7 Steps to Practical Business Stories
By Tim Berry
Remember, stories aren’t just stories. They’re truth and promise and relationships established. They’re vital to business. There’s more truth in stories than in all the statistics ever published. Geoffrey James posted How to Tell a Great Story on Inc.com last month, quoting Mike Bosworth of Solution Selling, and Ben Zoldan, one of his top trainers. So this... Read More »
A 2-Second Business Pitch that Worked
By Tim Berry
Last Thursday I’d just spoken as a guest to a class in entrepreneurship. As the class ended I was anxious to go because I was late for my grandson. The professor was thanking me and three students waited to talk to me individually. I didn’t want to be rude and I like talking to students,... Read More »
Watch This Excellent 1 Minute Elevator Pitch
By Tim Berry
Although it doesn’t take an MBA to do it, one of the things business schools teach more often these days, as part of the entrepreneurship curriculum, is the elevator speech, also called elevator pitch. The one embedded here, from the Rice Business Plan Competition last week, won first prize in a contest that included 42... Read More »
Tell Your Story Well: Resonate
By Tim Berry
This last Sunday I bought three copies of Nancy Duarte’s book Resonate and sent one each to three adult children. That’s the best review I ever give a book. I’m sad to admit that it happens rarely. But I love this book. If you ever – ever – get up to speak to a group... Read More »
1 Great Tip for Better Story Power for Business
By Tim Berry
Here’s a great tip for anybody presenting anything to an audience: Skip the boring preamble. Many times we feel like we have to do a lot of prefacing, but four minutes goes by quickly. If you spend two minutes on background, you’ve lost an opportunity to grab attention. Far better to leave the identifying bits... Read More »
True Stories: One Good and One Bad Answer to Investor Q&A
By Tim Berry
We talk about the slides, and what they cover, but some of the more important moments in business pitches I’ve seen are not about slides, or plans, but rather about the people themselves, and how they respond. For example, I posted last week on gust.com about two radically different ways to handle questions about financials.... Read More »
Pitching Your Business: How Not to Answer A Tough Question
By Tim Berry
Imagine a meeting room in a hotel. You’re an entrepreneur talking to five potential investors. You present their new business with a slide presentation. This is your pitch. The pitch goes perfectly well until it gets to the financial projections. They’re bad. They are embarrassingly over optimistic. They cast doubt over the entire presentation. So,... Read More »
Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes #9: Pitching Without Planning
By Tim Berry
(Note: this is the second of a 10-part series listing my revised top 10 business planning mistakes. The list goes from 10, the least important, to 1, the most important.) I’m guessing that the idea of doing a pitch – meaning a slide deck driving a presentation, about 20 minutes’ worth maximum – instead of... Read More »
By 
