Imagine you have 60 seconds to win that $1m contract and your dream
audience is standing next to you in an elevator.

Could you do it?

I recently had the pleasure of sitting with the team at Access Granted to do a podcast interview.  At the end of the interview they asked for my elevator pitch for Fuelled.

I instantly froze and thought ‘why haven’t I prepared this?!’ After awkwardly bumbling away for a few minutes I finally managed to spurt out ‘Fuelled turns outstanding invoices into cash’.  Face in hands, I was so disappointed in myself. I had wasted a perfect opportunity and could have done so much better had I been prepared.

Moral of the story – Don’t Be a Donna.

Having an ‘elevator pitch’ is crucial when it comes to thinking on your toes about your business offering. It’s the promotional pitch you use to tell people about yourself or your brand in the same amount of time it would take to ride an elevator.

There are endless opportunities to casually strike up a conversation about what it is that you do.  So cue the Elevator Pitch!

Simple right?

Well, while it may sound simple to prepare an elevator pitch, there actually seem to be a few rules!

• Practice it but don’t preach it
• Keep it professional but not boring
• Cover all your points but keep it to the point
• Tell a story but not a novel
• Sell yourself but don’t over sell it

Feeling confused?
Well you are not alone! However, when putting my Fuelled elevator pitch together I did discover that the less confusing approach is to share your ‘Why’ not your ‘What’.

In her blog, Jules Schroeder from Forbes.com talks about a shift in business culture where people are buying based on ‘Why’ you do what you do rather than ‘What you do’.

Simply put, Jules’ advice was to prepare a short and a long elevator pitch; one for the first-floor ride and one for the multiple floor ride and no more than 30 to 60 seconds long.

She gives an overview of how you should construct your pitch:

So, after reading Jules’ blog I’ve started to piece together my short elevator pitch and thought I’d share it with you. It still requires some furness and tweaking along the way but thats part of the journey.

Remember, being perfectly imperfect is ok. Each time you use your elevator pitch see how your audience reacts. 

• Did they understand why you do what you do?
• Did they say ‘Oh I know someone who could use that service’ or ‘that’s a great idea’. Or
• Did they stare at you blankly, fall asleep briefly or excuse themselves to the bathroom!

So dont be a Donna, be prepared, and enjoy the ups and downs of constructing your own elevator pitch!

At Fuelled we’re proud of our partnership with Xero to make cash flow management easier for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Our solution gives SME owners a simple way to fix their cash flow problems by advancing invoices.This can be done safely and securely from a computer in a matter of minutes.

Read more about Fuelled + Xero 

 

What is invoice financing?

What does ‘advancing invoices’ mean I hear you ask?

How does it work?

 

 

Creating a Fuelled account is free and you find out in a matter of seconds whether you qualify for the service, how much cash you can free up, and what the total cost is per invoice.

You can use Fuelled only when you need it; no lock-in to long term contracts or monthly fees. It is an everyday tool available to you when you need extra cash to pay bills or accelerate your growth.

So how does it work in practice? Put simply, you create your account and authorise Fuelled to read your Xero data.

Our platform does an immediate credit analysis and, if you qualify, lists the invoices that meet our criteria. You choose the invoices you want to fund, we provide a quote, and you click submit.

If this is your first invoice, there is some additional information we need to collect, mostly due to regulatory reasons (such as anti-money laundering legislation).

You typically receive the funds in your account the same day. The service is confidential and doesn’t interfere with your customer relationships.

‘Faster, Better, Smarter’

 

It doesn’t cost you anything to find out if Fuelled funding is available to you so that when the day comes that you’re running low on funds, you can login to Fuelled and release cash tied up in your unpaid invoices.

I suggest you give it a whirl!  Introduction to Fuelled video

20 February 2017
Heartland Bank Limited (Heartland) (NZX: HBL) advises that it has taken a 25% shareholding in
Fuelled Limited, an online small-to-medium business (SME) lender (www.fuelled.co.nz). The
shareholding has been provided alongside a committed debt facility enabling Fuelled to
accelerate its Australasian growth plans.

Fuelled is a New Zealand-based business whose simple on-demand service enables SMEs to
receive an immediate cash advance on their outstanding invoices, rather than waiting up to 90
days for their customers to pay. Fuelled is the first of its kind in New Zealand and has been
selected by Xero as its first alternative lender in Xero’s recently launched Financial Web. This
tight integration with Xero enables Fuelled’s advanced credit assessment engine to make real
time credit and financing decisions. The Fuelled customer experience is fully online and the
entire process takes just a few minutes.

The investment in Fuelled provides Heartland with the opportunity to gain further exposure to
online SME lending, following the launch of Heartland’s Open for Business loan origination
platform for SMEs in 2016 and its recent partnership with Spotcap Australia. Expansion of
Heartland’s digital origination platforms is a key priority for the business and Heartland
welcomes the opportunity to work with an innovative New Zealand company providing a
unique working capital offering for SMEs.

For further information, please contact:
Jeff Greenslade
Chief Executive Officer
Heartland Bank Limited
DDI 09 927 9149

https://www.nzx.com/companies/HBL/announcements/297040

If you’re a small business owner, the one thing that wakes you up at 3am more than anything else is cash flow – or lack thereof.

It is the lifeblood of any business, especially smaller fast growth businesses.

In my experience, most businesses never have enough of it, and cash flow gaps are common; not because the business isn’t financial mature, but because gaps are hard to predict.

Customers pay late, they partial pay, the invoice is disputed…the list goes on.

When I was in my early 30’s I started a technical recruiting business in Seattle during the dotcom boom.  It was money for jam – demand was high as were margins, and we grew very fast. 

To keep us funded, we had a small term loan tied to the house and a minuscule line of credit, but that was all the banks would give us.  We had no track record, no assets and the P&L was weak, so getting flexible credit lines was almost impossible. 

In the end we used a factoring service which helped as it allowed us to take on more business, but the customer experience and administrative burden was a nightmare.

Fast forward 10 or so years, and while the breadth of credit and payment options is broader, the problem is still the same.  Short-term cash flow gaps abound.

With the whole finance industry being disrupted as I write this, new forms of alternative finance proliferate which can support the small business and provide working capital typically on more flexible terms than the banks.

The Kaplan Group identified alternative finance companies worldwide that fall into three categories: they use technology to enable extremely fast authorization and financing, they use technology to connect crowdfunding and peer-to-peer finance sources, or they offer non-traditional forms of finance[1].

As you can see below, there are a lot of options to choose from and they are growing:

 

 

Source: Liberium Capital Limited, 2014

In April 2014, new regulations were introduced in New Zealand to support alternative finance providers.  Aimed initially at peer-to-peer and crowdfunding providers, the regulations allow businesses to raise up to $2 million a year through licensed crowd funding websites by issuing shares or other incentives to the public.

To date there are 5 peer-to-peer lenders in New Zealand – mainly focused on the consumer market and primarily offering medium to long-term debt facilities.  In addition, there are seven or so crowdfunding providers – providing both debt and equity growth capital for charities and small businesses.

While the growth of alternative finance in New Zealand is encouraging, there is still a gap in the market for flexible financing solutions which address a small businesses short-term cash flow gaps, without tying the business up in onerous covenants, administrative burden and cost.

For the first time, thanks to Xero’s partnership with Fuelled, customers can access an immediate source of finance making the task of managing cash flow easier, as well as providing the means to fund future growth.

 

 

Whatever the cause of your cash flow gap, it’s now easier than ever to solve it.  Fuelled and Xero make it simple, giving you access to an on-demand cash flow source that is able to grow with your business.

It takes seconds to register and you find out in minutes how much cash flow you can access.

See you at www.fuelled.co.nz.

 

[1] The Kaplan Group, Alternative Financing Landscape, 2016