495: How to Give Presentations to Your Team

Explicit content warning

03/10/20 • -1 min

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to give presentations to your team.

Internal presentations are very common in the startup world. And while these presentations can be very boring and packed with data, it doesn’t have to be. Learning how to make your presentations exciting will help a long way in communicating your message to your team.

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about some mistakes people make when they give internal presentations, examples of good presentations, how to improve your presentations and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

00:29 Why this topic was chosen.

01:23 A big trend in internal communications.

03:20 How to present your data.

03:56 Why your presentations should have context.

04:27 How internal presentations are similar to speaking at conferences.

05:00 An example of how to create good presentations.

07:14 How to improve your presentations.

07:45 How the best presentations have stories in them.

09:10 What teams need from presentations.

3 Key Points:

Internal communication is a very big topic.
People are not used to presenting.
People are overwhelmed by with too much information.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about something that plagues every company at some point. And Steli had an experience that I haven’t heard yet, or some experiences, so I’m dying to hear them and talk about this. But it’s basically the idea of how do you communicate internally inside your company? Steli, take it from here. Lead out.

[0:00:26]

Steli Efti: Yeah. There’s obviously the internal communication is such a big topic. The one thing that I’d like to zero in on, because we are going through this and I’ve just personally had to go through this a couple of times and I’m currently working with leadership at close on this, is when people who are leading teams are giving presentations either for those teams or company-wide. And this could be a monthly report, hey, let’s a summary of what happened last month and what we are projecting or our goals for next month. It could be a big project that was concluded or that is planned. Any kind of communication where somebody that is responsible for a project is sharing the learnings, pros and cons, or what has happened, or what is about to happen with people. One big trend that I see, one thing that I’ve seen again and again and again, is that people will go through the, this is a general communication challenge, they’ll go through the simple work of just collecting information. So let’s say I’m running a sales team. February concluded, so I’m doing a summary of what happened in February and it’s a slide, and let’s say there’s six bullet points and it goes, we had a, whatever, 20% conversion rate, we closed this amount of customer, our goal was this revenue, but we only had that hit that revenue, with this one audit that affected closing two deals. Just reporting on a bunch of information, a bunch of numbers, a bunch of random events that happened. Just [crosstalk 00:02:12]. Yeah, go ahead.

[0:02:14]

Hiten Shah: No story.

[0:02:15]

Steli Efti: No story whatsoever.

[0:02:17]

Hiten Shah: That’s what you’re trying to get at, right? No story.

[0:02:19]

Steli Efti: Yes. You’ve instantly got it.

[0:02:21]

Hiten Shah: I was like, wait, I’ve heard this before.

[0:02:23]

Steli Efti: So you look at this and basically as an audience, as the sales team, or let’s say the company that is getting this presentation about the sales results of last month, as a team member, or as an employee of the business, I look at that slide and now I am burdened with doing all the hard work. You were just lazy. You plastered the slide with a shit ton of random numbers and information and now I have to look at it and ask myself, what does this mean? What does it all mean? What of all of this is important? Did we do a good job or not? If we learned something, what was it? What are we changing? I have to do all the interpretation. You’re giving me no story. You’ve given me 10 random facts and characters and you think I’m going to be entertained by that. Just sitting there and putting these characters and events together in some kind of a story that would entertain me as much as watching a movie. People ar...

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to give presentations to your team.

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about some mistakes people make when they give internal presentations, examples of good presentations, how to improve your presentations and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

00:29 Why this topic was chosen.

01:23 A big trend in internal communications.

03:20 How to present your data.

03:56 Why your presentations should have context.

04:27 How internal presentations are similar to speaking at conferences.

05:00 An example of how to create good presentations.

07:14 How to improve your presentations.

07:45 How the best presentations have stories in them.

09:10 What teams need from presentations.

3 Key Points:

Internal communication is a very big topic.
People are not used to presenting.
People are overwhelmed by with too much information.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:03]

[0:00:26]

[0:02:14]

Hiten Shah: No story.

[0:02:15]

Steli Efti: No story whatsoever.

[0:02:17]

Hiten Shah: That’s what you’re trying to get at, right? No story.

[0:02:19]

Steli Efti: Yes. You’ve instantly got it.

[0:02:21]

Hiten Shah: I was like, wait, I’ve heard this before.

[0:02:23]

Previous Episode

494: How to Deal With Rejection

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to deal with rejection.

Rejection is very common. If there’s one thing that is going to happen to you as a founder is that you’re going to be rejected a lot, and this hurts. But just because you’re likely to be rejected when you ask for something shouldn’t stop you from asking. How you deal with rejection can determine if you’ll be successful or not.

In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how nobody likes being rejected, coping mechanisms that you can use to deal with rejection, the problem with rejection and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic.

00:23 Why this topic was chosen.

01:08 How Steli doesn’t like to be rejected.

03:13 How Hiten deals with rejection.

04:30 The problem with rejection.

04:50 Why rejection is just an idea.

06:01 Why you need to ask all the time.

07:43 Why your decisions matter.

08:24 Why you shouldn’t put your self worth in someone else hands.

11:00 Tips to help you deal with rejection.

3 Key Points:

I encourage people to get rejected and put themselves out there.
I, for sure, don’t like to be rejected.
Ask the person who you think is good at dealing with rejection how they do it.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti.

[0:00:04]

Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah.

[0:00:05]

Steli Efti: Today on The Startup Chat we’re going to teach you how to deal with rejection. If you know Hiten and me, you know that we do believe great things come with taking great risk. If you know me, you know that I encourage people to get rejected. To put themselves out there, and to ask for things specifically that will place them completely outside their comfort zone, and with that bring a lot of risk of being rejected. Both Hiten and I have been rejected many, many, many times in our lives, and we know a thing or two about it. I do believe this is such an important topic. We thought today we’re going to do a little bit of a back and forth of just like coping mechanisms that we have developed, strategies, ideas, habits that allow us to deal with rejection. One thing that I’ll say right out of the bat, before I’ll ask you for your first tip Hiten here, is that I do not know anybody, I’ve never met somebody, and I surely I’m not somebody who doesn’t care about being rejected, or who likes being rejected. I for sure don’t like to be rejected. People think, especially when they see somebody that is as outspoken and as loud as me, and has as much sales experience as I have that I don’t care anymore. I could attempt anything and get rejected and I would not even just nothing from me, I would just dust off my shoulder. It’s not true. It is simply not true.

[0:01:46]

Hiten Shah: That’s not true?

[0:01:46]

Steli Efti: That’s unfortunately not true, no. Even after many, many, many, many, many thousands of rejections over the past 20 years of being an entrepreneur and in sales and all that, I still don’t like the feeling. I still don’t like the word no. No does not feel good to me. It doesn’t. I have just learned to deal with it. I’ve just learned to deal with it better than most people. I have learned to not run away from it as much. Not delay my actions as long. To me it’s like I’ve jumped a thousand times from this super high point into the water, and every time I’m a little afraid I get a little bit of goosebumps, but when I look down, I’m like, “I’ve done this many times. It sucks the first few seconds, but I’ll just jump.” That’s how I deal with this, versus what I think most people think, which is after he learned the magical art of not caring about being rejected and being so confident, nobody can shake his confidence. Now Steli walks around like a machine, and could ask anybody for money or for anything. Has zero emotions, zero fear, zero hesitation or anxiety around it. It’s just not true. With that disclaimer out of the way, which I think is a really important one, let me ask you, Hiten, how do you deal with rejection? What’s the first thing that comes to your mind if somebody asks you for advice on dealing with rejection?

[0:03:18]

Hiten Shah: On my end if someone came to me for that advice, I would do something that you just did. What I would do is I would go ask the person who I think is good at dealing with rejection, how they deal with it. This would be the best person that I know that’s good at dealing with it. Even if I’ve already experienced it myself and done a good job, but if I have some hesitation. The reason for that is...

Next Episode

496: Should You Be the Face of Your Company?

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about whether you should be the face of your company.

Being the “face” of a startup can be very intimidating for some founders, which is why a lot of prefer to not approach marketing this way. However, being a public CEO or founder can be a very effective way to market a startup.

In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about what made them become the face of their companies, examples of companies whose founders are the face of the brands, how to approach this if you’re starting a business today and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic

00:12 Why this topic was chosen.

01:55 What made Hiten be the face of his brands.

04:37 How Steli became the face of his brands.

06:11 How Steli created videos in the early days of Close.

06:31 How Steli stumbled in public speaking.

07:01 Example of companies with public faces.

08:17 How to approach this if you’re starting a business today.

08:33 Why you shouldn’t make it complicated.

09:33 Why you do what’s right for your customers.

3 Key Points:

It started out with me wanting to do the best job with the businesses that we had.
There’s ego involved in everything.
Once I discovered that creating videos was super easy for me, I just started creating a lot of them

[0:00:01]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

[0:00:05]

Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about humanizing your brand and being the public persona behind your company. Hiten, both you and I are pretty public people and are very closely associated with being kind of the humanized version of our companies, right? A lot of people but no closed in connection with Steli, right? Or Steli Efti.

[0:00:33]

Hiten Shah: Yeah.

[0:00:33]

Steli Efti: And same with FYI and Hiten Shah, right? It’s inseparable. And I had an interesting conversation recently with somebody that was asking me lots of questions on how I strategically decided to go down that route. What are the pros and cons? Who should do it? Who shouldn’t do it? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it just an ego trip? And I thought this is actually fascinating topic and I thought it’d be fun for the two of us to kind of quickly unpack this for people. So let me first ask you, you know, FYI is not the first company and product that you launched, that you have been very closely as a human associated with versus just being a brand where people don’t know who the people are behind the company. Pretty much every company that you’ve been involved with, you’ve been a very kind of public face off and you’ve been building kind of your personal brand in conjunction with the companies that you’ve been building. Was that a strategic move? Did you ever do research and then decide this is the best way to make a company successful, hence I’m going to go down that path? Was this kind of more random? How do you think about that, kind of looking back? Why did you in particular ended up doing this and building kind of a pretty public profile and brand on your own?

[0:01:52]

Hiten Shah: Yeah. For me, it started out particularly with like wanting to do the best job I could with the businesses that we had and kind of fell into it naturally. I actually fell into it by doing a ton of customer support for Crazy Egg back in 2005 and I was mentioned as a line item by people when they talked about our product versus like alternatives to our product. And a line item meaning like Hiten will respond to you really fast, if do you have a question? And I was just, I just knew that, particularly for that business, we helped you, we basically helped you see what’s happening on your web pages by creating a heat map and so it was a very visual representation of analytics data. And at the beginning, there were a lot of compatibility issues with your website. So people would like write in and be like, yo, it doesn’t work with my website or this thing’s off. Then I’d be like, yeah, we’re looking into it. And then, you know, I’d have an engineers work on it and then follow up, etcetera. And so anything that came up, I was handling. So for the first two years of that business, I was in frontline of customer support and you’d hear from me. So that’s really how I fell into it. And then once Twitter came along, I happened to have an early account. I was under the first 5,000. I was one of the first 5,000 users. And my following just grew because I was early and people were just trying to find people to fol...