The Best Presentation You’ll Never Make

by Mike Sigers on October 8, 2008

While waiting to make a presentation a few days ago, I jotted down a thought that came to my ever-moving mind.

The best presentation is the one you never make.

It’s much better if the prospect envisions their pain and your solution in their mind.

Why ?

Because it’s likely that their mind will see things bigger than you’ll dare to describe them to be.

When you present graphics, slides, numbers, etc, you lose.

The mind is much more powerful than your presentation can ever be.

For those of you who don’t believe this to be true, you probably proved it within the last few weeks.

How ?

You watched a movie after having previously read the book.

99.44% of the time, people say the movie didn’t live up to the one their mind played as they read the book.

Same thing happens when you short change the prospect with a piss poor presentation.

They envision your product or service solving their problems or eliminating their pain in a big way.

Go in there, tell enough of the story to allow them to justify what they already see in their mind and then shut up and leave.

You rate of successful completions of sales presentations will go up.

I promise.

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

joel cohen 10.09.08 at 6:07 am

So, what is your recommendation for doing presentations?

Thanks,
Joel
http://www.RestaurantMarketing.com

Glenn 10.09.08 at 6:44 pm

Joel, Let me suggest two books. 1. The Exceptional Presenter by Tim Koegel. 2. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Garr also has a great blog which Mike ought to have listed in his blog roll on the right (along with mine, Customer Service Experience–Hey, I’m just sayin’:-) Garr’s blog is at Presentationzen.com

Mike Sigers 10.09.08 at 11:24 pm

Thanks for taking care of that Glenn !

Obviously the Blog Roll trolls have taken your link and ran off with it ;-)

I’ll be fixing that over the next couple of days.

Bryan 10.17.08 at 2:17 pm

Great advice!

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