Crafting the ideal film pitch package is as much of an art as it is a science, but unlike your film, your pitch can and should be unique to each audience member. Imagine if every audience member of your film could choose their own ending - that is exactly what you get to do with your film investment pitch package. In this article, we use advice from a world renowned, multi million dollar generating entrepreneur and business person, Sabri Suby.
Sabri is a Shark Tank investor, multi business operator and most importantly, a SALES guy! In the digital business world, he is one of the top guys to follow when it comes to sales psychology and his methods and teachings have been successfully implemented by hundreds of thousands of successful brands and businesses worldwide. Sabri's teaching & videos can be applied to any business, job, career, personal or professional goals and if you ever need some motivation, clarity or direction, I encourage you to watch some of his videos. For anyone who dreads video learning as much as I do, Sabri is one of very few teachers who speaks at such a great pace, and doesn't use 'and ummm' filler, I don't have to listen to him @ 2x or faster speed just to stay awake.
So, what does this have to do with film financing? How will it help you fund your movie? Simple, what Sabri teaches is exactly what we teach in all of our articles, toolkits and bundles, templates and courses. Our experience has led us to customize all the top sales best practices for film funding, as opposed to say, selling luxury goods, which is one of Sabri's specialties. If Sabri gets paid to teach top luxury brands to sell to their target market, much of which will overlap with yours, then let's use the best practices we know work.
Film Pitch Package | $200M Spent to Learn These Expert Sales/Closing Cheat Codes
Five Sales Cheat Codes
The video discusses advertising on social media, however, it applies to just about any sales in life - and getting someone outside the film industry to invest their hard-earned money with you is 100% a sale. You are selling your investment, NOT your film. Part of the investment is the film, the attached or potential talent, your experience, your team, your film financing efforts (you've secured some soft financing and thoroughly researched all your funding options), but it is the whole of these things together that offer the best potential for a solid film investment.
- You must have an "Irresistible G-dfather Offer."
In the video, Sabri discusses all the people who say to him, "If I could just get the word out, just get more eyeballs on my product/service/film, it would blow up. My problem is traffic/lack of awareness or access to the right eyeballs." No, the issue is really your offer (aka the "Irresistible G-dfather Offer"). The offer trumps all and success takes getting the right offer to the right people.
FilmProposals:
Potential Filmmakers may have great ideas, but don't know how to communicate or pitch them, or what they would even do if they did have a face-to-face meeting with someone so accomplished. They have no idea what their film might look like as an investment. They are asking for production money, but are totally unclear on their offer. An investment is an offer, not a "please give me money." request. (More: About FilmProposals)
- Obsess over People
Obsessing over the wrong things, which in the case of films, is your script/characters/locations, etc. Focus on the psychology of the people to whom you are offering this opportunity - what are you offering the people you are pitching. What are their issues, hopes, dreams? How can you move these along and what can you do for them?
FilmProposals:
When asking for film financing, the coversation or tools/templates should never be about what you want. They should be about what you are offering. What will a film investor receive by investing with you? (More: 10 Things You MUST Do To Attract Film Investors)
- Goal of the Ad is to Sell the Click
A common error people make is trying to sell too soon, which in this video is using an ad to try to get a sale. In the case of film, it's using the the script or a business plan to get an investment. If you try and do this, you've just Olympic-level hurdled yourself over too many crucial steps, and are now disqualified. You're trying to get the sale (investment) way too soon in the process and using the wrong creative.
FilmProposals:
"When first approaching investors and producers, you can't very well send them 40 pages of business plan, financial projections, the script or any combination of materials that would take someone a week to review. You want your Film Pitch Deck to be a 7-10 minute read that compels your potential film investors to ask for further details about your project."
Your objective here is to lead your investor through a set of steps. So in the case of film, your "ad" is your Pitch Deck, designed to get your potential investor to say, "cool, tell me more," and then you send them your business plan, which is all of the details and analyses that show how you arrived at the "answers" in the pitch deck.
As an example, you've said in your pitch deck we believe our film will return a 111% ROI. After your investor asks for more info, then you send them the Business Plan, which shows the 10-20 films you've analyzed similar to yours, what their revenue was and how you arrived at your final numbers. Remember, they are already interested in an 111% ROI on their money, now they want to know how you got that number. It is an amazing feeling when you're walking through a result/summary/answer and the investor says, "how did you get that 111%?" and you say, "we'll get to that, the details are in our business plan." That's when you know you have their full attention for the rest of your discussion. When drafting your business case, you write the Business Plan before you write the Pitch Deck. When presenting to or trying to engage potential investors, you show them the Pitch Deck first, and if they ask, then the Business Plan.
- Pattern Recognition and/or Pattern Interruption
Got the Click (ie, investors have read your pitch, now want the details)? Now sell based on Pattern Recognition and/or Pattern Interruption. Make your pitch look like something the potential investor is familiar with. This ties in with the 'obsessing over people' point mentioned above and how to tailor your offer to every person individually. This is, of course, the opposite of the 1000s of emails we get every year that open with "Dear Sir, my name is XX and I am XXX and I need XXX." These don't work in any business or outreach and they especially don't work when you want someone to invest in your project.
FilmProposals:
Pitching to a dentist? Learn about their business and make some analogy in your pitch they can relate to...just like we are using this video to translate standard marketing into film financing. Examples: 1) Our film is to comedy what anesthesia is to dentistry, 2) Sick of all the comic book franchise movies being made by the large studios? Our movie is like the foot pedal-operated pneumatic drill to those - our movie will make audiences stop thinking, "I'd rather see the dentist" than another superhero franchise.
"You should be able to tailor your Pitch Deck depending on the background of the recipient- less creative and more financial for passive investors and more creative and less financial for active investors or talent." If you can't spend 10 minutes throwing in a personal anecdote and showing the investor you've taken the time to personally know them, why on earth should they invest with you?
"If you want investors to take you seriously, you must - and I can't emphasize this enough - must show you respect their time and money. The only way to show this respect is to put serious time, effort and thought into your pitch. This time and effort also goes towards finding out who they are, what their passions are and the type of the investor they are.
- Hit the Bullseye
Get your investors to act Rapidly, Emotionally and Rationally. To do this, you don't look at the products you are selling. These are the "products" (the script, characters) I'm selling all the benefits of the film. Your sale needs to talk to your dream prospect - your pitch, deck, copy, analyses, analogies need to speak to the product audience.
FilmProposals:
Example - yesterday I was researching steam mops (yes, I know, try not to be too jealous of my glamorous and exciting life). After sifting through hundreds of reviews, figuring out which were real and fake, the clearly fake ones (designed by the "experts" and fed to the audience to whom they gave free products in exchange for their "real" reviews) fell into two categories. 1) my home has never been this clean and 2) as an (older, pregnant, injured, working) person this has been a game-changer and saved me so much time doing the dreaded housecleaning, made it pain-free and my house sparkles like never before.
You'll notice #1 sticks to what the product does - it cleans, possibly better than any cleaning tool on the planet. But, #2, well that evokes emotion - avoiding the pain of bending over, scrubbing, etc while also including #1. But #2 makes the potential buyer feel the feels - what it would be like to have a sparkling clean home without a lot of labor, time, money or physical pain. If you had told someone 10 years ago they could write a NY Times & Amazon best selling book, thoughts of how hard that would be, how long it would take, how daunting the task seemed, and how many published failures there would take over most people's thoughts. Flash forward to today and add in AI, that analyzes your target audience, their buying/reading habits, writes the book for you while filling in some blanks "Mad Libs" style, designs the cover and writes the sales copy - all with a few clicks. Well, that changes the game. Yes, the technology (the product) is a part of it, but eliminating the emotion - the fears, doubts, etc are the win in this case - and how you hit the bullseye.
Do you know what to say and how to say it so investors don't feel pressure, but rather, want to write you a check? Are you using every possible tool in your arsenal to get your film financed? Are you able to Tailor the pitch to each investor Make the investor feel special and without pressure investors - make them want to write you a check? The Film Investor Tip Sheet includes practical and easy implementable advice, all designed to get investors to WANT to write you a check on the spot.
Back to Top of Film Pitch Package
Pitching Film Investors
Film Investor Guide
- Film Investor Ultimate Guide (For Filmmakers)
- Film Investor Primer (For Investors)
- 10 Things You MUST Do To Attract Film Investors
- Preparing for Film Investors
- Film Investor Business Plan Tips
- How to Find Film Investors
- Pitching to Film Investors
- Working With Film Investors
- Film Investor Tools & Templates
While our FilmProposals Bundles & Toolkits will save you hundreds of hours with prewritten text and templates and speed up your learning curve by showing you how to complete complicated financial projections, there is still a lot of information to process. We designed this FREE Film Business Plan Course to be sent once per week to break the process of writing your business plan into manageable pieces, and to keep you accountable and focused. In case you can't see the sign up form, try here.
FilmProposals - 2024 Financing Toolkits & Bundles
DIY Toolkits, Legal & Finance Service Bundles
See All Financing Toolkits, Financing Bundles & Film Legal Packs
Gold Toolkit
DIY Templates- Financing Manual
- Financial Projections Template
- Business Plan Templates (Narrative & Documentary)
- Investor Agreement Outline
- Film Budget Template
- Indie Film Pitch Deck
- Custom Indie Film Database
- BONUSES (MPA Market Stats, Dealmaking, Investor Tips, ++ )
- Regular Price $303, Save $124
Gold Toolkit + Financials Bundle
Most Popular- Full Gold Toolkit
- + Professional Sales Projections & Investor ROI (10 Films)
- Regular Price $802, Save $103
Platinum Bundle
NEWEST!- Full Gold Toolkit
- + Professional Sales Projections & Investor ROI -10 Films (Reg $499)
- + Film PPM Investor Agreement (Reg $499)
- + Filmmaker Legal Pack (Reg $129)
- Regular Price $1430, Save $231
FilmProposals Tools and Templates
- Film Financing Bundles
- Film Financial Projections Template
- Film Business Plan Template
- Documentary Business Plan Template
- Film Financing and Investor Manual
- Film Budget Template
- Indie Film Pitch Deck
- Film Investor Agreement Outline
- Film Investor Tip Sheet
- Filmmaker Legal Pack
- Indie Film Database
- FREE Business Plan E-Course