Five Ways to Improve Your Powers of Investor Persuasion

Live, formal presentations to investors are often the most effective means of generating or sustaining interest in your company's story and stock. Yet many investor presentations fail to impress or even educate. Instead they are often ponderous, inward-focused, and full of corporate platitudes.

The problem appears to be two-fold. First, executives spend too little time developing the content and practicing delivery. Second, corporate speech-givers often can't tell the difference between a good investor presentation and a bad one. They don't look for audience signals of restlessness,  they rarely seek meaningful feedback from those in attendance and the worst offenders assume that a presentation made to employees will work equally well with investors.

Clearly, enhancing your presentation starts with more preparation time - at least two weeks before you speak - and a dedication to listening and asking "how did I do?" Formal audience surveys are a valuable exercise for the executive who wants to polish his or her powers of persuasion. If you don't want to go to this level, ask your investor relations professional to critique your speech and performance in the all-important question and answer session that follows.

In addition, consider these six tips from Fundamental Communications to improve your oratory prowess:

1. Focus your remarks on what investors want to know: what kind of growth and profitability can they expect; where will this growth come from and what are the trends driving that growth; what's the master plan for achieving future performance; what are your competitive advantages.  Keep discussions on historical financial performance to a minimum (since they will be covered in collateral hand-out materials).
   
   
2. Understand and respect your audience's knowledge of your story and level of interest. Ask the host for their views on what the audience wants or needs to know. Ask for the list of attendees. If the audience includes a mix of knowledgeable, long-term followers and those who don't know your company, include value-added information for both groups. But remember point #1: talking about growth and how you plan to achieve it will resonate with newcomers and long-time followers alike.
   
   
3. Begin developing your presentation in speech form. Don't start with the visuals. Visuals are meant to amplify the points you make in your remarks and add to the general image you wish to create for your company. Too often, executives let the visuals drive their presentations and spend little or no time thinking through exactly what they want to say. The result: good looking visuals but disjointed, poorly organized remarks sending no clear and compelling key messages. Once the speech is written, then create a visual storyboard.
   
   
4. Keep the speech to 20 minutes and be a ruthless editor. Vary the sentence structure. Too many long sentences are difficult to read aloud and difficult for the audience to absorb. Too many short sentences in a row make for a staccato performance that loses its impact.
   
   
5. Practice good podium etiquette. To avoid excessive body movement behind the podium, keep your legs at least shoulder width apart. Hands off the podium except to slide (not turn) the pages of your remarks. At a minimum, make direct eye contact with the audience between paragraph breaks and as you move from one page to the next. Do not look at the screen while you speak. It causes the audience to wonder if something is askew on the screen and it thwarts the microphone's attempts to amplify your voice.
   
   
6. Pay attention not only to the verbal, but also the paraverbal (tone of voice) and nonverbal (body language) messages you are sending to the audience. Depending on the circumstance, you most likely want to project two underlying qualities: confidence and trustworthiness. Appropriate attire and solid, commanding voice are vital.

Professional speaker coaching is an excellent way to improve your powers of persuasion and reduce the amount of practice time you need per speech to an effective proponent of your corporate story. For information on speaker coaching, call or email Fundamental.