How do you create a great investor presentation? After all, you aren’t meeting with investors to gain their good will. You are seeking their support with their valuable capital. The fact is a great investor presentation is not magic. Instead, a great presentation is a combination of quality relevant information combined with intense preparation.

The first key to a great presentation is cool, calm, detailed confidence in the material you are presenting. Reaching this level requires you to know your business plan inside and out. You must be well versed in your market place. You must demonstrate a thorough understanding of the industry standard operational standards. The investor has to sense your competence during the meeting. And, perhaps more important the information, positions, and issues you hold up as the critical items must stand scrutiny outside of the investor presentation.

So, you have to demonstrate a combination of verifiable competence and confidence. How do you accomplish this? Besides knowing your business your presentation should include facts and figures that can be checked out and proven as accurate. At the same time, the facts and figures must be presented in a simple clear way that the investor does not have to struggle to follow. Causing the investor to have to figure out the information being presented is a sure fire method for killing your opportunity’s chance of success with the investors.

The second key is to deliver a sharp, professional, attractive, and thorough presentation as a combination of reports, presentation materials, and oral delivery that supports all of the information you provide to the investor. For investors, this presentation represents the investors likely best view of the kind of work you do and the work that can be expected from the entity he is investing into. Your investment presentation needs to deliver an image of quality, efficiency and effectiveness that you expect from your company and that the investor can feel comfortable meets his expectations.

This implies that you should come to the presentation with a very sharp presentation to share with the investors, with well organized background and support information to answer questions that may arise, with access to resources and information that answer any additional questions or needs that arise. In effect, you are showing the investor that you can deliver, that you are well prepared and researched and not flying by the seat of your pants, and that you don’t act impulsively choosing instead to support your work with the right resources and support. If you tie these two key issues together, you will be on your way to delivering superb business presentations to investors.

If your position requires you to frequently conduct presentations, there is no argument that you must know how to give a presentation persuasively. There is also no barney that strong business presentation skills and steep career growth are directly proportional. However, public speaking is consistently ranked as the number one fear that people harbor.

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” – Jerry Seinfeld

From my experience of conducting presentation skills training program for over 1000 people, I have identified 5 tips that will help you to convert your fear to positive energy:

1. Be Organized: A good presentation begins with raw data and well- researched information and is augmented by personal opinion and colourful language. In short, a successful presentation has a distinct personality that’s structured and timed extremely well.

2. Remember The Three C’s: When you’re making a presentation, you must remember to speak with confidence, clarity and conviction. While nervousness is justified, it’s worth remembering that as the presenter, you’re the one who has control over the room, so everything you talk about must exude confidence and conviction. If you don’t believe in what you’re talking about, neither will anyone else. And remember to enunciate!

3. Make it Personal: If you’ve ever watched a TED Talk, you’ll have noticed that very few things work as well as a story does. Oral traditions and story-telling cultures continue to thrive to this day because as human beings, we connect with each other through the stories we share. To keep things interesting, and the audience engaged, support your presentations with your own anecdotal evidence. Share the process, the results and what you’ve learned from them, and for added measure, use humour to drive home the point you’re trying to make.

4. Review the Details: Deliverance is always in the details. If you’re using visual aids and slides, remember to keep things subtle. Pick a background colour that’s not too loud or too bright and use simple, sans-serif fonts. The idea is to make the audience focus on you and the information you’re sharing, not distract them from what really matters. By the way, skip the bells and whistles as well. While it’s tempting to add in graphics and fades between slides, there is such a thing as overkill.

5. Practice, practice, practice: And then go back and practice some more. Regardless of whether you’re an expert in your field or know all the statistics like the back of your hand, stage fright is a very real thing. The more you practice, the more familiarity you’ll develop with your content and be able to time it better. This is the time to decide whether you’ll want to leave room for audience questions or go straight through to the end.

Of course, if you are still stymied, signing up for soft-skills training with a focus on corporate presentation skills training will help you immensely in gaining the confidence you need. There are several organizations out there that offer these training courses, so do not hesitate to ask for help at the right time.

Recently I stopped by a Walgreens drugstore. I was there to purchase a graduation card for my niece and some Mothers Day cards. I looked for the graduation cards and could not find them. So, I asked a clerk where the cards might be located. She informed me that they were in 3 boxes in the storeroom. I asked if she, or someone else, could bring them out of the storeroom so that I might make a purchase. She informed me that she could not do so at that time and suggested I come back in a few hours. I asked to speak with a manager and after speaking with the manager and making my request to purchase a card known, I was once again told, I would have to come back in a few hours. I looked around the store and observed that it was not busy. Some of the clerks appeared to be ideally standing around doing much of nothing.

I’m not suggesting all Walgreens drugstores typify this manor of behavior, but this one did. By chance there happened to be a CVS drugstore literally across the street from that particular Walgreens. So, I went across the street, purchased the graduation card for my niece, and also purchased the Mothers Day. I ended up spending about twenty dollars.

What negotiation lessens can we learn from this experience. There are several

1. Always have an alternate source from which to get what you need
2. Make anyone you negotiate with feel important (I had the impression that I was almost disturbing the clerks at Walgreens by wanting to make a purchase.)
3. If you cant fulfill the request/requirements of someone you’re negotiating with, at least give the impression that you’re trying to do something to solve their problem (some hotel chains will book people in another hotel chains facilities when the first hotel does not have space. In so doing, they are sending a signal to that customer that says, the customers well being has a higher priority than just making money off of that customer).

When negotiating, give as much as you can to appease and ingratiate yourself with the person you’re negotiating with. By doing so, you give the perception that you care. In return, the fair minded person will give as much as they can give to you and in the end, both of you will have practiced, what I call, the win/win style of negotiating.