Do you know how confident you should act in your presentations?
Robert Herjavec (one of the angel investors from the TV show “Dragons’ Den” and “Shark Tank”) was recently asked this question: “What’s the most common fundraising flaw you see in entrepreneurs?”
His answer: “Overconfidence, bordering on arrogance. Or lack of confidence, bordering on insecurity.”
As a coach and a believer in the power of confident communications, I know how hard it is to walk this tightrope. You don’t want to fall right? So what should we do? Well the answer for communication is the same answer for the real situation – KEEP YOUR BALANCE.
You must be confident in your pitching and presentations. If you are trying to convince others to believe in you or follow you, you must give them a reason and a feeling to do so. That is right, both logical and emotional reasons must be there. You need to be passionate about what you are saying (or selling) and you need to have hard facts and figures to back up your beliefs.
A confident presenter is challenged less than an unsure or meek one, even on Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank. When a confident person handles the first challenging question successfully, smoothly and convincingly, there is less desire to challenge again and again.
To be confident you must believe in what you are saying, have data to back it up and be comfortable talking about it to others. Confidence comes from competence, and vice versa. Make sure you prepare well.
Keeping your balance means that you must be confident to succeed, especially in North America, and you must balance that with logical reasons so that it is not just your opinion.
For example:
“I think you should buy my soft drink machine because I think it is the best value for money and I get a lot of revenue from it”
could be transformed into:
“To get the best value for your money and a three to one return on investment, choose our soft drink machine. Recent statistics show that there is a growing increase in soft drink machine use when a variety of drinks are offered, and I strongly believe this is the way forward for our company.“
In this example we do not start out with our opinion. We start out with compelling facts and numbers that the logical brain can absorb. Then passion is displayed. It sounds more confident, doesn’t it?