Betty Cooper has a simple message for companies trying to raise millions of dollars in investment capital: Read this story.
Why? Simply because she’s helped hundreds of CEOs and senior executives in the past 20 years. As president of Cooper Communications, her specialty is teaching executives to make presentations that are effective and to the point.
“If you can’t hook your audience with the first 20 words and within the first two minutes, then say goodbye,” says Cooper. “If you can’t hook your audience with the first 20 words and within the first two minutes, then say goodbye,” says Cooper. “If they’re not listening to you by then, they aren’t going to invest in your company.”
Cooper knows of what she speaks, having worked with more than 75 high-profile Alberta companies since starting her consulting business in 1981.
To date, she hasn’t found a single person who didn’t require help.
“I shock a lot of senior executives when they make their presentation to me,” says Cooper. “Halfway through, I say, Stop! Stop! Stop! They’ve been working on it for weeks, and I say: ‘Ho hum, who cares?’ ”
Too often the message is at the end of the presentation, says Cooper. It’s a costly trap. Presenters spend the first five minutes talking about their company’s history, what they do, what they’ve done in the past, because that’s what they are comfortable with, she says.
Cooper fixes that. The presentation is re-orchestrated. Using radio call letters WIIFM – What’s In It For Me – she tells the presenter to tune into the group he or she is targeting. What does the group want to hear, and most importantly, what do you want the audience to do when you’ve stopped talking?
The obvious goal when you’re making a presentation to potential investors is to get them to put money into your company, she says. Don’t start by telling them about your history. Lots of companies had good times last year, and then tanked. What investors want to hear is this: “Our company has three things that we know are going to help move our shares up.”
Then for the next two minutes, says Cooper, you provide the key information to back up your statement – in language they understand.
It’s a concept high-tech companies should click into, she says.
“They are the worst jargonistic people in the world. They are so busy doing their own thing, and they talk in all these letters and numbers and you don’t know what they’re talking about. So you tune them out.”
Cooper recalls a junior stock company she worked with whose presentation was redone. In 48 hours, after making the new presentations, the stock jumped to $1.72 from $1.25.
“Nothing about the company changed, just the way they presented themselves,” she says. “They had 10 million shares. That’s not a bad couple of days work.”
Cooper has believed in the power of the spoken word since she was six and began studying speech and drama in New Westminster, B.C. She was going to be an actress. But her mother took ill, and at 17, needing to work, she earned her first speaking diploma as a teacher.
Since then she’s led a busy freelance career. Arriving in Calgary in the 1950s, she worked in television and radio, was an executive producer at CBC Radio, co-ordinated the broadcast program at Mount Royal College, and started her communications business now located on the 22nd floor of the Sun Life Plaza.
Married with three grown sons, she’s also become a Fellow of Trinity College, London, has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary and has tutored executives as far away as China.
Half of her time today is spent working with company executives on delivering messages. The message isn’t always about investments, she says, but it’s always about buying into a concept or idea. She is also a skilled professional speaker, author and teaches workshops.
Using the four P’s – pitch, pace, pause and projection – combined with breathing power, she teaches clients to deliver rich, colourful messages.
“Every time you have a new idea, change your pitch, higher or lower,” she says. “Change the pace, faster or slower. Pause between those ideas. The pause is where someone swallows the idea and you can get more breath if you need it. That allows you to project with strength.”
Cooper says many people’s fears of public speaking are alleviated once they have a clear picture of what they want to accomplish.
People need four steps to speak effectively, she says.
* Feel it in your heart.
* Think it in your head.
* See it in your mind’s eye.
* Then say it.
“Then,” says Cooper, “you’ll say it with the passion necessary for them to buy into your message.”
