24 Hours Before A Pitch

What are most people doing 24 hours before a big pitch? Making last minute changes to their ideas. Reworking the content. Panicking. What should they be doing? Practicing. Practicing their presentation. Why? Because when it comes to selling ideas, the presentation matters more than the ideas themselves.

Unique ideas are intangible. You can only imagine how they will work out in the real world. If you are selling a truly creative idea, than your audience won’t even know what to compare it to. How do they evaluate it as good or bad? How do they know it will work? They don’t. It’s the job of the presenters to make their audience believe that it will work … with minimal hard evidence that it will.

That’s why the presentation is so important.

The presentation needs to invoke enough emotional attachment to the idea that the people want to invest in it. It needs to demonstrate confidence from the presenters that it can be done. You need to convince them that this IS do-able. And that comes from confidence. To create a presentation that portrays confidence as well as invoking an emotional response, you need to practice.

Practice makes perfect. True story.

Memorize your lines. Rehearse your body movements. Practice your slide transitions or use of props. Do it 20 times. All of this will give you the confidence to perform at your highest level. That way, when you are in the presentation, you don’t have to worry about what to say or what comes next. You already know that. You can worry about controlling the room. Drawing people into the performance. Reacting to the audiences response.

That’s what people need to experience to buy your ideas.

- Christian