Investor Presentations – IPOs, Placements or PE Rounds – are both fascinating and depressing. Fascinating because the search for a better mousetrap never stops: in the last quarter, AIM has admitted companies ranging from online dating to animal genetics to pharma distribution. The depressing bit is the narrow, cautious range of presentations styles out there: management teams are petrified to make mistakes; and investors are often blasé and cynical: they have heard dozens of growth stories before, and that’s only this week… Presentations teams can’t bring themselves to consider the F word: FEEL. Yet considering the emotions and feelings of the audience is fundamental to delivering a great investor presentation. Each story can be seen as a triangle:
- The first apex is about the business story – Is it interesting? Is it distinctive? Is it clever?
- The second apex is the financial story: is the business model believable? Can it scale? Is it expressed in a way that can easily be communicated? Is the pricing right?
- Finally, there’s always a human story: is this the right team to deliver the project? Are they competent? Are they a proper team? Are they driven? Can I trust them with my clients’ money?
In most cases, stories are built on basic information already available in the accompanying information and the audience’s feelings and emotions not considered: this is when teams come back from the roadshow with a mixed feeling about their impact. If, on the other hand, the team starts with feelings in mind then they can shape the narrative and reorder data in a way that supports it: do you want your audience to be excited by a clever idea which needs high speed delivery, or quietly confident about a professional and experienced team? Do you want to demonstrate that you have insight about a new way to make money or that, on the contrary, you will squeeze every penny from a well known model? Is your management team a ‘band of brothers’ who complement each other or an assembled team of experienced specialists? All emotions are possible, but you can’t leave them to chance. Your story, its delivery and its emotional impact all need to be managed professionally. To find out more about how our team of psychologists and business analysts can help you use the F word more freely in your presentations, contact us, watch this video or click here.
