The story of the worst pitch of my life — Part 2
This is the second part of a two-part article. You can read the first part of “The story of the worst pitch of my life — Part 1”
When I said that this pitch was a trauma to me I was not being dramatic or overstating it. This was really a trauma. I avoided every public presentation or any presentation at all for years. When my job forced me to make it I suffered from anxiety, so bad that lead me to have panic attacks. Yep, imagine you need to make a public presentation and every time you need to take tranquilizers. That was my life for almost 1 year, doing several presentations every month. Eventually, this disappeared because I choose to deal with this trauma. I choose to learn from this bad experience and try to understand “why?”. Therefore, I came up with the 10 lessons, the “10 deadly sins for every pitch presentation.”
1st Sin - Confusion
This is quite easy. Know the critical point of your presentation. What the hell are you doing on that stage, why, and what do you want from your public. After you understand that, build each slide with one key message. Make sure that individual message contributes to the critical point of your presentation.
2nd Sin — Concealing
Don’t fill your slides with text. Just don’t. People try to hide behind their slides.Mostly because they are embarrassed. Well, that sucks. Don’t do it, is just worst. I have two golden rules here:
1- The presentation doesn’t work without me presenting it. People cannot understand the message just by looking at the slides. Slides don’t give information, they introduce me.
2- People must look at the slide just for 3 seconds tops. The content must be understood in 3 seconds, after that the attention must be on me!
Bonus 3- LOOK AT THE AUDIENCE NOT TO THE SLIDES!
Making a pitch presentation is about empathy and sharing a vision. So you better engage your public, look them in the eyes!
3rd Sin — Ignorance
This is quite interesting. When we do a pitch we need to have a critical point to our presentation. And to do that you need to know to whom you are talking to. Imagine, you cannot make a technically focused presentation to an audience who’s not an expert on that domain. Is just stupid.
If you want an investment from a specific guy from the audience, you should investigate and focus your presentation on him. Not talk about him but talk to him! Know your public, investigate before the presentation.
4th Sin — Not shutting up
This is quite easy! Shut up. Yep, that simple. Know your timings. Learn how to pause and when to pause during your presentation. This is useful for 2 things:
1- Gives time to your public to assimilate what you’ve said;
2- Gives you time to think in your next words
BONUS: It creates suspense on public! Remember, a pitch is about creating emotion. Nothing better than creating anticipation to create suspense. People need suspense to be focused on your presentation. Otherwise is just boring.
This requires a lot of training, so, you better train every detail of your presentation.
5th Sin — Reading
JUST DON’T GO WITH YOUR NOTES AND YOUR MESSY PAPERS TO THE STAGE! JUST DON’T!
You know what your notes say about you? You’re insecure, you don’t know what you’re talking about, your body language is awful, and you shouldn’t be on stage because you’re not prepared for this.
6th Sin — Complexity
Don’t try to explain complex concepts during the pitch. If someone has any doubts about your technology they will ask. This will only create noise and will damage your presentation. You don’t have the time to explain everything to make it clear.
Pitch presentations must be simple and straight to the point or business.
7th — Deceive
Don’t hide your weaknesses. This is counter-intuitive, I know, but think with me. You’re going to present your idea to lots of people. Usually, those guys have a lot of experience and are quite clever. They will found out about the weaknesses you’re trying to hide, and thousand others.
Embrace your weaknesses and the risks of your business. Show that you thought about them, and you have a plan-B for some. People like this, believe me. Don’t try to fool them. They hate that.
8th Sin — Noise
Don’t use lots of animations and sounds. You are the interface of your presentation, the critical asset. Don’t let your presentation be the star. Avoid noise at all cost, and focus on the critical message you’re trying to send to your audience. Make sure you are the one sending that message, not your powerpoint. Otherwise, you can just send the presentation by email.
9th — Grumpiness
Be happy. Be proud of your work. Smile. Pitch presentations must create empathy and emotion in public.
I personally prefer creating positive emotions, so I’m always smiling! Just see the videos of Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg, or any other founder. They are proud of their work, and they are always smiling to the audience. Be like them, be happy and proud of your work. If you smile, usually people smile back :)
Jesus, I just realize I wrote “proud” hundreds of times in a few sentences!
10th — Thinking that pitch is sales
Be happy. Be proud of your work. Smile. Pitch presentations must create empathy and emotion in public. This is my last advice. Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever think that pitching your project is sales. It is not. A Pitch is about inspiring, creating emotion, it is about “selling” you vision of the future. It is true that in the future you’ll need to sell that vision to your clients or investors. However before that, you’ll need to “sell” that vision to your team, or at least to the people you want to be part of your team. This is probably the first and most important pitch of your startup’s life! Startups are not just an easy fairy tail story, where all of us are rich. Startups are about working hard, working late at night, sleep deprivation and despite that being motivated and passionate about our work. If you cannot sell your vision to your colleagues and your teammates you’ll never make that talent stay with you, making all the sacrifices towards success or failure. So you better learn how to pitch.
Finally I’m ending this post!
Those were the 10 lessons that I’ve learned the hard way.
The last lesson, don’t try to bury your fears. I know this is a cliché. But I really mean it. It takes time, I know. But once you have the courage to understand your fears and learn lessons from your failures, believe me, you’ll feel much better. I know it is difficult, I’m still afraid of spiders, but at least I can do cool presentations without tranquilizers :P
Sorry for the long post, here is a spider potato.
Kiitos!
