Ten Ways to Improve Any Investor Presentation

You’ve got a brilliant idea. And you’re convinced it’s going to be huuuge. 

Now it’s time to convince the folks who have the money you need to fund it that it’s a risk worth taking. Which is where your investor presentation comes in.

And while financial fundamentals and proof of concept are paramount, so is the notion of actually selling your business concept to an audience you have to presume to be skeptical.

Keeping it visual and short are accepted best practices. Here are ten other tips for taking e a marketer’s view and adding the sizzle you need to go from skepticism to enthusiasm:

1.     Think like a storyteller. Using the narrative technique called The Hero’s Journey is ideally suited to an investor presentation. Why? Though there are many storytelling structures, this one makes your business concept the hero by providing the perfect structure for adding context, drama, and validation for the solution you want to bring to market. Or put another way, it puts everything you need to tell into a story that your audience wants to stay with from start to finish.

To help plot your story, a good tool is to use index cards and map it out as if it were scenes in a movie. Here’s an example for a SaaS offering realtors leads based on predictive interest/intent:

2.     Perfect your “fastball” or “elevator line.” If someone asks, what do you do or what’s your idea you want to be able to respond in 10-12 words or less. And what you say should be sharp and compelling enough to prompt the response, oh, that’s very interesting, tell me more.

 Some fastballs from “legendary” pitch decks (primarily because they went on to become fantastically successful businesses):

 Airbnb – Book rooms with locals rather than hotels.

Uber – Next generation car service.

Buzzfeed – What’s buzzing on the web?

 Caution: don’t circumvent or downplay this critical step. Because getting it right means you have an idea and a product position that can win in the marketplace. If you don’t, maybe what you have isn’t quite ready for prime time.

3.     Consider video. It’s estimated that 70-75% of people prefer video over text when learning about a new product or service. Think potential investors are any different? Think again. A two minutes or less video can help pull your audience in and engage.

But there’s another reason to consider adding short video content: your job is to convince your potential partner that you know how to market what you’ve got – and video is a great way to do that.

Now, before you say that you don’t have the funds to create a “quality” video, consider that you can leverage a site like Upwork, engage a local university, or even compose one yourself. And there are some terrific content agencies that do video production very affordably.  

Use The Hero’s Journey framework – either in its entirety, or a single section of it – to craft your content. OR, follow the advice of the book They Ask, You Answer by contemplating what questions you’re likely to be asked, and preemptively answering them in dramatic fashion.

4.     Include a strategic executive summary. If you’ve given thousands of business presentations, as I have, you know this cruel fact: people have short attention spans and they want to cut to the chase. A short, well-crafted execute summary does that.

 The mistake I’ve seen over and over again, is to summarize virtually every point that’s in the presentation. If you do that, why should I fasten my seat belt and go along for the ride for the next ten or fifteen slides that you want to show me? I won’t. That’s when the cell phones come out, emails and texts get read, and you boil over because your time and effort aren’t being respected.

Instead, think of your executive summary as a movie trailer of sorts. Tell just enough. And focus more on the financial conclusion than the how.

5.     Make your headlines count. Here’s a little trick: if your headline has five words or less and starts with the word “The” or “Our” it probably is very suboptimal. Think along the lines of “The Market, “Our Product,” and “The Solution.” Those aren’t headlines, they’re placeholders.

Instead, think of your presentation as a great consulting deck – where the headlines make a compelling summary statement on what’s on the page or what you’re about to talk about. In effect, it allows the audience to disregard everything else that’s on that page. And it’s in the headlines that you’re best able to map your Hero’s Journey narrative to your content.

So, for example, if you’re introducing a new type of mattress to the market, instead of headlining your page “The Research,” it would be something like: “Consumer’s nightmare: 80% say that shopping for a mattress is worse than buying a used car.”

6.     Include emotional/empathetic reasons to believe. It can be easy to think that a potential investor only wants to hear the financials and the facts. But if what you’ve got truly solves a business or consumer problem, then emphasizing the pain or struggle inherent in that problem, and the joy or satisfaction that accompanies the solution, are key to establishing and validating that what you have are of value. Emotion is core to The Hero’s Journey, so don’t be shy about injecting it into your narrative, and highlighting it as a customer outcome.

7.     Treat bios as you would a LinkedIn profile. It’s often said that the most critical element of any startup is the management team – what they’ve tried, what they done, what they’ve accomplished, what makes them an authority in their category. For a leave-behind, it’s fine to include a 200-word bio, but for an in-person presentation it’s a non-starter.

Instead, introduce members of your management team on paper as you would in your Linkedin profile, and then let each of them tell their own (short) story at the meeting. That means condensing the “headline” to 120 characters or less, and then adding (at most) three short bullets emphasizing core credentials/accomplishments (most importantly, past success as an entrepreneur).

The idea here is that, at quick glance, people viewing your presentation recognize that your management team has done it before, and they can do it again to make me money.

8.     Visualize your financials. Sure, before you do a deal, you’ll likely need to provide a comprehensive financial model. But for your presentation, the key is to pull it the most essential elements of your financial statement such P&L, balance sheet and cash flow. Most of the graphs can be created directly in Excel, or you can turn to a BI tool like Tableau.

One of the key reasons for doing this is to not only project your vision and opportunity, but also pragmatism and authenticity. As I heard one investment exec say, “if every graph has an ascending straight line from left to right, my immediate reaction is bullshit.” Demonstrating more realistic forecasts projects experience, and an awareness of what it takes to build a successful business.

9.     Customize your presentation. Everyone brings a bias to their decision making based on their expertise, experience, and expectations. And if you know ahead of time what one or more of these biases are, it’s an opportunity to make small tweaks to your presentation to acknowledge and address them. Think of it as classic target marketing.

 A little research can go a long way in discovering what types of companies they prefer to invest in, the backgrounds of the people who will be in the room, their investment philosophies, their track record with specific types of businesses, etc. You can take what you learn and inject it into your content in a way that says I know what you prefer without outright saying it. Also, thinking along the lines of one or more personas reflecting who you’ll be presenting to is a great way to help practice your pitch.

10.  Hook in a CRM component. The harsh reality is that, regardless of how enthusiastic your audience is to your presentation, you’re likely going to need several follow ups to get traction and close the deal. Having a stated purpose for this follow up will help a lot. So again, thinking like a direct marketer, including engagement hooks can be very valuable. 

These can include offers to deploy or provide additional research validating your concept or conduct a conference call/webinar/demo with other members of their team to answer any lingering questions. Having a graphic “meeting summary” doc “in the can” with modules/fields that are easily customizable based on the conversation/ feedback you get, is also a great idea in that helps you to strike while the iron is still hot to overcome objections/hurdles, harness the enthusiasm, and project assertiveness and professionalism.

Unfortunately, a great idea doesn’t always sell itself. You need to provide context and detail to give it substance, authority, and credibility. Following these ten tips will help you do just that.

Want a free critique of the presentation you’re using now, or interested in conducting a Hero’s Journey workshop? Drop me a line: richfeldman@landtheplane.net or visit our web site, www.landtheplane.net and click on the “schedule now” button.

Rich Feldman is Captain of LandThePlane – a strategy and concept consultancy specializing in marketing for startups, consumer and enterprise technology, financial services, pharmaceutical and recurring-revenue brands. Formerly, he was Managing Partner, Chief Strategy Officer at Doner CX, an MDC Partners Agency, and SVP, Executive Director at Brann Worldwide, a Havas agency.