It’s no secret that an excellent presentation is the key to an investor’s heart. The problem is that most people are sure that an excellent presentation is about excellent slides. There is a huge amount of articles, services and templates on the internet with different successful examples and advice on pitch decks. On the contrary, your success depends on what and how you speak. Here are few steps which have helped me and my mentees to raise investments and win startup competitions. Throw away your current presentation! The problem is that your slides prevent you from making fresh decisions. You spend a lot of time mixing slides and its content, instead of concentrating on the main things: the plan, the plot and the vision. You should switch from slide-thinking to storytelling if you want to impress your potential investors. That is why you have to take a step back and start with your speech instead of your slides. Take some rest, imagine you are talking to investors, and write down your speech. Starting your preparation with the text opens an opportunity to make your pitch cohesive and smooth. Create a plot for pushing your potential investor to sign a bill. Before you start writing your text, prepare a plan and a plot, which includes a beginning, a main part and an ending. While planning your main part, keep in mind that you won’t raise money just after the pitch, and that the main goal is to involve investors in a dialog. Investors may not be experts in your area — you have to talk simply about difficult things without overloading them with technical information. Instead of indulging in specific details, talk about trends and general vision. It’s more common that your investors sign a bill if they see a huge rising market, a perspective competitive product with traction, and come to the conclusion that it is exactly your team that will succeed. Start with capturing attention, finish with a call to action. Are you sure people are listening to you? Before you start your presentation, you have to divert the audience from their phones. Personal stories, unexpected questions or incredible facts make people listen. Base the story on your personal experience which brings about the whole idea of your product. Start your presentation with 20–30 seconds of storytelling and the audience will be yours when you shift to the main part. You have to finish your pitch with an inspiring proposal to the audience: change the world/life/environment together, become partners, etc. Make your text short and sharp. After you have finished the first draft of your text, look through it and shorten it by at least a half. While it might not sound intuitive, the shorter your text is, the sharper your ideas are. Mastering your text means you throw away all extra words and repetitions. Read your speech aloud to help catch failed patches. You will clearly understand if something is wrong. Maybe you missed certain ideas, or you need to add something, or you might decide to replace some parts in your text. After you have done it, call your team, business partner, mom or friends and read your text to them. Is it clear to them? If not — repeat previous steps; if yes — move further: divide your text into meaningful, logical paragraphs. There must be one idea for one paragraph. For every paragraph, create an illustration which will be the basis of your slides. Remember — you don’t need to squeeze your text into the slides. Your text is what you will pitch, and your slides are just the illustration for it. Don’t add more than several words to your slides. Work hard, train hard. The text of your speech is ready, your slides are ready, now it’s the time for the hardest part — train yourself to make your brilliant pitch automatic. A pitch it’s just an ordinary skill like swimming, car driving or dancing which you can master through a certain amount of rehearsals. People think that brilliant speakers possess a gift. Behind the screen lie hours and hours of repetitions. The good news is that everyone can master their 5–7 minute pitch. Let me share my techniques with you, although you can find your own: read the text aloud, 3 times, read the text aloud, with a stopwatch, 3 times read the text aloud, with the slide-show, 3 times read the text aloud, with the slide-show, and a stopwatch, 3 times retell the text, with the slide-show, 3 times retell the text , with the slide-show, and a stopwatch, 3 times gather focus group (with your teammates, friends or toys) pitch your presentation 5 to 10 times to them. Does it sound like too much for you? Well, that is how we master our skills and become “The God of the Pitch Deck”. Also published . here

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