Innovative Business Plan Presentations Turning Ten Minutes

Innovative Business Plan Presentations: Turning Ten Minutes
into Competitive Success
Right or wrong, people form a perception about how competent
you are by how
you present yourself when you stand and speak. They also form
perceptions
about the company you represent based on your performance.
Does that make
you nervous? It should! Never before in the history of mankind
has more been
riding on the effectiveness of a person's presentation.
In fact, public speaking is an easy way to set yourself apart
from your
competition, because when you stand up and say what you want
to say, they
way that you want to say it, you are doing what 95% of the
people in the
audience wish they could do! A person who is confident in
front of a group gives
off an air of competence, whereas a person who fumbles might
leave a negative
impression.
There are many occasions when you, as a small business owner,
will be called
upon to explain your business. These presentations will be
given to many diverse
groups including potential customers, bankers, suppliers, and
investors. Each

group requires different information about your business and it
should be
presented in a format appropriate to the situation.
Along with computer literacy, professional presentation skills
are becoming a new
survival skill in the workplace. Not only do people enjoy
presenters who are
inviting, engaging and informative, in today's hypercompetitive
marketplace,
presenters have to persuade and inspire to obtain a bid, win a
contract, gain the
confidence of an ally in a high-stakes competitive task, and
motivate others to
overcome impossible obstacles.
Words have the ability to change the way that people think, the
way the people
believe, and can even change their values. If you can alter
someone's values,
then you can redirect their actions. From values, actions will
flow. From beliefs,
come a person's subsequent behaviors.
On the other hand, technical expertise and proficiency without
the ability to
communicate will render us inefficient and ineffective.
According to research,
people would rather die than stand in front of people and make
a speech. The
top three things people are afraid of are public speaking, death,
and snakes!
Since you as a businessperson will be required to make

presentations, sales
pitches, pleas for cash, and so on, it is imperative that you
recognize that
nervousness is a part of the communication experience, and find
ways to
channel that anxiety into useful energy.
Are you nervous about your public speaking skills? Developing
and delivering
business presentations, just like most functions in business, are
formulaic and
are a learned skill. Learn the formula, practice the skill and you
will gain
competency as a presenter. This document is part of learning the
formula. You
will have to provide the practice to learn and master the skill.
You are going to be giving presentations in boardrooms. You
are going to be
presenting your ideas; you are going to try to persuade someone
to give you a lot
of money. People and their money are not easily parted. They
don't like to just
give it away. Consequently, it will be your responsibility to
create persuasive
appeals to capture their imagination and get their attention.
Usually you will not
be the only one entering a boardroom. In fact, there might be
twenty, thirty, forty
people in one day competing against you -- one after another. It
may be a
meeting on the weekend, or a business presentation during
business hours – in
either case, often you will only have one opportunity to make a
good impression.

How do you make your presentation stand out? How do you
capture the
imagination of a venture capitalist so that they say, "Now that's
something that
really interests me! That's something that I want to be a part
of! That's
something that I want to invest in! That's something I want to
go for." It will
certainly take creativity on your part. It will take strategic
planning, creative
thinking, a lot of hard work, practice, and a supreme effort on
your part.
The purpose of this document is to help you create the type of
presentation that
will grab the imagination of those viewing and listening to you
so that you can
take them to a place where they are excited about becoming a
partner in your
endeavor. Opportunities for public speaking and presentations
in business come
across our path every day. Most of us turn away from these
offerings out of fear.
When asked to talk, many of us feel our knees wobble, our
voices tremble and
our sense of vision dim. It just doesn't need to be this way.
Learning the basic skills of public speaking and practicing
regularly can lead you
toward becoming an accomplished, polished speaker. What
better way to place
you and your company in the limelight and boost your own
credibility than to be
the keynote speaker at an industry association meeting? God
gave each of us
certain gifts and abilities. You know more about certain

subjects and topics than
anyone else, so there is no reason not to consider sharing this
information with
others. God will open doors for you -- it is up to you to walk
through those doors
and seize the opportunities with all diligence.
Introduction
This workbook offers step-by-step advice on critical
components of presentations
such as:
� Defining one's goals.
� Visuals.
� Logistics.
� Rehearsal.
� Presentation strategy.
� Delivery.
� Communicating your message so it comes across clearly and
confidently.
It focuses specifically on the topic of preparation. The finest
presentation
techniques and the most up-to-date visuals will not overcome a
poorly prepared
message.

There are two books recommended if you are interested in
public speaking.
Peggy Noonan's On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With
Style,
Substance, and Clarity. Noonan was a speechwriter for
President George
Bush, Sr. She is the one who wrote the phrase we are still
familiar with today, "a
thousand points of light."
The second book is, You are the Message. Getting What You
Want by Being
Who You Are by Roger Ailes and Jon Kraushar. This title is
great because the
goal of your presentation is to not only sell your idea, but to
sell yourself. Your
audience needs to say, "I can trust this person" -- not just trust
the idea, but trust
the person.
This document provides a critically important beginning to the
public speaking
component of your career. Consider it your introduction to the
presentations you
will make for the rest of your life. You must want to improve.
This document will
give you proven techniques that, if practiced, will significantly
enhance your
presentation skills and help you overcome any fear of public
speaking you may
have. It will also help you prepare presentations for different
types of audiences.

The goal of your presentation is being who you really are at
your
absolute best.
The goal of this document is to get you to be who you really are
at your absolute best!
Resources
Craig von Buseck has been streamed in the video links bel ow. It
parallels
the material in this document.
Craig von Buseck 1
http://media.regent.edu/schbus/busn620/bp1.wmv
Craig von Buseck 2
Craig von Buseck 3
Optional Resources:
Morrisey, George L., Sechrest, Thomas L. (contributor),
Warman, Wendy
B. (contributor), 1997, Loud and Clear: How to Prepare and
Deliver
Effective Business and Technical Presentations, Perseus Press,
New
York [ISBN: 0201127938].
On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With Style,
Substance, and
Clarity by Peggy Noonan

You are the Message. Getting What You Want by Being Who
You Are by
Roger Ailes and Jon Kraushar
High-Impact Presentations : A Multimedia Approach by Jo
Robbins
How to Create High Impact Business Presentations by Joyce
Kupsh, Pat
R. Graves (Contributor)
How to Make Winning Presentations: 30 Action Tips for
Getting Your
Ideas Across With Clarity and Impact (30-Minute
Solution
s Series) by Paul
R. Timm
Designing & Delivering Scientific, Technical, and Managerial
Presentations; Peter J. Hager, et al
Objectives:
1. After completion of this document, you should be able to
successfully give a
ten-minute presentation of your business plan to an audience.

Demonstrate skills required to construct and deliver a business
plan
presentation
Preparing your information for presentation is a skill. For an
effective
presentation, you need to be certain that you have a clear vision
of what you
want to accomplish with your presentation (not what you want
to say). The
approach offered in the text provides a foundation from which
you can design a
strong presentation that is more likely to achieve the results you
want with every
group you face, whether they are customers, upper management,
colleagues,
venture capitalists, or the general public. Preparation for your
presentation can
spell the difference between success and failure.
Once you complete your business plan, you will be refining
your data into clear

concise pieces deemed to inspire and move the audience to
action.
Be Who You Really Are!
The point is worth emphasizing again.
The goal of your presentation is to be who you really are
at your absolute best!
In life we have certain moments when opportunities open up to
us because of the
intersection of our preparedness, our education, our work
experience, and God's
grace. Different opportunities will present themselves if we are
doing the right
things in life. When these opportunities arrive (such as this
business plan
presentation), that is when we need to recognize the need to
shift into our best
personal performance gear -- not shift into the, "I want to be
like him or I want to
be like her, or I want to be like Zig Zigller, or I want to be like
some other
motivational speaker."

The goal in public speaking is not for you to be whoever you
might think is a
great speaker. You are not supposed to be the next Elizabeth
Dole. You are not
supposed to be the next Martin Luther King. You are not
supposed to become
Ronald Regan or whomever it is that you look up to as a great
speaker. You are
supposed to be who God made you to be at your very best.
You can certainly learn techniques from other great speakers,
but the person you
want to be is you. And you want to be at your best.
The best analogy is that of "the invasion of the body snatchers."
This is when a
person stands up in front of a group of people and may become
too stiff in their
demeanor, and wooden with their presentation style. Suddenly,
they become
robotic. Or maybe they start speaking too fast and sound like an
auctioneer.
Some people become too loose and laid back. Their presentation
is not formal

enough for the occasion and they lose credibility with their
audience.
The reason that I use the Invasion of the Body Snatchers
analogy is because we
often operate as two different people. For example, when we go
out into the
hallway at work or the break time during class and we are
talking to our friends
about the episode of "Survivor" last night on TV, we're
animated, we're smiling,
and we use gestures. We say things like, "Oh, man, that was a
great segment!"
You back up your statements with evidence and enhance the
statement with the
appropriate gestures and appropriate movements. You don't
stumble over your
words, and you don't say things such as, "Oh, I am so sorry. I
can't believe that I
just said that. I am so stupid." You just don't do that kind of
thing when you are
out in the hallway in a casual conversation situation.

But when we get into a public presentation setting and we start
to speak, all of a
sudden we stumble across one word and we say, "Oh, I am so
sorry, I can't
believe I just did that." Or we get stiff and wooden, and we talk
very low and
monotone, or we go at 180 miles per hour. We may treat the
microphone as our
enemy. No one recognizes us because we are not who we really
are. The goal is
to be the same person you are on the stage in front of a group or
in a
presentation as you are in the hallway during the break.
Now you are saying, "Oh, yeah, that's a lot easier said than
done. Do you know
how frightened I am of public speaking? " Yes, in fact most
people are more
afraid to make a speech in public than they are to die.
According to research,
people would rather die than stand in front of people and make
a speech. That's
true! Most people are also afraid of snakes. Those are the top
three things

people are afraid of -- death, snakes, and public speaking.
Fear of Public Speaking
People are more willing to die than they are to give a speech.
How do you
overcome that fear? You want to be confident, but it's difficult
to be confident if
you are shaking like a leaf and are really, really nervous. The
first thing to do is to
acknowledge your fear. You are a speechaphobic. You are
afraid of public
speaking. You have a fear of pubic presentations and it causes
you terrible
anxiety. Acknowledge that it exists. And rest assured, for most
of us, it does
exist.
There is the old trick from The King and I. Do you remember
when Anna arrives
in Siam and is terribly nervous about meeting the King for the
first time? She
sings this song to her son:
"Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect and whistl e a

happy tune, so none
else suspect that I am afraid. The result of this deception is very
clear to tell. For
when I fool people I feel I fool myself as well."
Act confident. The more you act confident, the more likely you
will feel
confident. The more you feel confident, the more likely you will
be confident, and
it builds on itself. But you have to start with all of this
somewhere. If you go in
saying to yourself, "I am afraid," then you have already hurt
yourself. Instead, go
in saying, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens
me. I have the mind
of Christ." Go in saying, "I know this project is good. I have
done my homework; I
have done my research. I know this is a valuable idea. I know
there are positive
benefits. This project is valuable and I am going to help these
people. They are
not helping me, I am helping them; they are not interviewing
me, I am
interviewing them. They have the money, and I have the idea.
This is a great fit.

This is the beginning of a beautiful relationship." Go in with
that kind of attitude
and you will be amazed at how well you will do.
Be Prepared. One of the best ways to overcome anxiety is to
prepare. Be
prepared. One of the primary reasons people are afraid is that
they are not
prepared. Be prepared. Know your stuff, and rehearse, rehearse,
rehearse. Your
audience will know if you don't prepare. It will be very obvious
because of the
stumbling, mumbling, bumbling -- tripping over words, and not
conveying the idea
with clarity.
Channel your nervous energy. Make nervous energy your friend.
It does not
matter who you are, everyone is nervous before a public
presentation. Even if
you have been giving speeches for fifty years, you get nervous.
People who have
been doing it for a long time know how to use nervous energy to

their advantage.
They harness it like a wonderful stallion, and they ride it to
glory, to victory. It's
much like the marshal arts where you use your opponent's own
movement and
energy against them. In this scenario, your opponent is fear. But
fear and
excitement are very closely related. Those two feelings are very
similar. Very
similar! That's why we go to Busch Gardens. That's why we go
to really cool
suspenseful movies. There is energy in those feelings. You get
on the roller
coaster and you are afraid, but when you get off you say, "That
was awesome!"
Recognize that it's the same thing in a presentation. When you
are preparing to
speak, you experience anxiety, just like you do when you are on
the roller
coaster and you are about to go over that first hill. But once
your presentation is
underway you start to get momentum until you are really
moving! You harness
your energy and use it to your advantage to give you enthusiasm

-- to raise you
to a higher level of performance. You convert your fear and
anxiety into energy
the same way a dam converts a rushing river into electricity. It
takes something
that could be potentially bad, and converts it into something
good.
Another thing you can do is go for a walk in advance and pray.
This does a
couple of things. First, the walk oxygenates your brain and that
clears your head
and helps you to think clearly. When you have oxygen in your
blood system, you
think better. Your mind is clearer. It also gives you energy
because your heart
rate is going and the blood is pumping. Of course, prayer is
always a good thing!
Those last few minutes before a speech I am often praying to
get in the right
place with the Lord.
Building Your Confidence
Nervousness is healthy--it shows that the presentation is

important to you and
that you care about doing well. Knowing as much as you can
ahead of time will
give you confidence. Rehearse until you are comfortable with
your material.
Realize that people want you to succeed. Here are some
additional tips on how
to control nervous jitters:
Relax. Take a deep breath. When we get nervous, we breathe
shallowly. If you
concentrate on breathing deeply, you'll get enough air to speak
and ease your
panic.
Use good posture. We have more power and energy when we
stand erect with
weight balanced equally on our feet.
Concentrate on the message, not on how you are coming across.
Use eye contact. This will help your audience know that you are

speaking to
them, not at them. Find a few supportive faces and hold their
eyes as you make
a point.
Turn nervousness into positive energy.
Do not apologize.
Forget perfection. Be Yourself.
Learn to laugh at yourself. The problems that occur during
presentations are
funny (equipment doesn't work, you trip, you discover a gob of
toothpaste on
your clothing).
The objective is to learn the techniques that are necessary so
when you are
standing in front of people, you can be yourself. It may not
seem possible now,
but we will get you there. You will see, as we go along, that
there are certain
things that we can do to become ourselves; to be ourselves, at
our best. But you

need to understand from this point forward that the goal is not
to be like someone
else!
The Communication Model
In any type of presentation, it is important to first understand
how we
communicate with one another.
This is called the transactional model in communication. Some
of you may
remember this from public speaking classes in undergraduate
school. It's basic,
and yet, you have to understand this to fully grasp what is going
on between you
and your audience.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was in the
speaker's mouth. The
speaker encodes a message. That is what you are doing when
you are preparing
your presentation. You are encoding a message. When I am
giving a speech the
goal is for me to take information from inside my brain and

transfer it into the
mind of the listener, and then, hopefully, have that person
respond in a positive
manner. That's the objective. The speaker encodes the message
and sends it
along the channel to an audience -- or the receivers, the
listeners. When the
listener receives the message, he or she decodes the message.
If we are sending an e-mail, this all works well unless you have
some sort of a
virus. But when we are talking, things get more complicated
because words
mean different things to different people in different ways. And
the way that I say
something and the manner in which I communicate those words
can mean a lot
of different things to different people. For example, say the
following phrase out
loud putting the emphasis each time on the word in bold print:
"I love this class."
"I love this class!"

"I love this class?"
"I love this class?"
You just said the same thing four times, but it meant four
different things
depending on where you put the emphasis and the punctuation
used. Now, add
gestures, facial expressions, the intonation of your voice, the
volume of your
voice, the rate at which you spoke the words, and the four
different meanings
may have become eight, or ten, or perhaps as many as sixteen!
Then there are other things that add to understanding and
decoding of the
message. A speaker must evaluate the feedback that comes to
him or her from
the audience. We also have to take into account the context of
the speech, the
frame of reference of the listeners, and a phenomenon referred
to as "noise."

Noise is not just physical sound, but it is also the mental
interruptions that take
place in the mind of a listener during a speech. Are you hungry?
Maybe just a
little bit? Are you hearing your stomach growl? Do you have a
big bill that has to
be paid tomorrow? Are you getting paid tomorrow? Do you have
a sick child?
Does the thought of this presentation scare you to death?
MessageMessage
&&
ChannelChannel
Receivers/
Decoders
Noise
Context
FeedbackFeedback

Frame of
Reference
FeedforwardFeedforward
Frames of
Reference
Sender/
Encoder
MessageMessage
&&
ChannelChannel
Receivers/
Decoders
Noise

Context
FeedbackFeedback
Frame of
Reference
Frames of
Reference
Sender/
Encoder
MessageMessage
&&
ChannelChannel
Receivers/
Decoders

Noise
Context
FeedbackFeedback
Frame of
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Frames of
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Encoder
While everything I may be saying to you is vitally important, I
am fighting not only
all the physical noise in the room, but I am also fighting the
physiological noise,
the psychological noise, the emotional noise, the mental noise,

the background
pressure noise, and anything else that is going on in the
listener's life. In fact, I
almost have to yell to get in there and have you hear what I
have to say!
One of the statistics that is guaranteed to break the pride of any
public speaker is
the fact that 70% of what I say you won't remember. It's so
important to
acknowledge that fact! You may say to yourself, "I worked so
hard on this
presentation!" And yet, when your audience leaves the room,
most of it will be
gone from their consciousness forever!
This demonstrates what you are up against in working to be an
effective
presenter. When you are making any kind of public
presentation, whether it is a
business presentation, a political speech, a message at church, a
eulogy, all this
stuff is going on inside of the person that is listening to you.

Therefore, you need
to prepare yourself in such a way that you have devices that will
catch their
attention on one hand, but will keep in their memory what you
are saying on the
other. You need to have memory devices built into your
presentation so that they
don't forget. We call such memory devices performance
outlines.
Performance Outlines
There are preparation outlines, which is the typical A, A1, A1a
form that we
learned in grade school. These are good organizational methods
to use to help
you put your presentation together in a logical format. But then
it is necessary to
take that information and whittle it down into what is called a
performance outline.
For your business plan presentation in this course, you have ten
minutes. How
much can you do in ten minutes? Not very much! Perhaps you
determine that

you can make one key point per minute plus you want to leave
one minute for the
introduction, and one minute for the conclusion. There goes
your ten minutes.
Next, you've got to come up with the three key points you want
to communicate.
You want the instructors to remember your presentation,
because they are going
to see sixteen other presentations besides yours that evening.
How are you
going to make yours stand out in the crowd? You need to find
the way for them to
remember yours.
Maybe you will use alliteration, where every point starts wi th
the same letter.
Maybe you will use a rhyming devise, where every main point
rhymes. Maybe
you will use some sort of metaphor where you might say, "This
company that you
are part of is a strong sailing ship, but what you don't recognize
is that there are
cracks in the hull. But I am the glue that can fill those cracks."
Those are the kind
of creative strategies and themes that you need to be thinking

about to find the
way to help your audience differentiate your presentation from
all the others -- so
they will remember it.
The Speech Making Wheel
When you begin preparing your presentation, the first thing that
you need to ask
is, "Who is my audience? What is their background?" You need
to know what the
demographics are of the people that you are going to be
presenting to. You need
to do your homework. You need to do your research. From a
business
perspective you would ask, "What is the company's market
share? What is the
background of the company? What kind of profits are they
making as a
company? " While that's all important, you also need to look at
who they are. Are
they mostly men, or are they women? What's their age group?
What's their
ethnic background? What part of the country are they from?
You're already

learning the research techniques for ferreting out a lot of this
kind of information if
you haven't got it already, but now you need to find out who the
people are.
O
Organize
Speech
Rehearse
Speech
Gather
Supporting
Material
Generate
Main

Ideas
Deliver
Speech
Select and
Narrow
Topic
Develop
Central
Idea
Determine
PurposeConsider
the
Audience

O
Organize
Speech
Rehearse
Speech
Gather
Supporting
Material
Generate
Main
Ideas
Deliver
Speech

Select and
Narrow
Topic
Develop
Central
Idea
Determine
PurposeConsider
the
Audience
Build everything around your audience. In this course, we give
you the option of
letting you identify who your audience is before you start.
Obviously, you are

being graded by the instructors while you are presenting to your
peers. But if
your business plan was designed to be presented to a missions
board then you
can tell us, "I am presenting this to the board of missions at my
church." Or, "I am
presenting this the board of directors," or, "I am presenting this
to a group of
venture capitalists." We allow you to identify the audience to
whom you are
making this presentation. From that point forward, the audience
(including the
instructors) is thinking in that context.
If you can't do that, you can at least focus on what the company
produces and
what is their history. For example, if they are a venture
capitalist, then who have
they funded before? Try to find out what previous successful
presentations
focused on. Do research on who that audience is and then select
your topic.

While your goal in this class is obviously the business plan
presentation you have
to do, the key word is "narrow." You have a very limited
amount of time. The first
mistake that happens is a lot of people think, "If I say a lot of
things, I will impress
people." That is absolutely the opposite of what is true. You
don't need to say a
lot of things. You need to say the right things in the right way.
Consequently, you
want to think narrow, not broad. It's the key principal - "Keep it
simple!"
Planning Your Presentation
In creating your presentation, think like a reporter and answer
the "who, what,
why, how, and where" questions.
♦♦♦♦ Who will attend--and how many? Aim the content of
presentation to your
audience, and the choice of visuals to meet the needs of your
group. Visuals
need to be visible to everyone.

♦♦♦♦ What is the purpose of the presentation? Is it to explain a
plan or project; to
tell people what to do--and how; report on what's been done; get
support for
an idea; define or solve a problem; gain consensus for a
decision; provide
training; or encourage motivation.
♦♦♦♦ Why are they there? Is attendance mandatory? Any time
anyone attends a
meeting, they will always be asking themselves, "What's in it
for me?" Be
sure you answer that question for them.
♦♦♦♦ What information is needed to support your purpose? How
will you present
it? Keep your points short, concise and understandable to your
audience.
Use visuals to clarify and reinforce your message.
♦♦♦♦ Where is it going to take place? The room that the
presentation is in will
have an impact on how you present. Will you need a projector
or can you
use flip charts? Will you need a microphone? Do you need a

podium?
Determine Your Purpose
What is your overall purpose? Almost always, you need to
persuade someone to
do something: to take action, to make a decision, to fund your
idea, to allow you
to market the product, to service the customer, to send the
missionary, etc. But …

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