How to Create a Persuasive Business Pitch Presentation and Enhance It with Data

Welcome to the last lesson in our course on presentations. In this lesson, you'll use persuasive language to make a pitch, which is a short, convincing presentation. A pitch is when you try to sell an idea or a product to an audience. It's important in a good pitch to create or present data to support your argument. You'll also describe the data presented in a graphic chart. So, in this lesson, you'll create your own visuals or use some already published graphs or charts to make your pitch powerful and convincing for your audience.

For your pitch, you'll need to do some research and then present the information in ways that are very clear for your audience. Use the techniques and language that you've studied in this course to create a presentation with at least three convincing, clear reasons why your idea is good. Include data in easy-to-read slides and provide good explanations of the graphs or visuals in your presentation. This is your task to make a pitch that will persuade a company to locate a business in your city, town, or country. You can use your imagination to create your own role or position. Like, for example, you can be the mayor of your city or the head of your city's tourism board, but please try to find real data to use about the city or town you choose.

First, imagine what type of business you're trying to persuade. Is it a subsidiary of an international company or is it the entire organization of the company or just one part, for example, a manufacturing facility, maybe a distribution center or a call center. You decide. This decision is important because it will determine what things you emphasize in your pitch. For example, if you're pitching to a software design company, their employees might be a bit different than if you were pitching to a toy manufacturing company or to a nonprofit. The audience for your pitch will be the top decision makers in the company, the top executives, and maybe members of the board of directors, the group of people who approved major decisions.

As we discussed before, think about what your target audience the company needs. Then, think about your location, your city or town. What benefits can your location offer that would meet the needs of this company? What problems could you help them avoid? Also, think about what things are good about the city you choose and why their employees would want to live there. For example, the cost of living, the recreational facilities, the people, availability of housing, lifestyle, things like that. Make a list of these possible benefits your city offers to the company and its employees and then decide on the top three. When you've identified the top three benefits you want to emphasize in your pitch, find data to support them.

Then, figure out exactly what you want to say, your pitch. It should be about three minutes long. Include a good hook, three main points, and a strong conclusion just if you as you've studied in this course. Your presentation only needs to have three to five slides, but at least one of them should be a chart or table. You should draw attention to the chart and make sure it's clear how it supports one of your points. You can use a visual that you find in another source, but be sure to include a citation at the bottom of the slide as you present the data. If a graph or chart you find online has too much detail, put the information into a new visual. Look at the resource in this lesson if you don't know how to make your own tables and charts. Before you begin your presentation, let's watch an example of a short pitch to move a company to Seattle. Notice how the use of graphs help to support the speaker's arguments.