Presenting is important. 95% of presentations are terrible. Yours don’t have to. With a little practice, you can be in the top 2% of presenters in the world.
Seth Godin recently wrote an excellent post on the two elements of a great presenter. Here are the original two and 12 more.
1. Give love (to the audience)
2. Gain respect (from the audience)
3. Transfer emotion (to the audience – and receive it back from them)
4. Sell one idea (to the audience)
5. Have a strong posture. In the lobby of the VC’s office, you get in the zone. Orchestrate your mental posture to be “Before you got here, you didn’t know about my company. When I leave . . . you will be begging to give me money.” Then don’t tell them, show them.
6. Presentations are better than sales calls. With sales calls, they might be looking at you, they decide when you start, they decide the pace and they decide when you end. With presentations, everyone is looking at you, you decide when you start, you decide the pace, you decide the end. That’s magnificent. Don’t waste it. They won’t let you waste it twice.
7. Make it worth their time. Make it interesting.
8. Offend some people.
9. Change the way some people think.
10. Sell them on something. It doesn’t have to be a product or service. Sell an idea. Sell change. But if you’re not trying to sell them on something, you’re wasting their time. Please go home.
11. Determine the vernacular. Then shatter it.
12. Watch presenters like Ken Robinson, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
13. Read and learn from Garr Reynolds book and blog Presentation Zen. Read Nancy Duarte’s book, Slideology. If you have the presentation of your life, hire Nancy.
14. Surprise them. If you want VC’s to think that you’re willing to do ANYTHING to get their money back, take an egg and slam it on the table and exclaim confidently, “It’s broken”. I can fix it . . .
15. . . . then pause for 5 full seconds, while they decide if you’re a psychopath or not. Be willing to pause. At moments when the audience doesn’t want you to pause. Pause to increase the tension in the room.
16. Make an extraordinary amount of eye contact. If you’re sincere, you can create an emergency.