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6 Ways To Make Your Business Presentations Stand Out

Startup Professionals Musings

Here are some key ways that personal stories can raise your message above the standard sales pitch: Show that you are authentic and deserve their trust. Don’t expect your storytelling to be a substitute for basic business plan content, including competitive analyses and financials.

Startup 145
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How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck

Both Sides of the Table

I believe in this so much that, despite my post advising you to be prepared for the *norm* in VC, I wrote a post about a company that came in for a presentation and never even got the slides out or presented a demo. The “Triple Play&# of VC Presentations. Be ready to map your presentation to their preferred method.

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Scaling Sales: Arming & Aiming – A’s, B’s & C’s

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.

Sales 286
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How to reach beyond the prospect’s gatekeeper

Berkonomics

Looking for an entrance into a VC, an angel group, a bank, a CxO for a sales opportunity, or any other entity? Few of your contacts will be willing to use their valuable social or political capital helping you with a sales effort, and you will definitely strain your relationship with the intermediary if not a close friend.

Ideas 156
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Interview with Fariborz Maseeh, Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition

socalTECH

Last week, the University of Southern California 's Viterbi School of Engineering announced that it had established a new, business plan competition, the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition ([link] specifically aimed at students in the engineering school. Why a business plan competition, and why in engineering school?

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You name the price; I’ll name the terms.

Berkonomics

Satisfy the seller’s need to claim a higher sales price victory by moving a substantial part of the price into a future earn–out or using the target company’s own cash to pay part of the price, or asking the seller to finance a significant piece of the sale. Offering too little in an acquisition to satisfy the seller? What power!

Pricing 156
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The Best Entrepreneurs Are Hyper Competitive & Hate Losing

Both Sides of the Table

Competitiveness - One attribute that I believe most VCs look for in entrepreneurs is competitiveness. If you stumble on to a really good idea believe me it will get competitive really quickly. I know that people who aren’t competitive always find competitive people slightly distasteful. I had to say it.