Ultimately audiences and judges will vote for you if you
- Connect with them emotionally
- Answer all their questions – spoken and otherwise
- Save and respect their time and intelligence by only making credible claims
- Backstopping and supporting your claims by solid believable evidence
The first presentation on my slideshare deck is about the SMB Fatimah Jinnah School project undertaken by the Book Group and Zindagi Trust. I normally deliver this presentation without speaking a single word. In this case it is possible because Sami Mustafa, The Book Group and Zindagi Trust have already done so much work that the pictures by themselves and a little text is enough to create impact.
I have yet to make this presentation to a group where it hasn’t had an impact or helped us raise funding. My pitch generally is to send the presentation along with an accompanying write up and in good times these two together were enough for us to get a pledge from the person we were pitching too.
In terms of the elements I spoke about earlier in part one of the series – the opening theme and the pitch is simply a posed question “How much would it take to change a life” and then throughout the presentation that question is repeated and reinforced by supporting images that show what was and what has been done.
The close follows with a simple action item of what you can do to help and the contact details if you are interested in helping.
If you understand what was done here, you now understand impact and relevance.
Remember the story here was the school. All I did was put the right pictures together and get out of the way.
So homework assignment two for you, my dear TAN/BAP participants is to figure out
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How do you connect emotionally with the judges and the audience
Create impact within the first 90 – 100 seconds of your pitch