The top secret to making an investor and lender presentation is understanding the four parts of your enterprise they want to understand.
Making investor and lender presentations requires research, preparation, and practice to get the capital you need for your business!
Most companies spend considerable money developing brochures, videos, presentations for their clients they sell their product or service to. Unfortunately for most owners seeking capital or loans, they spend very little time thinking about how they need to prepare for an investor or lender presentation and what the investor wants to know.
The same principals that apply to selling your product or service apply to presenting your case about why a lender or investor would risk their money with your company. The process though is not all about explaining your product or service to the person(s) you are trying to convince.
Investors and lenders want to know about four broad areas of your enterprise and they give approximately the same weight to each area.
Investors and Lenders want to understand Your Company Management Expertise and Skills (25% value)
Investors and lenders want to understand that your management TEAM has a much better than average chance of succeeding in the business enterprise, especially after they invest or loan your company money. Spend time in your presentation discussing the depth and width of your company team.
If you are light on talent within your company, discuss how you have surrounded yourself with the best trusted advisors you can. Trusted advisers generally include your business and/or intellectual property attorney, your CPA, your banker or other financing consultant, and finally your risk manager (insurance agent). If your company is going to have many employees you might need to have an HR consultant. If your enterprise involves potentially dangerous processes or products, a safety manager may be important.
Investors want to understand your marketplace and the businesses your company serves (25%)
You may have a geographical marketplace, a vertical marketplace or both. Use accurate market anaysis statistics about the market(s) you serve. Discus how large they are. If geographical proximity is important to how your customer purchases your product or service, consider using a map showing the number of potential customers in your geographical area and the potential number of service opportunities you have with those customers. If your market is more vertical than geographic, customize your presentation to emphasize the various vertical markets you operate in.
The business problem you solve and how you are going to solve it better with an investor / lender helping you (25% value)
Let’s assume you manufacture very complex, expensive parts for undersea oil exploration. Your precision machine shop has to be concerned with extremely close tolerances and absolutely perfect quality control. Companies that buy products like yours have millions if not billions of dollars at risk in their own projects and a catastrophic failure could result in a disaster like the BP Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Your precision manufacturing machine shop may have a stellar reputation for the highest quality products produced with the best quality control processes and checks. An example of the business problem you are going to solve might be providing the highest quality work on-time, without defects, and within budget when other machine shops don’t have the same quality track record you do.
Your presentation would include describing the business problem, i.e. lack of machine shops capable of providing the quality required for the harsh undersea environment. Spend time explaining the way your company can solve the business problem. Be elegant, be concise. Make sure you understand the most important business problem and how you can solve it better than other machine shops.
Investors and lenders want to know how much money you will make and how they will be rewarded or paid back
Although this section is last, don’t cut corners in describing your projected EBITDA and return on investment. Use well designed charts that show your projected results you plan to achieve with their infusion of capital. Plan on explaining how an investor is going to share in the profits of the company. Lenders are more concerned about making sure you can always make your loan payment on time. Customize this part of of the presentation based on your audience. Below is an example of a projected EBITDA chart our company likes to use:
Use easy to read charts like this EBITDA chart for your investor and lender presentations.
Final Tips for Making Investor and Lender Presentations
- The four parts of your presentation are about equal to each other. If you have 20 minutes to make your presentation (an ideal length) spend about five minutes on each main part.
- If you don’t have the skills to create charts and graphs consider using a professional to help you get them to tell the best story you can.
- Make sure you can answer any questions about the material you have put together. Try to think like an investor would think.
- Practice your presentation with an audience that can help you improve your content or presentation style.
Business Finance Solutions has been successful in helping hundreds of companies with their capital needs because we have 20+ years experience understanding the process of what investors and lenders want to see. If you are trying to raise your next round of equity or debt let us help you present your ideas using our proven methods of analysis and presentation.