The renaissance of selling your ideas

New Presentation Form - Duarte Design

Do all your presentations have a dull, predictable pattern: Title Slide, Agenda Slide, About XYZ Company, Our Customers, Our Platform, The Problem, The Alternatives, the solution, Summary, Call me?

There is another fresh way to sell your ideas. Some of the earlier blog posts point to a new way to conduct a presentation, new ideas for how to express important aspects of your idea - like the contrast between how things are and how they could be and the automatic elements of resistance that pop into peoples minds as you tell them your way of doing things. In the previous post we talked about presentation structure, beginning, middle and end, we also discussed how the customer is the hero and the hero needs to agree to go on a journey with you to overcome the challenges and return home to the new dawn.

Now we need to discuss how to help the hero on their way, this involves a more intricate presentation form - visually it looks like the picture above - a constant movement between two contorting scenarios. In a movie once the hero accepts the challenge and embarks on the journey (think Luke going off to rescue the Princess) the story unfolds chronologically - however in your presentation we are unconstrained by the boundaries of space and time and as long as we stick to the presentation form - what is and what could be - we will do just fine.

It is into this form that you place your ideas that ultimately will convey the status quo - a day in the life of a customer without your product, the complexity of today's solutions, the overhead, the cost, the gaps etc...this is interspersed with ideas that convey how life will be like once the hero is using the product, how simple, how much cheaper, how much faster, how much more comprehensive. The presentation form ends with a declaration of how life will be in the new era underwritten by your product. This is your Big Idea and we'll discuss this in the next post.

In Apple's WWDC, Tim Cook ends with a statement about how the world is with Apple in it:

Only Apple could make such amazing hardware, software and services. We are so proud of these products, as they are perfect examples of what Apple does best. And ultimately, it’s why people choose to come to work at Apple, and with Apple. To do the very best work of their lives, to create products that empower people to do great things, to make a difference in the lives of so many people around the world. The products we make, combined with the apps that you create can fundamentally change the world. And really, I can’t think of a better reason of getting up in the morning.

Powerful stuff from Tim Cook, CEO of Apple at WWDC 12 in San Francisco.

Can you reimagine your default presentation presented in this new form?

With an ending like that you too can expect new converts to your ideas.

Adding drama to your presentation helps you sell faster

A Hero - Daenerys Targaryen on a journey

How many of your presentations have a slide all about you - a "me" slide - generally at the beginning of your deck? How many of you believe that your product or solutions solves customer problems in a kick-ass way? In fact that your product is so kick-ass that it is the hero and will lead your customers out of the wilderness? Well it is true that some people are attracted to that guy that comes up to you at a cocktail party and talks all about himself...but let's take a look at another approach, one that will give you significantly different results: You are not the hero, your customer is the hero. You are taking the customer on a journey and they are going to need your help in overcoming a series of obstacles, but once resolved they will enter into a new state of being.

Books, screenplays, mythology, cinema all provide a structure for a story to be told; one of the reasons some presentations are so boring is that they lack a story. In stories we have heroes that we relate to, we root for them as they face challenges until they reemerge transformed and the final story is revealed. There are other key attributes of story telling, the notion of stakes - something must be at stake if the hero doesn't reach his goal. This tension creates drama and without it you have a boring story.

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, screenwriters employ more complex forms and Joseph Campbell who deconstructed stories and myths from around the world  created a circular diagram to show the different stages of the journey a hero takes.

Christopher Vogler’s version of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, as visualized in Stuart Voytilla’s Myth and the Movies

With presentations it is the customer and/or your audience that is the hero - you take them on a journey from their world to your special world and they learn new ways of dong things. Along the way they will resist your ideas citing roadblocks. Before they can get past this point they have to change their perceptions internally of the problem before they change the actions they take. Getting the audience to step into something new is the goal of your presentation, you need to acknowledge that change comes with a struggle, and once audiences are willing to make that change then you as their mentor help them with the rest of their journey to make them successful.

In the next post I will describe a presentation form that is part of great speeches given by luminaries such as Martin Luther King, Richard Feynman and Steve Jobs, a way of introducing ideas that resonate and that cal people to action.

Meanwhile take a look at your decks, are they all about you? Can you describe the day in the life of a customer without your product and with your product? Do you have a story to tell?

Related articles

• The renaissance of selling your idea (reimaginestrategy.com)