Tailor Your Pitch to Your Audience

Seeking end user customers, pitching licensees, pitching retailers and pitching partners/investors to start your own business are very different things.

Each one has a different emphasis:

1. Customers care about features and benefits and price.

2. Licensees want a competitive advantage, ways to increase profits. Patents that cover the lowest cost, best way of making something or cover an innovation that will enable them to expand market share.

3. Retailers want to know why (and how) your product will generate more profit for its allocated space (peg, shelf, counter, floor or web page) than existing/alternative products, that you will be reliable and that you will maintain product quality. The wonderful features of your product do not matter... it's just a box of profit.

4. Partners/investors in a new business want to know why YOU will succeed. Your invention is almost secondary to you and how you will attack the opportunity.

Keep it short.

For each audience you want to connect with, consider what is the ONE THING they should know. Lead with that. Do it in a headline, not an essay.

- Mike Marks