For anything you want to present or explain, in any business situation, you should have a one or two sentence summary for it that encapsulate the main idea.
You may actually use this brief summary as an elevator pitch if the situation arises, but even if you don’t ever use it as is, by simply having it, it will give you so much clarity and focus in deciding what to do with your presentation or pitch, how to build it, what should be in it, what not.
This brief summary is the core story of your pitch. But how do we write stories?
The simplest tool for writing stories is the Three Act Structure:
Act 1: Setup
Act 2: Confrontation
Act 3: Resolution
The Three Act structure comes from playwriting and Hollywood, but it works in business too:
Act 1, Setup, is the the context: Why are we here, how did this come to be?
Act 2, Confrontation, is the problem, the issue that we want to address.
Act 3, Resolution, is the solution we’re proposing, the thing we’re asking for.
Want budget from your manager for a team building with your team?
“(Act 1) The team has been working extra hard for the past 6 months on project X (Act 2) and they’re near burned out and we’re starting to see motivation issues. (Act 3) I’d like the budget to take them out on a nice team building next weekend, after we deliver.”
You want to explain to a potential customer why your product would be good for them?
“(Act 1) Your current HR software is expensive and limited in functionality (Act 2) and it leads to human error and increased effort for trivial tasks. (Act 3) Our product is fast, feature full and comes in a better price.”
The core story is your North Star
Yes, when it comes to a fully fledged presentation, you may need to add more info, like detail that team building budget a bit. But the key question of “what should I add vs what is unnecessary and should not be added?” has been answered: add what is required to support your core story, and add the minimum that will do the job. Remove anything else.
Next time, we’ll look at visual examples: 1 slide presentations on the same “thing”, but radically different depending on what the angle and the story is.
"The core story is your Norh Star"
probably should be "The core story is your North Star"