Translating Financial Projections from the Business Plan to the Pitch Deck

 

If you’ve ever written or reviewed a business plan you know the document is quite lengthy. You’ve got a lot of ground to cover when thoroughly detailing all the ins and outs and key aspects of a business. One of the meatier sections is the financial projections of the business plan. The trickier part comes when you try to translate all these – often expansive - areas to a single slide each in a Pitch Deck.

One of the sections people struggle with the most is how to convert the financial projections in the business plan to apply to the pitch deck. The financials are arguably one of the areas that investors will be most interested in. Yet you are still expected to cover the main highlights in one slide, two at most.

There are many ways to consolidate the key components of the Financial Projections Business Plan into a single slide of the pitch deck. Here is one suggestion.

Take your Profit &Loss Statement. First, only show the following lines/rows:

• Volume (in quantity)

• Revenue (may want to also express % growth from period-to-period underneath figure)

• Cost of Sales

• Gross Profit (in $)

• Gross Profit (as a %)

• Operating Expenses

• EBITDA (in $)

• EBITDA (in %)

Another key concern for investors will be cash flow, so you should also show the expected cash at the end of the period below EBIDTA.

If you are planning on growing rapidly, you may also want to include a quick snapshot of headcount and average revenue/employee on an annual basis as well.

You will also need to determine what time frames you are going to show. If your business is brand new or yet to launch, you may want to consider breaking the projections into 9 columns:

• Month 1

• Month 2

• Month 3

• Quarter 2 (Q2)

• Quarter 3 (Q3)

• Quarter 4 (Q4)

• Year 1 (in total)

• Year 2

• Year 3

Although heavily consolidated, this is still a great deal of information crammed into one slide. If the pitch deck is being sent to an investor, this will be highly readable. However, if you are going to present this information in a presentation, be cognizant of the size of the screen you are working with.

Make sure you display the information as large as possible and consider breaking it up if necessary. It will also help if you make sure that your audience has printed copies. That way, in case they can’t make out all the details on the screen, they’ll still be able to refer to their printed version of the pitch deck.

Also, don’t forget the purpose of the pitch deck. It is supposed to show very top line information and is only an introduction to your business. If you are able to entice them, they will thoroughly review all of the detailed Financial Projections in the business plan.

When you review your pitch deck before sending or presenting, make sure to consider it from the side of the investor. Are you giving them enough information to gather your overall concept and see the potential?

Knowing that one of the areas they are most interested in is the financial projections for the Business Plan, it is tempting to give them too much information. So always keep in the back of your mind that the purpose is to get them to want to read the full plan. If you give them too much information, they may feel that is unnecessary or you could lose interest altogether, so keep it brief and topline only.