, and emotional state.

15:40

So that's the A.

And Sam, we've gotten to know the speaker, who the speaker is.

It's a lot of self if you're presenting with maybe a business partner, if it's a team really figuring out OK, who's speaking, how can we lean into how we are in particular and making this unique?

15:57

Then we lean into the audience.

Go on Sonny, hop up.

My dog's getting ready now the M in getting to know Sam, preparing for your high stakes pitch is mission.

What decision are we trying to influence?

16:13

I also like to think about this as a message.

I've done a lot of rhetorical analysis of high stakes moments on my YouTube channel.

You can go and watch some of these.

I recently analyzed Zoran Mamdani's victory speech whenever he became the New York City mayor.

16:29

And the message is an interesting one because typically you're going to think that this message is woo Hoo, we did it.

It's a victory speech.

But rather, it was a lot more of a nuanced message.

There were different tiers in this message.

Yes, you're going to celebrate.

16:44

You want to encourage the base.

We did it.

But you also don't want to seem too boastful because there's a lot of people who didn't vote for you.

And ultimately, you will need their support later on.

So you want to be able to communicate to them.

And many people have some sort of shout out to the people they went up against.

17:04

They may give them like, hey, you know, you fought hard.

I'd like to give a shout out to the other the the other party, whoever that is, because potentially they'll work with them in the future.

And then a big part of Zarin Mamdani's message was that he had this mission of saying, hey, it's not all me, but it's all of New York City.

17:26

So he wanted to empower the audience.

So yes, we would think his his mission is to be victorious and to say, yeah, we did it to celebrate to lot of the moment, but it's actually a lot more tiered and nuanced and you'll see the best speakers will make the most of a moment with a few different missions at mind.

17:48

So mission, what decision are you trying to influence?

Here's some questions to be asking to prep for this.

What is the purpose of this communication?

What action should they take?

What is the one thing they must remember?

What outcomes are we trying to create?

18:03

And if they remember only one sentence, what should it be?

I was working with a team and they're presenting to an investor for a potential location, a second location in the state.

And one of the most helpful exercises that we did with the team was what can we, what can't we not say?

18:27

What can we not afford to not say?

What is a must mention?

We have to mention this.

And the more detailed, concise, narrow you get, the more you realize what your message is for them.

18:46

It was.

This is a no brainer because we Add all of these specific services to our clients that naturally fit you and what you want to do with the future of your business.

So whenever we're preparing for the pitch, we littered that throughout the whole entire pitch to really nail that home.

19:03

That's going to be a big part here.

We want to know the core message and the memorable take away.

Another thing we're looking for here is desire, decision and clear ask.

With all of this, we bring all this together and what we'll, what we will realize is if you don't have this, you're not going to build the right message until you understand the situation.

19:28

This is where so many people get it wrong.

They immediately start prepping for rehearsal.

They immediately start thinking the lines.

Maybe they'll go into Claude or they're going to ChatGPT create my pitch deck.

Awesome.

That could be really cool if you know the situation.

19:47

But before you do all of this, you don't even know the situation, you are just trying to attack it with what you got and the result is going to be a subpar result.

If you've ever lost a pitch, more than likely it's because someone prepared better.

20:07

I never want that to be the reason you lose a pitch.

Lack of preparation is not a thing on this channel.

You're going to prepare and you're going to make the most of your moment.

And the reason why your preparation is going to be so much better from other people's preparation is you know how to prepare.

20:25

That's like knowing how to train for a race, then beating everybody compared to the person who just lift weights for hundreds of hours a year.

That's not going to help them run the race.

They're preparing in some way, but they're preparing in the wrong way.

But now you have the right way to prepare and it's getting to know Sam, the situation, the audience, and the mission.

20:47

That's phase one of preparation.

There's really 3 phases in this video.

I'm going to go over 2 of them.

But if you would like a more interactive guide that you could download and you could use to walk through Sam together, I will put something in the description.

21:06

I'll put a link in the description that you could just download a guide and it would ask you these questions and you can walk through it and fill it out.

I would encourage you to add things in addition to that.

But it will be a really good base layer for preparation.

21:21

And if you do use something like Clod or ChatGPT, it will make it a lot more detailed, your prompt and a lot more what we would say at High Fidelity, it would ring more true to your audience, which is what we want.

And so I'll put that link in the description below.

21:38

If you are enjoying what you're watching so far, if it's helping you, if you're taking good notes, be sure to subscribe to the channel.

I also think it's really high quality that you're preparing the way you are.

And because of that, I'm going to share with you Step 2.

21:56

So we've gotten to know Sam.

I think Sam's a great guy, don't you?

Sam's really helping us prepare for this pitch.

And Sam is going to help us win the client, win the deal, win the pitch competition, and we're going to be happy.

But now that Sam's helped us so much understand the situation, we are now going to give Sam some.

22:14

TLCTLC to me means tend to loving care, but TLC to us in this moment is going to mean something different.

It is going to be how we engineer our message.

So we've thought about speaker, audience, mission.

22:30

That's given us some really good context and now we are going to use that context to engineer our message, engineer our pitch.

This is a bit more sexy than the other stuff, but it's still not as sexy as delivery.

Rather, we are figuring out how to do what we are going to deliver once the situation is clear.

22:49

This is when we design persuasion.

So this layer, just like the first layer, but this layer is actually rooted in Aristotle's rhetorical triangle, where he said the effective means of persuasion at any given time can typically be broken down into three main appeals.

23:06

The first appeal being logos, ethos, then pathos.

But I've broken it down to be a bit more fitting for where you are in your business into TLC, a bit more of modern business language.

T stands for trust.

23:25

Why should they believe you?

So the audience, why should they even believe a word you're saying?

We would look at this as the ethos.

But what is the ethos?

What's the lifeblood?

Why should they believe you?

So here are big questions to ask here.

23:42

Why are you the right person?

What you'll notice with some of these questions is you'll be able to use information that you've already plugged in from what you did previously.

Getting to know Sam Speaker Audience Mission O Question one Why are you the right person?

How do we establish credibility quickly?

24:00

So if we know what the audience values and we know some of the things that set us apart, how can we put those two together to establish credibility quickly?

If they're very money motivated, then let's say upfront, we've been in business for four years, every single year we've grown twice year over year.

24:20

We have reduced our overhead by 15% in the last six months and we are currently on target to have the most profitable year in business history.

If you are a numbers person, that is water to a thirsty traveller, right?

24:38

Music to our ears.

Another thing, what proof demonstrates competence?

How can we communicate competence?

What values create alignment and how do we reduce skepticism?

These are still questions we are answering.

24:56

We are not going through and actually putting a line by line what we are saying.

These are questions that we are answering tools for this.

It'll boil down to some of these things.

Whenever we put it out a little broadly like this, it'll make a bit more sense.

25:14

Experience, expertise, testimonials, social proof, confidence, transparency and shared values.

The T in TLC is the trust.

The more you can get your audience to trust you, the more likely they are going to walk with you into the unknown future.

25:32

And that's pitching.

Pitching is getting someone to cross the bridge of certainty into uncertainty, but you make the uncertainty so clear that they want to join you across the bridge.

That's how you build the trust.

All right, now we're moving to building logic.

25:48

Logic, logos.

This is one of my favorite parts because there are so many different ways you can take it.

But the point here is why does your argument make sense, and why does it particularly make sense to your audience?

26:04

Communication is about meaning and making Our ability to communicate about something is our ability to create shared meaning.

And there's a million and one ways you can take this because words are very tricky.

Language is very tricky.

26:21

I may say dog, You may think of a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd, while I'm thinking of a golden retriever.

I said the same word that you said.

We both said dog, but we thought of different things.

I may think of business success and when I say business success, I may think of being able to have enough money to pay my bills and buy the car I want to buy, not have to work a full time job, go on vacations every now and then.

26:53

And you may think about having $100 million in a private jet in a three vacation homes.

All we said was business success.

So words are tricky words.

You say one thing, we think another.

Building the logic here is being able to get as close as we can to thinking the same thing that our audience is thinking, or at least predictably, getting to a point to where we can guess where they're at.

27:20

So why does your argument make sense?

So what evidence supports our ideas?

How can we back up our ideas if we are pitching a certain product, process, service?

How can we back up these ideas to be, to make sense to them?

27:39

You know, it could be a money thing, it could be a story thing.

It could be anecdotal, it could be a testimonial thing, a network thing.

President Donald Trump said this was the best thing ever, or President Barack Obama or, you know, GECEO, whatever it is, what structure creates clarity?

28:01

This is question #2 we see one of the best ways to think about this would be narrative arcs, how to communicate complex information.

Rags to riches, 0 to hero, Once Upon a time, then Happily Ever after or the hero's journey.

28:21

There's a lot of different ways we can structure something.

Often times for pitches we think about from it's called Monroe's motivated sequence.

You could look that up, but it's getting to a point to where you grab attention of the audience.

You have them visualize a certain future, you share with them a certain problem, you share with them a certain a certain answer to that problem.

28:44

You demonstrate what it could look like.

There's a lot of different ways we could do a structure, but just think about what structure creates clarity from my audience.

Is it problem then effect, or is it or problem then solution or cause and effect?

Is it beginning, middle, end?

29:02

What could it be?

Should we use stories, statistics, analogies, metaphors, demonstrations, or data?

I like to refer to this as AMS. Generally analogies, metaphors or similes, but also statistics.

If this is a numbers based crew, statistics are helpful.

29:20

What assumptions need to be addressed?

What questions remain unanswered?

All of these.

Write those down, and whenever you answer those, you're going to get a better approach to building logic with your audience.

Remember, we haven't even worked on our pitch yet.

29:36

This is all preparation tools for this Data, stories, analogies, metaphors, case studies, demonstrations, and clear structure.

That's logic.

I firmly believe that if you were to answer all of those questions, you are going to have one of the best pitches you've ever had in your life.

29:57

You are going to show up and your audience is going to be like, get out of my head, I don't understand how you're doing this.

And then the C for TLC, we've gotten to know Sam, now we're giving them TLC.

The C for TLC is connection.

This would be the pathos and Aristotle's rhetorical triangle.

30:16

Pathos typically means emotion.

But the question we want to answer here is why should they care?

Caring is different than why does your argument make sense?

Making sense is logic.

Caring is emotion.

30:32

Why should your audience care?

So the key questions we're thinking about here is what emotion are they creating?

Are we creating?

What emotion are we creating?

A accident injury attorney is going to have a different emotion to create in their commercial, their pitch to their business on the TV, then a NFL promotion or AUFC promotion.

30:58

A No Kid Left behind fundraising campaign commercial is going to have a different feeling than a Doritos commercial because they are trying to engineer a certain emotion.

What future are we inviting them into?

31:15

What is at stake?

One of my favorite things to talk about the stakes.

What transformation becomes possible and how do we make this personally meaningful?

The tools here that get people really good at this.

Being able to communicate a vision.

31:31

Being able to communicate stakes.

What's the cost of not joining you on this story?

Being able to communicate empathy, urgency, hope, curiosity, and inspiration.

People don't act simply because they understand.

31:47

They act because of TLC.

They trust, they understand, and they care.

TLC, trust, logic, connection, Sam speaker, audience, mission.

32:05

I don't even know if you all want Step 3 in this video, but I will tell you I do have a Step 3.

So if you want Step 3, be sure to leave that in the comments below.

If you want a virtual guide to walk you through this process, check out the description in the comments.

32:23

And if you want to quit losing out on pitches, then you need to start investing in pitches.

If nothing changes in your preparation, nothing changes in your results.

You change your words, you change your practices, you will change your wallet.

32:43

That isn't a promise or that isn't a thinly veiled promise or some coaching platitude.

That is legit.

That is a promise to you.

If you change how you promise or you change how you prepare and you change the words that you're using to connect to your audience and articulate your message, you will have much better results.

33:07

It will be one of the best investments you've ever made in your life and in your business.

It'll give you the best ROI and it'll because you know how to prepare.

So by getting to know Sam and by giving a little TLC to your message, you're going to have one of the best pitches in your life.

33:24

Be sure to subscribe to the channel.

Put questions down below if you have something coming up and let's do it again.

Best of luck on your pitch.

Let me know how it goes and I'll see you next time.