Why making an impact in 6 minutes can be the difference between success and failure

Maryanne Johnston is a public speaking and presentation expert who runs workshops for the CivTech Accelerator. As the companies participating in the Accelerator work toward building their Minimum Viable Product to showcase at CivTech Demo Day (and beyond). We spoke to Maryanne about the importance and value of her workshops.

Maryanne Johnston, Director, Maryanne Johnston Ltd.

I'm quite heavily involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Scotland and have been working with CivTech since it started. I really feel like I'm part of their team, and it's great to be a part of something that makes a difference.

I love what I do. I see some people go from being really quite debilitated by public speaking to suddenly having this amazing confidence to do it using the toolkit and techniques I show them. It’s a privilege to go on that journey with them.

In my workshops my aim is to teach people to come across as clear and confident in delivering their ideas but also to make sure that when they are on stage or in that meeting with investors, they're being themselves using their natural conversation style.

In a situation where you’ve got just six minutes to sell your solution, whether you’re presenting one to one or one to hundreds, you must make it count. Start-up businesses get limited face time with investors, and we know that getting investment at the moment is quite challenging, so you need to get that pitch right first time. At Demo Day, there's no room on the stage for waffling or rambling. You've got competition all day for people's attention so keeping your audience hooked is essential.

I think one of the challenges for many people is that they are so caught up in what they're doing day to day and our brains are so flooded by information from different angles, that they can’t see the wood from the trees in terms of what the audience wants to hear. If you're pitching to an investor, for example, they aren’t interested in buying your product or technical details about it. They want to know that it solves a big problem, is innovative and has high growth potential and a therefore a good return for them. However, if you’re pitching to potential customers, as is the case on Demo Day, they want to understand your product’s features and how it works. People need to understand how to tailor the message.

Companies pitching their products on stage at Demo Day.

I advise clients on all aspects of preparing and delivering presentations and pitches.  One area which often causes confusion for presenters is managing their pace of delivery.

Pace can be separated into two distinct elements. The first one is what I call your rate of WORD delivery. It's really important that you keep to your natural rate because that puts across energy and enthusiasm through the intonation in your voice. And if you start to slow down, you become more boring and monotone and crucially, you're going to lose people's attention.

The second one is your rate of IDEA presentation. If, for example, you put an image up on the screen that stirs people’s imaginations then everyone in that audience is off thinking about different things, or you are rattling through your ideas at 100mph. Our brains aren't good at listening and thinking at the same time. So, if you rush ahead at this point then by the time you have the audience’s attention again, they’ve missed everything you’ve said for the past 10 seconds.

I want to give you an example of why my job can be so rewarding. During CivTech 4.0, I worked with a founder of one of the participating companies who came into the first workshop, and he seemed anxious. I asked everyone about their strengths, weaknesses, and experience, and he just looked at me and said, “I don't ever speak to anyone. I do everything through the website. I don’t like talking to people.” I thought, does he know he’s going to present to 300 people in three months’ time? As the workshops continued, he listened, learned, and practised everything carefully. He was a fantastic writer and drafted an excellent pitch, so we worked on how to deliver it as a script, without it appearing he was reading from a script. Come Demo Day, he did it and he was awesome. His son and wife were there, and she came up to me afterwards, gave me a massive hug and said, “This has been transformational for him. He would never, ever have done something like this. Thank you.”

These workshops are just one way you and your company can benefit from getting involved with CivTech. They've got a fantastic team, and they look after everyone with great care and attention to detail. I think they're really offering a very different experience to some of the other accelerators in Scotland. To my mind, the CivTech Accelerator is a gold standard programme.

You can find out more about the workshops Maryanne Johnston delivers here.