Presentation is Essential When Asking for Money
Imagine for a moment that you have had a very long day and you are driving home, hungry and tired, fighting the rush hour traffic. You do not want to cook dinner, your spouse will not cook dinner, your kids do not know how to cook dinner. Going out to eat is definitely not an option. So you decide to stop at the grocery store and just pick up something to eat. A frozen dinner sounds like just the thing.
Now, everything we buy at the store has a nutrition label that tells us the ingredients, how much fat, carbs, protein, etc. That label tells us everything we need to know about what is in the package.
But when you are hungry and just want to get something to eat, is the nutrition label the first thing you look at? Of course not. You look at the picture on the front because it shows you exactly what the product looks like and, to encourage you to buy that package, the picture is designed to get you salivating over the salisbury steak, pizza, lasagna, or whatever else in the box.
You need to apply the same principle when you prepare a financing request for presentation to lenders or investors.
Do not give them the equivalent of a nutrition label. Instead, paint a picture in their mind that gets their mouth watering and makes them want to know more.
You want to avoid a situation in which you think you are telling a great story but your audience only hears a lot of facts that are just plain boring. If you only give your listeners the nutrition label version, you have not made your offer very appealing, and they cannot picture what you are trying to do. So why should they be interested? What will make them want to open your package and see what is inside?
So remember to make your story interesting and appealing. Create a picture and emotion in the mind of the investors so they want to know more and are ultimately eager to invest in you.
[...] learn more about dealing with financing sources, I recommend you read Are You a Nutrition Label or a Picture? and Can You Really Make it Happen? var $j = jQuery.noConflict(); $j(function() { [...]
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[...] learn more about dealing with financing sources, I recommend you read Are You a Nutrition Label or a Picture? and Can You Really Make it [...]