Persuasive strategies in the SME entrepreneurial pitch: Functional and discursive considerations

This paper aims to determine the efficacy of persuasive strategies in the SME pitch by examining the discursive interaction that takes place in a televised corpus, taken from the Spanish TV programme “Tu Oportunidad” (“Your Chance”), the counterpart of the British Dragon’s Den and the American Shark Tank. Using the information gathered in the discursive analysis of the corpus, we address how the use of rational and emotional factors may influence the decisions taken by the investors and how the entrepreneurs may achieve credibility. The results show the importance of rational argumentation in entrepreneurial and SME pitches, relegating emotional aspects to a secondary role from the persuasive point of view, which should, however, not be disregarded. Entrepreneurs should anchor their discourse firmly in a rational cognitive framework, but without discarding those emotional appeals which may be naturally connected to rational arguments, reinforcing their validity.