Master Pitch to Investors in a Day with Beth Susanne, Global Pitch Coach: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey, everybody! Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Saul Marquez here. Today I am joined by the amazing Beth Susanne. Beth is a global pitch coach from Silicon Valley-based in Spain. Clients have raised over 10 billion with a B billion dollars in funding. And they just followed her way of doing things with her pitch skills, her pitch process. Global leaders like Singularity University, Oxford, Foundry, Barclays, BMW, Disney, and thirty-three hundred international founders have quickly secured the funding they needed to scale, including three hundred and fifty teams in Medtech, biotech, digital health care. And that’s why she’s here today because she knows that all of you are in this niche of health care, looking to make a big difference, looking to change the world that’s here to help you do it. Beth, I’m so glad you’re here with us.
Beth Susanne:
Thank you. I’m pleased to be here. Thanks, Saul.
Saul Marquez:
Absolutely. And so I am so excited to dive into how you help people do this and what it is that they need to be thinking about here toward the end of the podcast. But before we do get into that, Beth, talk to us a little bit about your journey. What is it that got you into health care?
Beth Susanne:
I used to work in California for 17 years in Health Care Architects, and I was the pitch coach for these teams to win huge projects. 1.2 billion, 2.1 billion-dollar hospital projects. So I was coaching them. I did strategic planning, facilitation, plus presentation coaching. So I worked for 17 years in health care there. And then when I came to Europe almost ten years ago, I continued. But I just took the presentation coaching a couple of years before I moved here. I adapted it for the tech world and did pitch coaching. And, you know, since then I’ve come out of the ten billion dollars worth of funding and projects that I’ve helped teams win six billion of it is in health care.
Saul Marquez:
Amazing. That’s just amazing. Lion’s share of that in health care. And that’s why I think everybody listening today is going to really want to tune in and learn. So talk to us about bethsuzanne.com, the work that you do. How are you adding value to the health care ecosystem?
Beth Susanne:
Well, basically some clients have said to me that they get amazing results. So I just coached a team. It’s a VC fund out of London and they’re looking to raise one hundred million. They’ve already raised ten. And they had been struggling to get the rest of the money raised. And after I worked with them, they raised another five million, and then they had got eighty million in the pipeline really securely. And they were awarded another fund, a huge fund, a health care fund also. So two funds at once. What they said basically was that I have a balance between being encouraging and challenging. So I’m quite empathetic, but I’m very direct and most people don’t know what they don’t know. And I can tell them what they’re not aware of that’s getting in the way or is not clear enough that the investors are looking to hear. There are certain signals investors are looking for. And you need to understand how to surface the key ideas that they’re looking to hear quickly and in a compelling way in order to get the results that you desire and deserve. And my key thing is to help them get the results quickly. It’s the ideas. It doesn’t have to take a long time. A lot of the clients that come to me, Saul, are really frustrated because they’ve been struggling and they have achieved amazing things and they’re amazing people, their teams. It just blows my mind, all the brilliant people I work with. But they have trouble getting distance, enough distance from what they have created to understand what they need to surface in order to talk to the investor because it’s a different conversation than they’re in normally for building their technology and developing their market.
Saul Marquez:
Wow. That is so well said. It is difficult to get away from what you spend so much time working on and building to actually surface those key points. And so do you help your clients decipher what those things are and then do you help them put the pitch together, walk us through your process? Like, how does all that work and what do you know?
Beth Susanne:
So I work with individual teams and founders or I work with groups of teams and founders both. And what I do is I have them give me the back story of what their situation is. And then if it’s a group of several founders I’m coaching together for accelerators or incubators or for corporate venture groups, I have them do a one-minute pitch and I give them one to two minutes of feedback. Then I do my presentation, which is basically what to say, what not to say and how to say it, and give them tips about how to get inside the investors’ mindset. And it’s interactive. And so what I do is I bring them into my conversation that shifts them out of so they see clearly what’s working and what’s not. And then they go online. I’ve adapted my two-day in-person pitch coaching intensive to online for the last year and a half. Yeah, and which has been interesting because there are some positives that come out of that, and one of them is that that initial session takes about two and a half hours. But after that, they can go away and they can read you their deck, which they always need to. And then I have smaller group sessions with four firms, four companies at once, and they pitch they do a three to five-minute pitch with slides. I give them feedback and they get to hear the other companies, what they’re saying, what they’re not saying, what works and what doesn’t work. So they’re learning together much more quickly than they go. They go away again. That’s not the end of the process. They go away again.
Saul Marquez:
Can I ask a quick question, Beth? I’m just curious. So then these four companies, you’re in there with four companies. These are all your clients, right? Four different clients are going through the process. I mean, like, that is so valuable. Like just to have number one, when do you run into people that are doing the same thing as you do and you get to do this and learn from what you’re seeing right now? Because, OK, sorry to interrupt, but I was just curious.
Beth Susanne:
Ok, sorry, because I’ve coached over three thousand three hundred companies. Right? There are certain patterns and similarities about what people do correctly, incorrectly, and what’s missing. So you get to be I’ve been doing this for 12 years, super intensely. But before that with the architect firms, also the health care architects firms, it’s basically what’s the essence. what’s the value you’re bringing? What’s the problem you’re solving for? What’s the solution you’re bringing? How does it work? Why is it better? What is it about your team? What traction do you have in the market? There are certain key things that you have to just be able to, in two minutes, be able to articulate, really know what those should be and could be, and say them. So I’ve developed a sense. Well, it is experience, right? So that’s you can see really, really quickly. And I can coach 10 to 20 teams like this because I can see and give feedback quite quickly, which people are actually pretty amazed about. But I’m so used to doing that. I don’t think about it. And then in the actual process, after I hear them in groups of four give their presentation, their pitches, I have them co-coach each other in another session. So they give their five-minute pitch, three-to-five minute pitch, and they have twenty-five minutes of feedback from the other three teams without me there. And sometimes they say this is some of their most valuable feedback because they are now all in the same conversation that I’ve set up with them initially.
Beth Susanne:
And they know what to look for and what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be improved. They give really good feedback. And then the next thing is that they meet with me one-on-one and I give them either thirty minutes, an hour, or two hours individually. And then we have a final session on another day of all four teams giving us their pitch with ten minutes of feedback for the final hour. And they get to see the transformation and Saul, one of the things I love so much is that it’s so gratifying to see that people do transform really quickly and sort of the eyes get big and the lights go on because so many people you can get discouraged because you get lots of no’s. You don’t know why you get the noes. The investors don’t tell you what’s wrong with what you’re doing or what’s right with it, even mostly. And so I’m able to help them transform. And then they go out and they pitch/ My clients to raise the money within generally within three months to six months. And I have about a 90 percent success rate in terms of getting my clients to raise the money. So it’s been really super gratifying.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Wow. And so I got to say, I think this is a really unique approach. The amount of time that you’ve spent doing this, Suzanne, is obviously a big reason why you’ve been able to fine-tune it so well. How do you think the process, I guess, at what stage can people work with you? You know, there’s different stages of funding. Walk us through all of that.
Beth Susanne:
Well, I’ve worked with all varying stages, so really super early startups are my it’s the group that I work with the least. Now I’m working with scale-ups more and they’re looking for, you know, two to twenty million or one hundred million for a fund. I’ve worked with a number of VC funds looking to raise the next round. Seventy million. One hundred million. And so but I do work with early-stage startups also. And one of the good things is one of the things I’m the most excited about right now is I’ve just brought on a new principal pitch coach with me. Her name is Lily Christensen and she’s brilliant. And all the years I’ve been working, she’s the only person that actually is able to coach and have perceptions that is totally aligned with what I’m doing. I mean, her perceptions and she adds extra value because she has built sales teams for startups in New York, London, and Amsterdam. And can she’s got a slightly more commercial point of view. So if a number of clients have come to me like some pharma clients, they’re pitching to, well, startups who are pitching to pharma clients and in biotech and other clients, they’re looking for clients, not not for investment. So I coached for any ask you have in terms of clients, investments or partners, or projects. If you have a project that you want to get funded or you have your corporate situation where you’re. Time to get another huge project in, that’s all I can do any range of it because it’s a similar set of attributes or characteristics that you need to be able to cover in your presentations.
Saul Marquez:
Fascinating. Thank you for that. Broad range, sweet spots there, kind of scale-ups of three to 70 million. One hundred million. There are also different applications of this. If you’re wanting to pitch for those difficult to get appointments, like you’re trying to get in to see a payer or you’re trying to get in to see a pharma company and you have this one shot, don’t mess it up. This is where they would reach out to you and say, how do I refine this?
Beth Susanne:
Right, exactly. And if they need help in getting the appointment, that’s where Lily comes in because she’s so good at that. She’s amazing.
Saul Marquez:
She is the mastermind of getting in the door and then help them shine.
Beth Susanne:
Right. And she also can help them shine. But she’s got this extra added advantage. The other thing that I’ve done is I’ve worked with a lot of government organizations in Europe since I’ve been in Europe for almost 10 years. I’ve worked with the European Institute of Technology, which has been funding health, and I coached them to win about four hundred and fifty million for seven years. And there were matching funds of about one point five billion that industry in academia contributed over the seven years. And so I coached them at the end of 2015. They won the money in 2016 for the next seven years and then they get funded again. But what they do is they drive innovation between industry, academia and startups, and citizens across the health care spectrum. And I’ve been coaching teams all across Europe as an outcome of that also in IT Health. So that’s where it’s given me such a broad spectrum of to cover for health care with medtech, biotech, and digital health care, and then also then VC funds also raising health care funding.
Saul Marquez:
Like their next round to get the next slew of investments through. Not fascinating, but in your experience, so you did mention, number one, you know, getting separating yourself from that day-to-day value that you deliver so that you could really speak a different language. You’re speaking a different language to these investors. You mentioned that’s one of the biggest challenges, right? Getting away from what you do day-to-day. What’s another big challenge that you see pop up and people as they’re trying to raise money?
Beth Susanne:
I think basically they don’t do they might not do enough research on who they’re talking to. You know, they have to really understand who these people are, whether this fund has already who’s in their portfolio. They have to do their research because you can really stumble if you’re not talking to the right people. And so that’s one thing. Another thing is many it’s interesting how difficult it is for founders to express what problem they’re solving and then to get their numbers in there. There are so many companies that some companies, it’s the numbers are all handled, but there are many companies and their earlier stage companies that are they’re having trouble figuring out what their business model is, how are they going to make money and how they’re going to grow. And the other thing is there are different mentalities because, in Europe, people are more modest than generally in the US, US, we understand in the US that, you know, in order to have anything come towards you, you have to stand out. You have to shine. So I’m not saying people in the US understand necessarily what that means in terms of saying the right thing at the right time, in the right way. But they understand that you do need to shine and you’re up. When I first got here 10 years ago, that inbuilt modesty in Europe was was amazing because they’ve achieved so much in their companies. But they weren’t, they have cultural norms that tell them that they shouldn’t ever say they should say something better about themselves or anyone else. For instance, in the Scandinavian countries, in Sweden and in the Dutch, for instance, they have a saying that’s “doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg”, which means acting normal is crazy enough, which means don’t stick out, conform. And that permeates a lot of the psyche of people who are thirty-five years old and older in Europe. Younger people, not as much anymore. I like it. Things have changed dramatically since I came to Europe. But when I go to Silicon Valley, people are aware that they need to stand out, but they’re still not. It’s still a struggle.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, so it’s like on the one hand, the fact that you have to do it is one thing that you have to communicate to European business owners. In the US it’s OK, you know, you have to do it but how do you do it in the right way?
Beth Susanne:
Right, exactly. Exactly. And I’ve worked all over. I’ve worked in South Africa, I’ve worked in Brazil, I’ve worked all over Europe and all over the U.S. and I’ve worked with companies from 60 different countries around the world. So I work with so many different cultures and I’m working I’ve worked with South Korea, China, everything. And what they need to understand is this initial pitch, three to five minutes is the same worldwide around the world. You have to say the key things that I cover with you about the problem, the solution, your market, your team, your business model, your traction, your ash has to be clear, your competition has been there, all of it is the same. What changes then is the next conversation when you actually then go in and finished talking with the client or the investor, rather? And when you have a conversation where you have a meeting with them, then you have to understand what these cultural norms are and that with that culture in order to know how to talk to them and then it shifts a bit. The other thing I want to say is I work with individual companies, not just groups, but I do deep dives with one company and online it takes between 12 and 16 hours with one company. And these are companies that have already raised money, a majority of them, and they’ve raised three-five million. They’re looking for their next 10, 12, 20 million. And I still it still takes 10 to 12 to 16 hours of time to work with them, to develop their decks so that it flows.
Beth Susanne:
Exactly. The logic of it flows. Their script is perfect. The delivery is perfect, and I coach them and they know that when they get into the investor meeting, they are not going to have, in the majority of cases, five minutes to just make a presentation. When they walk into the investor meeting, the investor, they have to you might have some questions. They have to follow the lead of the investor. And what I do is that sometimes they have an opportunity to do their pitch, but if they don’t, they’re prepared in the course of that conversation with the investor over the next half hour to hour, if they’re lucky, to have the sort of mini-pitches for each point that I mentioned, right and ready on the tip of their tongue. And if they have the deck there, they could pull up a slide and sort of explain it and go more into depth on that. But they’re ready so they can sort of be more agile and facile in how they handle that. And they can redirect the conversation more because they understand clearly points that they needed to get across and listen to what the investor is interested in and then tailor what they’re saying in a much more finely tuned, honed manner that gives them much better results.
Saul Marquez:
Wow. Yeah, because it’s not always going to be a picture-perfect setup.
Beth Susanne:
No, rarely.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, exactly. So how do you insert these relevant tidbits of information that are meaningful and actionable for the investor to say, wow, this is somebody we want to work with? That’s what you help people do?
Beth Susanne:
Absolutely. Because everything you say, what I described how you have to sort of hone the pitch so carefully, the flow, that logic of each slide, and the script that you’re writing in your delivery. One of the key things to know is that how you start off and grab attention in the beginning really matters. If you’re in a meeting, you can have a conversation. They’re judging you. They’re looking at you. The minute you come online and you just sit there in your little rectangle, you’re little. You know, they’re assessing, you know, they say, oh, we don’t have body language. That’s true, but not true. Also, when you’re not pitching, meaning when you’re having a conversation online, they’re actually reading your body language, your eye contact, your lighting. The backdrop. They’re assessing and making decisions about you immediately. And then if you have a team member there, you know how you interact as a team member. That has to be choreographed ahead of time. You have to know who is going to be addressing what issue, answering what. You have to not talk over the top of each other. There’s a lot of things that I cover. I cover everything you need to know about online pitching. I have actually an online pitch playbook I’d be happy to send to your listeners because it gives you what the investors looking to say and then online what you need to really watch out for. The thing about it is in the old days, like fifteen years ago, you say the research showed that you had ten seconds to thirty seconds for people to decide whether you were worthwhile listening to or not, Saul now online. Unfortunately, the research shows you have three to seven seconds. That’s like hardly any time at all. And they can tune out. And the bad thing about being online, this is a big bad thing is that of course they can shut their camera off and mute themselves. And you don’t know if they’re there.
Saul Marquez:
You don’t know what happened. Yeah.
Beth Susanne:
Yeah. So you’re sort of talking into a void. So you have to understand how to get comfortable doing that. And one of the most important things online everybody is how you use your voice. You have to have energy behind your voice. Your voice has to be compelling. And there are three different things to think about with your voice. It’s the volume, the pitch, and the speed. And so you have to vary the volume in English when you’re pitching English, we have to vary the volume and say some things louder. See, that’s louder, softer. And you have to vary the speed and your pitch, your pitch to go up and it has to come down. And then you need space between the ideas. You have to make sure you have some space and allow them to sort of capture and hear the key ideas that you’re saying. One of the issues for people who speak English from their native melody, which is another language right so I’m so impressed by so many, you know, millions of people who are pitching in English when it’s not their first language. But one thing to know is that when you are pitching in English, whether you’re a native English speaker or not, is that how you use your voice? You have to choreograph how you use your voice and after you develop your slides in the script and we coach you on your delivery, you have to go through the script and figure out which words in the script are your impact words. Impact words. Did you hear what I just said? Impact words. You have to design it that way so there’s an emphasis on it and then a slight space so we can hear it and absorb it afterward.
Saul Marquez:
So I love it. Yeah. No, this is fantastic. Beth, appreciate the little peek behind the curtains and some of the things that you do. This is super useful, I’m sure, for everyone listening. What would you say you’re most excited about today?
Beth Susanne:
Well, I sort of let the cat out of bed because I’m the most excited about having Lily Christensen come and work with me. Yeah, it’s changed my life. I’ve been working on my own as a pitch coach. I’ve had a great team of digital marketing people supporting me. But in terms of actually two things doing the pitch coaching, adding another aspect for sales coaching. And also I forgot to mention, I have a graphic designer I’ve been working with Ashley Wiltshire for the last six years and he’s amazing. And so we can just do the whole thing for the clients. We can get your pitch ready, get visually ready. And then and if you need to grow your team, Lily can help grow the team. And I really am excited about this team of people. And then I have one more person. That’s Carrie Alderson and she is a headhunter for startups and she finds the C suite for you. So I’ve got sort of the follow-on from actually getting the pitch, getting the money, growing your team, find the right people, and getting the graphic design. So I’m excited about having sort of the whole thing handled for you that I previously was more on myself, although Ashley’s been working with me for six years, and I’ve added these other people and it’s really made a big difference.
Saul Marquez:
Well, but that’s exciting. Really exciting. And, you know, experience shows that you know, once somebody hits a home run for you, there’s likely that they’re going to do it again. And you’re finding ways to augment these home runs that you’re helping your clients hit and helping them get deeper and broader with a lot of their goals. So fantastic stuff here. I’m excited for everybody listening to this because this is an opportunity for you to really consider your approach in your fund-raising, the opportunity to connect with Beth is certainly there. She welcomes it. It’s bethsusanne.com. It’s got two n’s, So BethSusanne.com. We’ll also leave that in the show notes. But Beth, what takeaways should we be thinking about here as we conclude, and apart from the website that I just mentioned, what’s the best way for the listeners to get in touch with you and your team?
Beth Susanne:
Well, there are two best ways. I think you could email me at beth@bethsusanne.com. And it’s b e t h s u s a n n e so it’s not a z, and or LinkedIn – bethsusanne at LinkedIn. And I think the takeaway is that if you’ve been struggling or frustrated with your fundraising efforts and you really want to hit it off the park, then I would suggest getting in touch with me and Lily and we’ll see what we could do for you. I’d be delighted to work with you.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Well, Beth, we appreciate the work that you do. And listeners take advantage of this. Reach out to Beth, take your business to the next level. Beth, thanks again. This has been great.
Beth Susanne:
Thank you very much, Saul. It’s been a pleasure.
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