All posts by romanok7

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation

How to pitch to VCs, and why accounting does not matter

1 Comment

While most of our class was enjoying accounting, I had a pleasure of taking Charlie Goetz’s Entrepreneurship class.  Charlie is a fascinating person – full of energy and entrepreneurial spirit , he could survive anywhere. He is also extremely successful, building multiple business from the ground up and selling them to wealthy investors for large sums of money (including a business that exclusively sold french fries).  While working  on a project in  his class, I finally realized that it is not just about ideas and execution – Charlie’s pitch and presentation were keys to his success. One might have the best idea and great execution – but if you can’t sell it to real people, especially people with money and connections, all those ideas will be worthless.

One presentation that each entrepreneur hopes to have is a pitch to a venture capitalist – that means your idea made it past the idea stage, and you have an opportunity to make it big. If you can sell your idea to a venture capitalist, you can sell your presentation to anyone, whether it is your boss,  Professor Noonan,  or even Dean Lewis. So how does one prepare for this presentation – “the Money Game” section at WSJ has few tips:

– Present Yourself:

Modesty does not pay. Each presentation, whether to a venture capitalist or to your classmates, is a lot like a date. People want to know something about you,   they want to know why they should listen to you.  Going to straight to your presentation is a lot like like going on a date and saying “Let’s get it on”.

–  Tell it to mom:

Keep is simple.  Steve Jobs once said:

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

When making a presentation, keep it simple and understandable. It is always easier to send more information to ones who need more details,  but once you loose your audience, it is impossible to get them back. One caveat – the assumption needs to be clearly explained, and your pitch needs to be grounded in reality.

– Don’t Play with numbers:

Integrity is paramount. Whether pitching to a VC or your Boss, you cannot undermine their trust. A lot of presenters try to focus on the positive, but what one needs to show is they have though of the negatives and have a plan to address it.  It absolutely necessary that your audience can trust you.

– Stay on the radar:

In class, the presentation may end on the day of the class. Yet in the real world,  this is just a start – persistence pays off.  Even if you receive a no at the first pitch, you should keep in touch with the investor.

Your can read the rest of the article at WSJ.

PS. Accounting is crucial to business, and multiple accounting scandals of the 2000s certainly proved that.  However, the is always a CPA when you need an accounting advice, but you are the one who needs to make the pitch.

 

 

07c-Telling stories

Telling Stories to Persuade People

Leave a comment

In the age of big data, we think data is persuasive.  If we can just visualize it,  harness it, and display it in a very detailed presentation, we can convince people with it.  All they need to do is see our numbers, facts and figures, and they will be convinced to follow our lead. Unfortunately, this is where the human mind comes to play – as  neuroscientists have discovered,  most decisions are informed by emotional responses rather than by cold and hard rational thinking.

In his Wall Street Journal article on the topic, “To Persuade People, Tell Them a Story”, Dennis Nishi tells a story of Paul Smith, associate director at P&G. For many days, Mr. Smith prepared to present to P&G CEO, A.G. Lafley. However, on the day of the presentation,  CEO entered the room,  greeted everyone and turned his back to the screen. As Mr. Smith tells his side of the story,

“I felt like maybe I hadn’t done a very good job because he wasn’t looking at my slides like everyone else.It didn’t occur to me until later that he did that because he was more interested in what I had to say than in what my slides looked like.”

To address this issue, presenters need to connect to their audiences on an emotional level.   The above mentioned Paul Smith, now a corporate trainer and an author, has a new book:  “Lead With a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire”. In it,  he told a story of a mother’s plea to P&G executives about hardships and trade-offs she had to make for her children, and how that story convinced them to lower the price of shortening, underscoring the power of an emotional connection.

In another book mentioned in the article,  “Beyond Bullet Points” by Cliff Atkinson,  Mr. Atkinson tells us to move beyond facts in figures. He suggests  structuring our story in three acts – starting by establishing context,  following with a description of how the main character fights to resolve the conflicts, and finishing with a call to action.

Stories are important to human communication – they started long before PowerPoint presentations,  and we have strong emotional connections to them. So it is important that we do not start our story with an apology or ask a permission to tell it – we should be confident enough for it to stand on its own.

You may read the rest of  “To Persuade People, Tell Them a Story” at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303482504579177651982683162.