Best Practices

Question and Answer Sessions

Some entrepreneurs are great at presenting and terrible at Q&A. Some

are the opposite. It is important to shine during both portions of a
pitch. A quality presentation shows that you understand your business
and can explain it well. A quality Q&A session shows how you process
and respond to challenges and gives a glimpse of your personality.

These tips are primarily for entrepreneurs that are presenting their
business plans to investors, but many of these concepts apply for other
Q&A scenarios – sales presentations, partner presentations, etc.

1. Answer the Question. Seems obvious, but too many

entrepreneurs ramble and try to use Q&A as a way to extend
their presentation and squeeze in more information
2. Be Concise. Try to answer the question in 1-2 sentences. Give
them a short, concise answer that stands on its own. If they
want more information, they will ask for it. Make sure you
immediately give them an answer and then you can give them
supporting information if needed. Don’t start with a bunch of
background information that leads up to the answer.
3. Don’t ramble. If someone asks a question and has a puzzled
look on their face, don't just ramble until they cry "mercy". Ask
them "Did that answer your question?”.
4. Practice. Sit down with your team and write up 30 questions
that might be asked. You know your business and the holes and
risks, so you know what questions you will get. Then prepare
tight answers for these questions and practice delivering them.
If you do this, you will be prepared for 90% of the questions you
will receive.
5. Don’t be defensive. Too many entrepreneurs make Q&A into an
argument because they feel they have to defend their business.
Be confident, but flexible. They are going to ask some
challenging questions that poke holes in your business. Address
them without being stubborn.
6. Know your audience. Do your homework on who will be in the
audience. Know their career, their education, the deals they
have done. This will help you understand why they asked certain
questions as well as how to answer them. It will also help you
build a relationship with them. And you will impress them at how
prepared you are when you toss out something like… “I know
you recently did a deal with XYZ so you understand that…”
7. Stroke their ego. You might have some people in the audience
that want to ask a tough question just to prove how smart they
 are. Give them the stroking they need by acknowledging their
expertise. “You have a lot of experience in this field, so you
already know…”
8. Don’t start a statement with “honestly”. This makes it
seem that you have been lying to them the entire time, but this
next statement is going to finally be truthful.
9. Don’t say “good question”. If you tell one person “good
question” and you don’t say it to the next person that asked a
question, you offend them because you didn’t think their
question was good enough to be labeled as a “good question”
10. Take notes. You probably have some smart people in the room
and you can learn something from each question they ask. At
least pretend that you are listening and want their feedback...
take notes. This shows that you are coachable, and open-minded
and that you value their opinion.
11. Don’t be a know-it-all. It is OK if you don’t have the answer to
every question. In fact, it is quite refreshing to hear an
entrepreneur say “I’m not sure about XYZ, but I’ll look into it and
get back with you.” It shows they are human and willing to
learn.
12. Let the CEO be the QB. If you have a few of your team
members at your presentation, let the CEO field all the questions
and then decide who should answer it… CFO, VP Sales, CTO, etc.