Presenting to the investor

Your business will need financing, and a lot of the time, this means finding an outside investor who beliefs in your ideas and is willing to provide you with the money to make them a reality. You will need to present your business plan and investment proposal to a potential investor so you need to ensure you have all the necessary information, including:

• A clear outline of what you do and what your mission statement is.
• An outline of the organizational structure and profiles of senior management. It is important to elaborate on how you plan to structure the organization of your business so as to maximize output and maintain efficiency.
• Details about the financial aspects involved. Accurate projections which measure up against industry standards are necessary to convince the investor that they will get the maximum return on investment if they choose to work with you.
• A sales strategy and marketing plan. You need to explain how you are going bring your products or services to the customers, and what marketing and promotional strategies you wish to deploy in order to attract these potential clients.
• Summary. Often, investors and lenders have no time to go over detailed business plans (link). They go through the summary or overview and if they see potential in what’s in front of them, only then will they bother to get into the details. Ensure your business plan summary is concise, crisp, relevant, and bursting with practical ideas and potential.

Remember: it’s important to have conviction about why you think your business will do well and to get that conviction across to the investor. Make sure you’ve backed up all your statements with research that proves what you’re saying. This way, the investor has more faith in your words and your proposal has more credibility.