Can I Use My Notes?.....Please!

        It would be lovely wouldn’t it, to be able to use notes when having to pitch/do presentations/ media interviews.   Have your notes handy so you don’t have to memorise everything and you can go back to them if you go blank.  They’re the perfect safety blanket.  

        BUT………

        Put yourself in your audience’s position.  Someone stands in front of you, you are expecting them to know what they’re talking about, and they’re using notes.  What would your reaction be?  You’d doubt their knowledge and therefore doubt them.

        I recently did a pitch training session with a very successful businessman who was going for funding for a new venture.  He was about to face a panel of VCs. 
       
        The conversation went like this…..

Him “I need my notes”

Me “You don’t, you’ll be fine without them.”

Him “Yes I do!”

Me “But you know your business, what makes you feel you need notes?”

Him “I need them…it’s fine it’s not a problem”

Me “You are risking looking as if you don’t know your business”

Him “It’s just technical information, they’ll expect me to be using notes”

Me “There’s a lot of competition for this funding, if it’s a toss up between you and someone who doesn’t need notes…….”

Him “I’ll put them on the table so I’m not holding them”

Me “Have you been in the room?”

Him “No”

Me “ So what if there isn’t a table?”

Him “……….Well there’ll be a lectern”

Me “ If you haven’t been in the room how do you know there’s a lectern?”

Him  “Look, I’m using my notes, it’ll be fine”

        I realised that I would have to physically demonstrate another reason that notes are not a good idea in order to get him to accept my first point that investors don’t like it.  The other reason is…….nerves.

        I casually picked up my own notes as I was talking to him.  As I kept talking I started to shake the papers very, very slightly as if I was trembling.   Despite the fact that I was still talking, his eyes kept darting to the sheaf of papers involuntarily.  The more he looked at them the more I shook them, still talking about something else.   His eyes kept darting…..
   
        So I asked him why he kept looking at the papers.  

Him “er…..well…they’re….”

Me “ Shaking?   Yes I know, and I lost your attention completely the first time your eyes dropped to see why they were shaking.   And that’s what will happen to you if you use notes.   If you have even the slightest nerves, the notes will show it.  And as the VCs eyes go to the paper,  you will notice them looking at the paper and that will make you more nervous and they will shake even more.”

Him “................Ah!”  

        If you don’t believe the effect shaking papers can have, try it yourself on someone else and watch their eyes.   You want your audience looking at you not at your shaking hands.   You want their complete undivided attention.   

        Notes are a very very very very very bad idea.    They will give away any hint of nerves and they will make you look ill prepared and ill informed. 

        If you want to know how to do without those notes, keep reading this blog.  Making your pitch easy to deliver is a subject I return to again and again.

Tech Entrepreneurs Week

Spent a headspinning week as the pitching coach at Tech Entrepreneurs week in London.

        www.techentrepreneursweek.com

        Techie startups had to compete in several pitching rounds for a £50K prize and the chance to pitch to a room full of hungry VCs and business angels.

        With only 10 places in the final, competition was fierce.  £50K with no strings was good enough, pitching to an entire room of potential mentors, investors and people with weapons-grade usefulness was a chance everyone wanted, badly.

        As the pitching coach I sat in a room with industry advisors as a succession of entrepreneurs rocked up in front of me.   I listened to their pitch, worked out what they were trying to say and guided them towards what they should have been saying and how to say it. 

        Seeing so many eager entrepreneurs in such a short space of time really crystallised the biggest problem people have with pitching.  The fact the businesses were tech businesses and that many of my trainees were techies,   made it even more obvious.

        They almost all suffered from the same malady – The Curse of Knowledge.   They knew too much about their product/business and couldn’t stand back and just tell me what made it an attractive business.  They could tell me why it was clever, complicated, cutting edge, why it came in four colours, had more whistles, lights and bells than an Indian Bus in Diwali.     

                                   What they couldn’t do was explain their business simply, tell me why anyone would want to buy it, invest in it, or how they were going to sell it.   Many of them had been up and running for some time, had already had some investment, had board members with more pedigrees than Crufts.    They were seriously clever people, with good businesses.  But the Curse of Knowledge tied them up in knots so they couldn't make a simple and effective pitch.

        What they didn’t get is that when you are pitching you have to hear your own pitch with someone else’s ears.   You have to work out what they want to know, what will excite them, not just what you want to tell them.

        Pitching isn’t an art, it doesn’t come naturally to most people,  it’s a learned skill. 

        I’m happy to say that I coached the winner, Last Second Tickets, most of the finalists and those who narrowly missed a place in the finals.  None of those final pitches bore much resemblance to the ones they tried out on me on day one.   I rolled up my sleeves and off we went………..

        I was very proud of the final performances.

All Decisions Are Emotional

        Using logic and facts to persuade people of something rarely works.   We are emotional creatures.  We might think our logical mind is making all our decisions, but it’s our limbic brain that’s really turning the cogs.   It’s this primitive reptilian brain that’s responsible for our gut reactions, the fight or flight response.
       

    All our decisions are at core, emotional.   They are based on two things, GREED or FEAR.

    “I want it, it'll make me look clever if I choose it..”
    “I’m afraid to take that great job in case I'm hopeless…..
    “I want him/her so I’m not lonely any more……”
    “I’m afraid I’ll lose face if I make that decision………….”
    “I want that investment, it’ll make me rich……….”
    “I’m afraid if I don't invest someone else will get it….”

        If you are pitching for money, you need to appeal to this part of the investor’s brain as well as the logical side.   Make an investor feel that you are the last bus leaving the station and they have to run to get on before it’s too late.   Not only do they have to run, but there’s only one seat left on the bus, and there are 10 other people in the queue in front of them.  You want to make them want to run and knock everyone else over to get to the door before it shuts and the bus moves off.  Sweet white haired grandmothers, mums with prams, dogs for the blind ……..they’ll knock over everyone to get to the bus.
        When you have pitched, you don’t want a logical considered response, you want to see some Tom and Jerry moments …. Tom’s  eyes turning into those fruit machine wheels with pound signs on them or Spike the dog’s tongue rolling out like a giant wet red carpet.
        All decisions are emotional, excite their emotions.

Devil's Snare

Remember the fairy tale Rumplestiltskin?   Let me remind you of the plot.
              To make himself look more important, a miller lied to a king, telling him his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king shut the girl in a tower room with straw and a spinning wheel and  demanded she spin the straw into gold by morning, for three nights, or be executed.  She had given up all hope, when an impish creature appeared in the room and spun straw into gold for her in return for her necklace, then her ring…. then when she had nothing left to give, for a promise to hand over her first-born child.
    Pitching for investment can feel a bit like being in that tower trying to spin gold.   Faced with this kind of pressure many entrepreneurs work themselves up into a frenzy, trying to get every dot and spit of information about their business into a 5 minute pitch.   They feel they have to appear stupendously impressive to get what they want without giving too much away to an impish creature who wants their first born…..sorry, investor.
    Staying with the theme of fantasy, it reminds me of Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, when Harry, Ron and Hermione get caught in the strangling tendrils of a plant called Devil’s Snare.  Hermione, cool in a crisis, realises that to fall out of it, all you have to do is relax.  Ron, panicking as usual, struggles violently and the Snare tightens.

    Struggling pitchers are Ron, trying so hard to muscle their way to a good pitch, they get caught in a tighter and tighter strangling knot.  What they need to do is follow Hermione, stand back, relax, and just do what’s required.  Get the investors attention, don’t try and wrestle with everything you know about your business and force it all on them in go.    Devil’s snare retreats with sunlight.  Nothing is as simple as sunlight, so keep it simple . 

Despicable Me

 Have you ever seen the wonderful animation movie Despicable Me? Steve Carrell voices Gru, a would-be international villain of the Blofeld variety.   He is large, bald, with heavy brows, spindly legs and a menacing countenance.   His goal is to steal a piece of tech so fiendish, his dreams of world domination will soon be……you know the rest… 

He speaks in a bizarre Eastern Europe accent and when he has an idea,  booms out the words “Light Bulb”  very slowly in weird pseudo-Muscovite. 

Now when running a pitch session or media training session, I think of Gru when my pupils argue with me with cries of ……

“You’re wrong, you’re dumbing it down!”

“You’ve missed the point!” (actually anywhere between 3 and 103 points they think they need to put in one sentence)

“But we NEED to use the jargon!”

I take them on a gentle tour of the concepts I am trying to get them to understand and embrace -  Less is more,  Keep it simple,  Don’t talk over the investor’s head ….….. and then ….. on cue …. it happens …. light dawns, pennies drop, scales fall from the eyes and clatter to the floor.  

From now on it will be very difficult for me not to roll my ‘L’s in my best Russian-Bond-Villain accent and boom ……. “L-L-L-Light Bulb!”