My first advice: Don’t lose your perspective of your potential client or sales prospect. Make sure you target your audience. Remember the point of your presentation is to appeal to potential investors and convince them that you can solve their problem. You need money...they have and wanted to invest i

“Presentation” defined: For our discussion , a presentation is the act of speaking to one or more people with the intent of informing, persuading or selling them on your point of view, your product or service or to convince them to follow you in some endeavor...or to invest their money in you.

Asking for Money

You remember the last time you had to ask someone for money. For instance, when you went to a bank for a home loan or you applied for credit. Didn’t you have to know what to say and not to say? Didn’t you have to persuade the lender to have faith in you and your personal success and ability to pay them back?

A great presentation is fundamental to a successful sale, business deal or interview. With just the merest efforts you should be able to target your presentation to the person or persons with whom you are meeting. I recently helped an entrepreneur do just that. Dave D. was invited to compete verbally for investment capital to fund his project. He would be given two minutes to convince the audience.

Dave’s Project

Dave is an entrepreneur trying to get funding for his second venture. In his previous endeavor, he and his partners had raised $50M in venture capital funding. Dave D. was convinced that his “job”, as an entrepreneur, was simply to ask as many people as possible to invest in his project. He was right.

This time, Dave had to do exactly the same thing but with some additional caveats and restrictions. Firstly, he had to sell his amorphous and intangible idea. Sure he had revenue projections and a good track record, but the successful funding for his project was on the other side of a successful competitive presentation to a group of potential investors.

Not only must Dave have a good grasp of his idea, he had to present a message which would successfully target those audience members who would be most likely to be impressed…..and invest their money in his invention....and the group only allowed a total of two minutes per presenter, also known as an “Elevator Speech”. There were twenty nine other hopefuls after the same goal.

Dave already knew the goals and makeup of his investor audience. But he was understandably nervous and I worked with him to structure his presentation to appeal quickly and efficiently, in the most succinct and direct fashion, so as to be able to raise financing for his project.

My first advice: Don’t lose your perspective of your potential client or sales prospect. Make sure you target your audience. Remember the point of your presentation is to appeal to potential investors and convince them that you can solve their problem. You need money...they have and wanted to invest i

A great presentation is fundamental to a successful sale, business deal or interview. With just the merest efforts you should be able to target your presentation to the person or persons with whom you are meeting. I recently helped an entrepreneur do just that. Dave D. was invited to compete verbally for investment capital to fund his project. He would be given two minutes to convince the audience.

Dave’s Project

Dave is an entrepreneur trying to get funding for his second venture. In his previous endeavor, he and his partners had raised $50M in venture capital funding. Dave D. was convinced that his “job”, as an entrepreneur, was simply to ask as many people as possible to invest in his project. He was right.

This time, Dave had to do exactly the same thing but with some additional caveats and restrictions. Firstly, he had to sell his amorphous and intangible idea. Sure he had revenue projections and a good track record, but the successful funding for his project was on the other side of a successful competitive presentation to a group of potential investors.

Not only must Dave have a good grasp of his idea, he had to present a message which would successfully target those audience members who would be most likely to be impressed…..and invest their money in his invention....and the group only allowed a total of two minutes per presenter, also known as an “Elevator Speech”. There were twenty nine other hopefuls after the same goal.

Dave already knew the goals and makeup of his investor audience. But he was understandably nervous and I worked with him to structure his presentation to appeal quickly and efficiently, in the most succinct and direct fashion, so as to be able to raise financing for his project.

My first advice: Don’t lose your perspective of your potential client or sales prospect. Make sure you target your audience. Remember the point of your presentation is to appeal to potential investors and convince them that you can solve their problem. You need money...they have and wanted to invest i

Dave’s Project

Dave is an entrepreneur trying to get funding for his second venture. In his previous endeavor, he and his partners had raised $50M in venture capital funding. Dave D. was convinced that his “job”, as an entrepreneur, was simply to ask as many people as possible to invest in his project. He was right.

This time, Dave had to do exactly the same thing but with some additional caveats and restrictions. Firstly, he had to sell his amorphous and intangible idea. Sure he had revenue projections and a good track record, but the successful funding for his project was on the other side of a successful competitive presentation to a group of potential investors.

Not only must Dave have a good grasp of his idea, he had to present a message which would successfully target those audience members who would be most likely to be impressed…..and invest their money in his invention....and the group only allowed a total of two minutes per presenter, also known as an “Elevator Speech”. There were twenty nine other hopefuls after the same goal.

Dave already knew the goals and makeup of his investor audience. But he was understandably nervous and I worked with him to structure his presentation to appeal quickly and efficiently, in the most succinct and direct fashion, so as to be able to raise financing for his project.

My first advice: Don’t lose your perspective of your potential client or sales prospect. Make sure you target your audience. Remember the point of your presentation is to appeal to potential investors and convince them that you can solve their problem. You need money...they have and wanted to invest i

Not only must Dave have a good grasp of his idea, he had to present a message which would successfully target those audience members who would be most likely to be impressed…..and invest their money in his invention....and the group only allowed a total of two minutes per presenter, also known as an “Elevator Speech”. There were twenty nine other hopefuls after the same goal.

Dave already knew the goals and makeup of his investor audience. But he was understandably nervous and I worked with him to structure his presentation to appeal quickly and efficiently, in the most succinct and direct fashion, so as to be able to raise financing for his project.

My first advice: Don’t lose your perspective of your potential client or sales prospect. Make sure you target your audience. Remember the point of your presentation is to appeal to potential investors and convince them that you can solve their problem. You need money...they have and wanted to invest i

My first advice: Don’t lose your perspective of your potential client or sales prospect. Make sure you target your audience. Remember the point of your presentation is to appeal to potential investors and convince them that you can solve their problem. You need money...they have and wanted to invest in a good project ...how can you sell them?

I set the stage: Now, you are at the lectern. All the eyes in the room are on you and they are expecting to be entertained, enlightened, persuaded, impressed but not sold, not yet. This is where you instill interest in your audience. Make them ready to fund your project.

I had learned that writing “direct marketing” copy was, in essence, also a great approach to this type of presentation. The four letters A-I-D-A, pronounced “Eyeeeeda”, give you a pattern for presenting yourself and your product, service or idea to potential “ direct marketing” customers. You’ve all received direct marketing letters in the mail.

They follow a pattern called. A-I-D-A which stands for getting their Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

Attention

My usual technique is to ask the audience a question. I raise my hand and ask: “How many of you get nervous when speaking to a group?” The usual response is from at least half of the audience…the other half is not telling the truth. I know that everyone gets nervous in front of an audience.

Dave’s invention would prevent prepared food providers from serving unwanted bacteria in their foods. Although on the face of this proposal, you might ask: who wouldn’t want that? But his audience would not be interested in sentimental reasons for providing capital to satisfy this need. Investors want returns on their investments. They want to know what you can do and how many food preparers will believe you.

Dave asked if they had just enjoyed the lunch they had just consumed and proceeded to present facts about food poisoning. This was, of course, disgusting and shocking but effective. His audience was now paying Attention.

Interest

Now, Dave continued to keep their interest and attention by pointing out some statistics (not too many) about how many people are affected and how these occurrences dramatically (Taco Bell) affect the business of the food suppliers and servers. He carefully crafted a scenario involving food product suppliers who must wait days or even weeks to ascertain whether or not their products are safe enough to distribute.

All the time the producers’ profi