A common mistake that I notice when listening to investor pitches, is using too many technical or complicated words, which are known as jargon. Nearly every field has its own distinctive words that people active in that field already know about. People usually use them to explain things better and perhaps even faster, but it only works with a specific audience that already knows what those words mean.
The Risks of Disconnecting from Your Audience
Jargons may help people within the same fields of activities communicate more effectively, but there may always be people in the audience who may not readily know them. When you use a lot of jargon, the risk of losing and getting these people disconnected from you becomes very probable. This is not a desired outcome if you are speaking to people who will or will not want to invest in you or your company. No, this is the direct opposite of the outcome you’re looking for.
As you begin with your business idea and spend months or even years in a certain field, it is only normal that you start getting accustomed to and comfortable with using technical terms specific to that field. You may even come to a point that you no longer remember what it was like not to know those technical terms. So you may assume that every living soul already knows about those words, but this could not be further from the truth.
Speaking a Universal Language: The Need for Simplicity
That’s why, when the time comes to pitch your idea to people outside your specific field, you need to bring the language down to a common denominator that every single person in the room can understand. And trust me as a public speaker, that you or me as the presenters will not have the best judgment of what that common denominator would be. No, we need to reach out of our comfort zone and ask people who are not already knowledgable on our topic or our field of expertise.
Find a 5 year old kid and pitch your idea to him or her. Reach out to your elder relatives and see if your speech makes sense to them. Especially when speaking to potential investors, you will have a very short amount of time to make a positive impact. Therefore, simpler statements and easy to understand phrases will go along way in creating a common comprehension of your ideas. You can later discuss more details in much deeper levels during further talks with your potential investors after the initial pitch.