Stories

“They are not interested in this”

Or maybe: “they understood it”. When you don’t get questions about a certain issue in your…

Usually one thing is special

Back in the 1990s at McKinsey, a very senior Director told me that while the Firm does high quality work across the board, in ever project there is usually one insight, one piece of analysis, one original idea, just one, that stands out and makes all the difference. And that one…

The presentation is not always the bottleneck

The presentation needs to “transplant” your idea in the head of your investors or customers. They need to understand what the idea, and then be excited enough about it to buy or invest.

Presenting the conclusions vs the recommendations

Most business presentations present conclusions. You did a ton of analysis, and now you take people through the data and their implications, often using the same slides the team used to get to those conclusions. “Look, here is what we did!”

Generic investor pitch presentation flow

Here is a story flow that I end up using often for investor pitches of my clients:

• Good idea
• Once, there was a situation
• Something changes/changed

Sounding convincing, versus actually convincing

Some people naturally sound convincing. They have charisma, they find it easy to tell their story, they are confident, they can wing the presentation, they say that they consider themselves good presenters. They sound convincing, but do they…

Backgrounds and introductions

You got 30 minutes with a senior executive to present your case in a highly politically charged issue. Many people bring a very long deck that starts slowly, industry trends, backgrounds, history, until finally at 25 minutes we get to the real issue.

Staring at a page and repeat

When you start at a blank or partially complete slide, it is tempting to put that key message in. You don’t have the overview of the entire presentation, so the key point will appear — duplicated — on many pages.

Problems, problems, problems, solutions, solutions, solutions

Most product pitches go something like this:

• Existing solutions have this problem
• Existing solutions have this problem
• Existing solutions have this…