Doug Davidoff
I’ve tried to be diplomatic. I’ve tried to be refined. Now let me be blunt.
Your buyers don’t care about you.
Don’t take offense, it’s not personal. It’s just that they don’t really care about what year your business was founded, where you are from, and why you think you are different. They’re too busy worrying about themselves to care about that stuff.Why am I writing this? Because today I was asked to review a presentation from a client who was complaining that their presentations “just didn’t seem to resonate,” and the client couldn’t understand because it was their best stuff.
How did the presentation start? You guessed it – with the client’s credibility story. But, it’s not just visual presentations where I see this. In my speeches about Creating Demand, I have the audience go through an elevator speech type exercise. 90% of the responses are some form a credibility or capability statement like:
We’ve got 35 years experience providing on-time delivery to manufacturers…
Look, I understand that you need to include this type of information (or at least think you do). If you are going to use it, save it for the end of your presentation – or better yet write it in story form and package it as a leave behind.
There are three problems when you start any presentation with this type of information:
1. It’s boring
2. Your competition has their own version of the same stuff, so it doesn’t demonstrate any difference, and
3. It just adds to the noise.
A far better approach is to start off by provoking your customer/audience. How can you do this? Try one of these techniques:
- Lead off with the results you client is going to get
- Lead off by stating the problem your client is having – and state it better than the client could
