Do you want to do a business plan presentation? If YES, here are 21 best tips on how to start a business plan proposal presentation that thrills your audience. One of the primary jobs of an entrepreneur is to sell. As an entrepreneur, you must sell to your customers, clients, suppliers, partners, investors, government agencies, etc; all in a bid to survive. One of such ways entrepreneurs market and sell their products is through a business proposal.
Business proposals are always vital to a company. They can make or break a sale within a certain period of time. As an entrepreneur, you will have to present a business plan to third parties at some point, especially when you are seeking equity or debt financing.
Why Make a Business Plan Presentation?
Getting third party funding in the form of bank loans, venture capital funds, angel investment, or small business grants is becoming more and more difficult nowadays, and the only way to boost your chances of getting the funding you need is to prepare a compelling business plan presentation and present it impressively. As there’s no guarantee in business, corporate leaders should be careful in presenting to their leads and customers. A poorly presented business plan will only kill your chances of success.
Despite being an important skill, preparing presentations is one task that most entrepreneurs find very stressful. Even when they are cocksure their business idea and plan are impressive, they still fear that they might not be able to express themselves impressively when presenting to potential third party funders.
But the truth is that giving a business plan presentation is not as difficult as most people think. You only need to get your starting point right, and all other things would fall rightly into their places. However, the key to making that good first impression is to put all your effort into preparing the presentation and rehearsing it like crazy.
If you want to learn how to give business plan presentations that fascinate listeners right from the start, the following tips will help you achieve that.
How to Start a Business Plan Proposal Presentation That Thrills your Audience
1. Prepare your presentation
Your first step towards starting a presentation well is to put much effort into its preparation in the first place. This step is more important than having your face beam with confidence or putting on the most appealing outfit.
Start by outlining your presentation. Business plan presentations are usually done with Microsoft PowerPoint Slides, so it is important to outline and highlight what goes into what slide. Check your outline repeatedly to ensure that you do not leave out any important detail.
Your first slide will be an introduction of yourself, your company and its products. It will also include a description of the markets you serve (or intend to serve), the customer problems you solve, and why our product or service is better than other similar solutions available in the market. All these pieces of information should take up the first two to three slides.
Next, show the size of the market available for your product or service; demonstrate that it is a large or fast-growing market, or else potential funders will lose interest. Nobody wants to put his or her money in a business that has a small target market or a bleak future. So, use figures and graphical illustrations to show how the market will grow with a three to five year period.
In the next slide, give more details of the competitive advantages of your product or service that will lead to outstanding revenue, sustainability, growth, and profitability. Include a chart that shows projected revenues and pre-tax profits for the next three to five years. This part of your presentation is one of the most important, as it reveals to the potential funder what they stand to gain from investing in the business and how soon they will start getting returns on their investment.
Next, discuss the various strategies you will use to market your product and ensure that they reach as much potential customers as possible. Then introduce your management team and advisory board, stating the qualifications, background, and experience of each member. More importantly, state how each person on the team will bring a critical element necessary for your company’s success.
Finally, state how much capital you need to start your business and give details of how the money would be spent. After drafting everything that will go into your business plan presentation, edit and proofread to eliminate all grammatical, typographical and other errors before saving it on your PC or tablet.
2. Rehearsing your presentation
Properly rehearsing your presentation before the meeting date can make all the difference between a good start to a business plan presentation and a bad start. So, you need to take your time to rehearse well.
Find out how much time you would be given for your presentation, including the time for taking and answering questions. If you are presenting your business to venture capitalists, they will provide you with a time limit. If you are presenting to a venture capital forum or angel group, they will provide a time limit as well as a recommended outline. Factor in these limits and recommendations when rehearsing for your presentation.
Rehearse your presentation with friend or colleagues. Invite them into a conference room and give them a mock presentation. See how well you are able to conform to time limits. And ask your “audience” to make necessary corrections.
3. <a title="How to Show Confidence at Work without Arrogance" Start with confidence
Dress well to the presentation venue. Leave home early, so you would arrive early at the venue. At the venue, relax and be yourself. Once you start presenting, maintain eye contact with your audience, smile, and present and image of confidence. And do not rush your presentation, especially the introduction slides, which make the all-important first impression.
If you are an entrepreneur, or a worker in the marketing department of an organization, you are expected to know how to make business proposal presentations to potential clients and investors. Business proposal presentation is the medium that you would use to market your business ideas and products to investors and clients alike.
Sealing a business deal or securing funds for your business goes beyond writing a powerful business proposal; it requires that you make a presentation to convince stake holders on why they should buy your products or services and why they need to invest in your business especially if you are <a title="How to Finance a Business Start-up, Growth or Acquisition" sourcing for funds for your business.
So, as an entrepreneur or a marketing executive, if you must succeed, you must do all it takes to develop your public speaking and presentation skills. No doubt standing before a group of people to make a presentation can be bloodcurdling especially when you aren’t trained to do it, but the truth is that you don’t have any option as a business person other than to do all it takes to learn the skills of public speaking and making presentation. Now let us quickly go through these 10 powerful tips for making a business proposal presentation:
4. Perfect Your Business Proposal Writing Skills
Making business proposal presentations requires that you develop and perfect your presentation skills if you truly want to be effective. There are various ways you can develop your business proposal presentation skills, you can hire a coach to help you build your presentation skills, and you can read books and watch videos that teach people how to make presentations.
5. Learn How to Make Use of Power Point
You would need to learn how to make use of Microsoft power point to make your presentation. It is simple to learn if you dedicate your time towards learning it. All that is required is your power point enabled computer.
6. Develop Your Public Speaking Skills
You can enroll for a public speaking class to polish or develop your public speaking skills if indeed you want to deliver business proposal presentation that can wow your audience. No one would take you seriously when they notice that you are an amateur in public speaking. Therefore you must work at raising the ante.
7. Avoid the Use of Unnecessary Jargons
Part of what you need to do to make a powerful presentation is to avoid the use of unnecessary jargons. Although in some instances, you would be required to make use of professional jargons to drive home your points when making a presentation, but you should try as much as possible to keep it simple so that you will be able to carry your audience along. If you don’t minimize the use of jargons during your presentation, you will struggle to convince people to buy your products or invest in your ideas.
8. Maintain Eye Contact with your Audience
When you make business proposal presentations ensure that you maintain eye contact with your audience throughout your presentation. When you make eye contact with your audience, it enables you know whether you are carrying them along or if you have lost them along the way and you will be able to make all the necessary adjustment. When you make eye contact with your audiences, it also shows that you have confidence and you know what you are talking about.
9. Make Use of Colors and Fonts that are Appealing to the Eyes
Another powerful tip that you must consider when making business proposal presentation is making use of colors and fonts that are appealing to the eyes. When you make use of colors and fonts that is easy to read, it makes it easier for your audience to understand your business proposal presentation and they can easily make up their mind to invest in your ideas or buy your products and services.
10. Make Use of Suitable Visuals
One of the easiest ways to carry people along when you make business proposal presentation is to ensure that you make use of suitable visuals to drive home your point. The truth is that with the right pictures (visuals), you won’t have to belabor yourself to get people to understand your presentation. If you have ever seen the slides prepared by a core professional, you will notice that it carries more visuals (pictures) than words.
11. Create Room for Feedbacks
Part of what you would need to do to ensure that you carry your audience along when you make business proposal presentation is to ensure that you create room for feedback at regular intervals during the course of your presentation. You don’t have to wait till the end of your presentation before you entertain questions from your audience; give room for questions from the beginning to the end of your presentation.
12. Always Stick to the Allotted Time for your Presentation
If you want people to consider you as a core professional when you make business proposal presentations, then you must ensure that you stick with the time allotted to you to make your presentation. If you over shoot your time, or if your presentation is too long you might find it challenging to get people to invest in your business or buy your products or services.
13. Ensure that you Practice and rehearse before making your Presentation
One of the major tips you need to consider if you want to make a powerful business proposal presentation that would dazzle your audience is to spend enough time practicing and rehearsing your presentation before eventually making the real presentation. Practicing your presentation means that you should spend time studying the presentation and rehearsing the presentation means that you should make a mock presentation. If you take your time to always stand in front of the mirror to rehearse your presentations, you will succeed in building confidence and in essence make a powerful presentation when you do.
9 Things You Should Not Do in a Business Proposal Presentation
1. Not Setting a Clear Goal
In a business proposal presentation, it is a well known fact that the goal of a business proposal presentation is to make your audience believe in the product or service you are selling. The idea must be clear and your aim is to get them to take an action. The structure of the presentation must be streamlined with relevant bullet points that give emphases on the main idea you are promoting.
2. Writing without Reviewing
Any paper that is submitted for presentation must be carefully reviewed. Note that you will be facing critics, some with business courses degrees, who will highlight errors in spelling, grammar, and other wrong facts stated in your proposal. If your write up contain a good number of statistics, make sure that you have a relevant and updated research result from a reputable source. Don’t make your viewers sense that there’s something wrong or amiss with your presentation, else they would lose trust in your proposal altogether.
3. Not Giving Specific Details
There’s a bunch of motherhood statements you can include in the intro of your presentation to capture the attention of your audience. But these should stop when you are telling about the meat of your proposal. Show them instances and possibilities that would make up the numbers in the future of sales and let them imagine these concrete scenarios related to the specific product or service.
4. Answering your Audience Questions Incompletely
During the question and answer section in the presentation, sometimes you are not sure if you got the question clearly or you don’t really know what the answer is. As a presenter, you should have sought a more extensive knowledge than most people about your offering. You should learn about the industry you will be playing, the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the business and the trends. A business proposal always consists of these details and it would be totally embarrassing if you miss these important points.
5. No Financial Projections
As much as you should be knowledgeable on the current setting of the market and competitors, you should also give your audience financial projections. At least, this should comprise of a summarized monthly cash flow, balance sheets and income statements that pursue the ROI.
6. Giving Too Much Technical Details
A business proposal does not need to have too many technical details that may only bore the participants. Stakeholders who are more adept at technical information may be the only ones who will be interested at them. For starters, a high-level overview of the business case should be enough.
7. Giving Unrealistic Assumptions
In truth, you would never know if the business will succeed because you are only in the proposal phase. However, as a presenter, you should be confident and at the same time humble about your assumptions. Be realistic when it comes to your number and projected expectations. Do not promise anything you cannot deliver.
8. Mentioning Risks
Any business has risks attached to it. In a business proposal presentation, you may mention about it but don’t forget to show ways on how to mitigate and go about it as well. Else, you would make your audience step down from the proposal, especially if they are big risks to pursue.
9. No Road Map
The business proposal presentation is not complete without a list of some long or short-term plans. These will be the foundation of any business as they will lead the direction the business goes to on every stage. There must be milestones set and targets for the business to measure its success.
In conclusion, presenting a business proposal requires hard work and you can’t go easy without thinking the plans through. You should gain familiarity on the profile of your audiences to protect interests. Do your research, get their feedback and win their buy-in.