Navigating the #1 fear when presenting your work

If you want to build a portfolio, get promoted or make a bigger impact at work, or even carve a path towards starting a venture of your own, your ability to effectively communicate (and sell) your ideas is crucial.

You need to be confident and capable whether presenting to your team, management, client executives or investors.

After providing over 100 hours of in-person training to some of the world’s best design teams, including Metalab, Spotify, Google, Huge Inc., Dyson and Ticketmaster, there is one question that is by far the most common concern of pitching:

What if someone interrupts me with a question I don’t see coming?

Often times the default position of an exec is to be skeptical and find ways to poke holes. It’s a bias they have to help them with time management — get to an issue as fast as possible. Overcoming that is a key differentiator between junior designers and more senior ICs.

When it happens, and it often will, here are two things you do:

1) If you have upcoming content in your pitch or presentation that will answer the question, respond by saying:

"Great question. I'm going to answer that in just a few moments, and actually, I think what I'll share between now and then might give some additional detail that will be useful..."

This tells them you’ve heard them, that you’ll get to their question, but that they will also get some value in the bits in between. That way, they don’t get impatient and instead stay receptive. If you only say, “I’ll get to that shortly”, then they will stew on the question, and you can lose them along the way.

2) If you don’t have an answer to the question at any point in your pitch (or an answer at all), there’s a formula you can follow. Respond by saying:

"Great question. I don't have a precise answer to that now, but...

• based on our work so far, here’s what we know today…

• our assumption, therefore, would likely be to try X and Y...

• and here’s how we’ll test those hypotheses to prove or disprove them as quickly as possible."

That simple.

The formula once again: What we know today is 1, 2 and 3 + therefore, our assumption would be to try X and Y + here’s how we would test that thinking.

You’re not giving them an answer, but you are doing valuable things:

• You're showing you don't pretend to have all the answers

• You're signaling expertise

• You're showing both proficiency and willingness in problem-solving

• You're saying you can validate your thinking to find the real solution.

That formula works most of the time.

If you want to minimize the likelihood of derailing questions

There’s a simple exercise you can follow before you get anywhere near the moment of selling your idea. It’s called Reasons not to buy.

As a team or individual, spend deliberate time thinking up all the reasons why the potential ‘buyer’ of your idea won’t buy it. Let me give you an example.

In 2021, I founded a healthtech company called Aide Health. Both my co-founder and I are product people, not clinicians. We knew this was rare in the market as most healthtech founders are clinicians, which could be a reason for VCs not to buy us.

So, we always address this before it becomes a question by including the following in our pitch:

• We have spent the past 20+ years in design and innovation…

• We believe the major missing piece of chronic disease management is patient engagement and that patients don’t have the tools they need to self-manage…

• We fundamentally view this as a product problem, not a clinical problem, for reasons X and Y…

• And we also have some outstanding clinicians on our team…

The reasons you will come up with are going to be specific to your idea, market and audience. But there are some guiding questions you can ask yourself to get started, for example:

• Why us and not another team, or a competitor company?

• What are the gaps in our experience?

• What will make them nervous to choose us?

• What are the risks of this idea?

• How could the idea be misunderstood?

• How does this idea compare the rest of the market or category it’s in

Remember, the commissioners of your idea are not looking for reasons to choose your idea over the others available. They’re looking for reasons not to choose it. It’s an easier mental task for them in their decision-making process.

Give them as few reasons as possible.

Want to learn more about storytelling?

Ridd here 👋 In my interview with the former Head of Design at Metalab, he kept raving about their experience hiring Ian Wharton to train the team in storytelling.

After meeting Ian I immediately understood why. He is a storytelling master and

If you want to make your ideas memorable and get buy-in then definitely check out Ian’s course Sell the Idea: Storytelling for Product and Design.

If you use the code DIVECLUB you can even get $100 off the next cohort!