Coach advices for finalists preparation
By sandrine szabo
Created Feb 7 2008 - 11:00
[fontself]Imagine you have a great project and wish to present it.
Usually, you feel comfortable with your dear subject but transmitting the excitment and seducing the crowd you will be pitching your project to, is not an easy thing to do.
You are usually that involved that you lack of distance and objectivity on your project.
Much to say, focused on not forgeting any important item, you tend to try to say as much as possible, while you should just talk about the minimum.
Seducing people is about telling them a story in which they can see themselves.
If you manage to reduce your project presentation to a single idea surrounded with a catching story, you get it.
So here are the advices they gave to the speakers :
- Assume people in front of you do not understand and make it simple
- Concentrate on the core idea
- Explain it from the customer perspective : what will it allow him to do that he does not today (how will it change his life)
- Tell a story people can identify easily to
- Do not put too much on slides, do not use too many slides, ideally use no more than 5 and only to higlight key idea (a couple of words or a picture)
- Explain what you are looking for (promotion, partners, financing, testers, users)
- Go to the product (demo) as fast as possible
- Pitch quick (rythm is important)
- Rehearse many times (to avoid reading note, let your heart and passion speak for you)
- Adapt the speech to your audience needs
- Start with what will strike the audience : if you have a catchy video, run it first
- Be a showman, smile, be confident and share excitment