Your text book story flow might not always be the one to use in tomorrow’s meeting.
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A 60-minute/75-page final Board presentation of a 3-month consulting project
- Sequencing is important to take resistant members of the audience from common ground, via cold logic and facts to the conclusion that option 1 is preferred over option 2 and 3 that equal to “fall of the cliff”
- In some business cultures it is important to establish the credibility of your work (assumptions, models, importance of people in the organisation you spoke to), before getting into the actual crunch
- Meeting timing, having the whole meeting explode with a debate on page 3, while that highly insightful analysis is on page 7 is not helpful
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A 5-10 minute investment pitch:
- The order in which questions pop up in the head of an investor might deviate from the business school investment pitch flow template. First, the investor needs to understand what it is you actually want to do, then it might make sense to take out “elephants in the room” before moving on to more important issues, but which are less controversial.
- Experience differs vastly across investors, some might need the proper 101, others dive straight into the detail, derailing your carefully laid out story
No, I am not saying to throw that perfect storyline out of the window, and in 90% of the cases it is the right thing to do, but think whether your meeting might be part of the other 10%.
Photo by Julian Lozano on Unsplash