EFFECTIVE PITCHING: 7 IMPORTANT STEPS for your next presentation

Straight to the point: Most presentations require some kind of selling, you are literally selling a part of your story to someone else. And selling is not about constantly talking, selling, it's about engaging the person, audience you're selling to, or pitching your idea to.

1)?Start at the end:?It's about getting the audience to ask you questions, like, How do you do that? Don't do it by putting a ton of information at once.

You do it by having a compelling story, by making pauses added in your story so that your audience has a chance to ask a question, and then by engaging with the questions that they've asked.

2)?Never send the full deck in advance :

Never send an entire pitch in advance, it kind of defeats the purpose of having it. It's something you want to be presenting. Don't steal your thunder.

When people ask for information as pre-reads, send them a couple of slides with key information on it, or send them a write-up in prose or summary, but don't send the entire deck.?

Keep the deck for when you actually could present.

3) Be Bold:?Tell the story of your business in the way you want to tell that story.

Here is a framework I use to prepare my pitch - 30 sentences

Opening?- have an Aha moment - the why - moment everything clicked to you??- 3 sentences - Here you can also Make bold claims.

What is it?- In 9 sentences, add Shocking facts, and data points to your story. What a real problem it solves!

How does it work?- 5 sentences - add a good call to action which benefits you.

Potential payoff?- 4 sentences - Connect the story back to why it matters for the audience - most people skip this crucial part.

Why can you do it??4 sentences - Relate about your team, education, skills, and advantage of having you / your team do this.

End with a wow anecdote?- 5 sentences

Leave out sentences that require too much explaining

Make sure to have all is lost moment: How will you react when you don’t have good answers to questions asked (what problem will the audience have the most skepticism for, rehearse.)

But what is essential is that you invest much time in the process. Too many people come in with a deck that they've clearly never presented to anybody, even though they are good at presenting. That's clearly not well thought out. That leaves major questions open.?

And for better or worse, audiences tend to be on their phones.?

You want to start with an opening statement that's gonna get everybody to put their phones down and focus on you and your story.?

4) Keep your main deck short?12 slides, maybe 15. Maybe you can even do it in 10. I personally do the 5 slides main deck rule.?

If you can’t get the audience excited about what you're doing in 10 slides, you will certainly not get them excited in 25 or 64 slides.?

If you're doing the job right. They will be questions, and you should be prepared for those questions.?

5)?Appendix is essential: You should have slides ready that answer those questions in the appendix. Somebody asked about the size of the market, and how you came up with that, you should have a slide that speaks to that, with solid references.

Be prepared. But don't try to push all that information at the audience. Get the audience to care about your story and then start pulling information from you.

But when they start pulling, it's critical that you're well prepared.

Sometimes you may not have an answer at all. Now, if there's a really tough question, something really unanticipated. It's okay to say that's a great question. And I don't know the answer to that at the moment (explain why), and I will get back to you. If you do say that in the meeting. You better actually get back to people very quickly thereafter with an answer. If you say, that is a great question many times is probably a sign that you're ill-prepared.?

6)?Answers with Numbers: What makes for a great answer? A great answer is compelling in its words, but to the extent possible, it includes a number or two. It doesn't need to be a movie of numbers, but having critical numbers at your command will convince the audience that you actually know about your business, you know about its performance, and you know about the market in a way that you can refer to at a moment's notice.?

7)?Practice makes improvement:?So I always recommend figuring out what the most important numbers are for your business or idea and making sure you have those memorized.?

?Always keep in mind that executives are in the business of saying no. Most executives sponsor ideas in single digits per year, but they have hundreds of decks, ideas, and sponsorship requests a year.?

How do you get better at pitching you may ask. You get better at pitching by pitching. It's one of those things where practice makes improvement. So if you fiddle with your deck, endlessly, but you never actually get up in front of the mirror and rehearse it.?

You're doing it wrong. Get up in front of the mirror and give your presentation. Then get up in front of some of your team members. Give you a presentation.?

Get up in front of friends or family for your presentation. If you can't get a friendly audience excited and starting to ask questions. Imagine how hard a time you will have with an audience trying to find problems with your business.

Hope this helped. Curious to know your thoughts.