We had a presentation yesterday to a huge company. I typically help with strategy, the building of the presentation, and the final editing for these. I am pretty anal about presentations, so I am always tweaking either the content or the way that I plan to present the content.

Yesterday I made a colossal mistake and one that I thought I would share with you, my loyal friends. I failed to go through what is usually a really normal process for me of putting myself in the audience’s place and going through the presentation in my mind. In my opinion, this is a must for any personal interaction that you expect be long and meaningful.

Having the other person’s perspective in mind is really important. It allows you to analyze what they care about most and in a sales setting, it will allow you to best tailor your message so that you can get the outcome that you desire. Areas of analysis for a sales setting should be:

• The audience themselves - Who is going to be there? How are they related or linked to one another? What are the things that are most important to them? What are their interpersonal relationships? Where is their specific pain? How are you going to take care of that pain? Don’t laser focus your message on only one person, unless it is an audience of one. Make sure you strike a nerve with each one in some way.
• The audience’s challenges – Do they understand their own challenge well and will they feel that you understand their challenges based on your presentation?
• The audience’s level of understand of the topic – Do they fundamentally understand the concepts being presented? If not, make sure that you alter the presentation based on the audience.
• The audience’s risk tolerance level – How risky of a proposition is whatever you are presenting to them?
  The audience’s historical buying patterns – In my world, I try to look at how my prospects typically engage on projects. Are they well-planned, multi-month or year programs, or are they more tactically focused and therefore engage on short projects.
• Does every visual or written component of the presentation further your cause? - If you are presenting case studies, examples, sample work, are those meaningful to them and their industry?

I am probably leaving a few things out, but you get the point. Thinking through how the content of a presentation will affect the audience is probably the most important thing you can do. For us yesterday, we would have avoided a particularly uncomfortable situation had we not missed this. We live and learn, that’s for sure!
Sell well, sell hard, or let me do it!