Presentations that Sell

01. Powerpoint that does not look like a powerpoint.
02. Bullet points do not excite an audience. Use images.
03. Use emotional images to engrave impressions.
04. Focus on your time limit, not your slide count.
05. Leave whitespace, do not fill. Move from left to right, bottom to top.
06. Don’t use symmetry, keep slides breathing. Align your objects.
07. No double axis, small labels, tick marks, 3D in charts.
08. Economist, NYT style charts with one clear message.
09. Professional, simple, clear fonts. Adobe Kuler for consistent colors.
10. No logos, no title bar in slides. Leave break pages blank.
11. No intro, agenda, summary, Q&A slides. Don’t waste real estate.
12. Tell story, let them voluntarily understand your message.
13. Stories are much more interesting. Place products inside the story.
14. Make your customer excited, intrigued. Avoid buzzwords.
15. Customer’s brain should want to learn, not forced to learn.
16. Shut down Powerpoint, take a piece of paper, go analog.
17. Explain to someone, capture it, visualize, build slides.
18. Customer’s impressions of you as a person is more important.
19. Gut buys with emotion, head justifies with facts.
20. Expert cannot explain to the novice – curse of knowledge.
21. Mission statements are only for who created them.
22. Choose a snappy slogan “10,000 songs in your pocket”
23. No time for history. Have a dialogue, listen to your customer.
24. Don’t repeat things that your customer knows.
25. Admit your weakness. Don’t ignore the elephant in the room.
26. Enable your champion to deliver the presentation to others.
27. Know who your audience is. And what they want.
28. Do not always pitch the solution.
29. Focus on the problem, visually.
30. Use case studies people can learn from, not just be impressed.
31. Don’t puncture the balloon of energy, watch out with that demo.
32. Teach them how to get to numbers, not just show them.
33. Be on top of your content completely to be spontaneous.
34. Stick to the time limit.
35. ‘Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

— Summary from SalesChrunch Presentations that Sell eBook

Patents

Coke vs. Pepsi

“We did some research and discovered that when people were going to serve soft drinks to a friend in their home, if they had Coca-Cola (KO) in the fridge, they would go out to the kitchen, open the fridge, take out the Coke bottle, bring it out, put it on the table, and pour a glass in front of their guests. If it was a Pepsi, they would go out into the kitchen, take it out of the fridge, open it, and pour it in a glass in the kitchen, and only bring the glass out. The point was people were embarrassed to have someone know that they were serving Pepsi. Maybe they would think it was Coke, because Coke had a better perception. It was a better necktie. Steve was fascinated by that.”

- John Sculley, Businessweek

Assumptions

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you think that the use of venture capital is the best way to go about developing all this new technology or is there some better way? Should the government be heavily involved? Should the stock market be involved? Some, I don’t know, any of the other way to finance this?

VINOD KHOSLA: Not only is there no better way, there isn’t any other way. And for one very simple reason. We can’t extrapolate our assumptions. This has got to be what Nassim [Taleb] calls the black swan phenomena. We have to radically change our assumptions. We are very much like turkeys and as Nassim says in his book, Black Swan, “for a thousand days, a turkey’s worldview model is it gets fat every day these humans come out and feed it. Somehow [...] before thanksgiving, it’s model changes.” We have to follow that model. We have to radically change, and that can happen for the negative or the positive.

We have to shift from extrapolating past assumptions, ignore what economists and econometrics tells us about how much oil we need and when we’ll run out and what consumptions will be. Because they are based on the false assumptions. Once those assumption change and technology will drive that change, the world will be different. Our assumption was long distance calls cost money. And then the internet came along, changed that assumption, and it didn’t matter what AT&T wanted, they disappeared essentially, got sold for a song.

- Vinod Khosla, PBS

Energy Rules

More than three years old but still relevant.

“Rules matter. Rules define the character — and shape the future — of the society that makes them. Democracy’s distinguishing excellence lies in its ability to write the rules in a way that serves the common interest. Good rules align the interests of individuals and corporations with the public interest, so that business can profit in ways that also make society richer and safer. This is the foundation of sound public policy. When high purpose is combined with the profit motive, the results can be astonishing. Time and again market capitalism, bounded by smart rules designed to serve the public interest, has delivered the desired result more cheaply, quickly, and easily than anyone thought possible.”

- John Podesta, grist.org

Why How What

WHY: What is your purpose, cause, belief? Why does it exist? Why should anyone care?

What -> How -> Why (Outside In) (90% of marketing/sales)
“We make great computers” (What is it?)
“They are beautifully designed, easy to use” (How is it different?)
… “Wanna buy one?”

Why -> How -> What (Inside out) (10% of marketing sales)
“Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently” (Why?)
“The way we challenge status quo is to make our products beatifully designed, easy to use” (How?)
“We just happened to make great computers” (What?)
… “Wanna buy one?”

Buyers: 2.5% innovators + 13.5% early adopters (=Tipping Point 15-16%) + 34% early majority + 34% late majority + 16% laggards

The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have… the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe… people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Feelings (Trust and Loyalty) are responsible for all human behavior and decision making. “what you do” is only used to rationalize “why you do it” and “what people buy” is only the proof “why you do it”.

Leaders hold a position of power or authority. Those who lead inspire us – we follow them not for them, for ourselves – they start with why? King said “I have a dream” not “I have a plan”.

- Simon Sinek, TED Talks

Positioning

‘This curious verb is in great favor among marketing experts, but no two of them agree what it means. My own definition is ‘what the product does, and who it is for.’ I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This is still working 25 years later. In Norway, the SAAB car had no measurable profile. We positioned it as a car for winter. Three years later it was voted the best car for Norwegian winters.’

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

Advertising

“I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative’. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’”

- David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

Crazier Future

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan, in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.

Asia’s Rise – How and When

Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world’s dominant economic force. At TEDIndia, he graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US.

Power without Love

“Power…is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love… What is needed is a realisation that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

- Martin Luther King, On Violence and Non-violence

Fellows

“American businessmen are not taught that it is a sin to bore your fellow creatures.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Customers

“The head of an agency has so much on his plate that he is apt to see his clients only at times of crisis. This is a mistake. If you get into the habit of seeing clients when the weather is calm, you will establish an easy relationship which may save your life when a storm blows up.”

“It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buck-passers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Afford to Lose It

“I have never wanted to get an account so big that I could not afford to lose it. The day you do that, you commit yourself to living with fear. Frightened agencies lose the courage to give candid advice; once you lose that you become a lackey.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Culture

“We make it a nice place to work. We put this first.”

“We treat people like human beings. We help them when they are in trouble with their jobs, with illness, with alcoholism, and so on. We help them make the best of their talents, investing an awful lot of time and money in training-like a teaching hospital.”

“Our system of management is singularly democratic. We don’t like hierarchical bureaucracy or rigid pecking orders. We give our executives an extraordinary degree of freedom and independence. We detest nepotism and every other form of favoritism. In promoting people to top jobs, we are influenced as much by their character as anything else. Our far-flung enterprise is held together by a network of personal friendships. We all belong to the same club.”

“We like people with gentle manners. We like people who are honest in argument, honest with clients and, above all, honest with consumers. We admire people who work hard, who are objective and thorough. We detest office politicians, toadies, bullies, and pompous asses. We abhor ruthlessness.”

“We have an infuriating habit of divine discontent with our performance. It is an antidote to smugness.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Study Experience

“What is the reason for one’s failure to study experience? Is it that any kind of scientific method is beyond his grasp? Is he afraid that knowledge would impose some discipline on them – or expose their incompetence?”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Price-off Deals

“They are a drug. Ask a drug-addicted brand manager what happened to his share of the market after the delirium of the deal subsided. He will change the subject. Asking if the deal increased his profit. Again he will change the subject.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Ogilvy-isms

“Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work. In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.”

“Get rid of sad dogs who spread doom. Hire gentlemen with brains. Tolerate genius. Prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance.”

“People do not buy from bad-mannered liars. Tell the truth but make the truth fascinating. Consumer is not a moron – she is your wife – do not insult her intelligence.”

“I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings.”

“Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.”

“Once a salesman, always a salesman.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

Mild and Wild

Mild = Mediocristan: when your sample is large, no single instance will significantly change the aggregate or the total… height, weight, calorie consumption, income for a baker, a small restaurant owner, a prostitute, or an orthodontist; gambling profits (in the very special case, assuming the person goes to a casino and maintains a constant betting size), car accidents, mortality rates, “IQ” (as measured).

Wild = Extremistan: inequalities are such that one single observation can disproportionately impact the aggregate, or the total… wealth, income, book sales per author, book citations per author, name recognition as a “celebrity,” number of references on Google, populations of cities, uses of words in a vocabulary, numbers of speakers per language, damage caused by earthquakes, deaths in war, deaths from terrorist incidents, sizes of planets, sizes of companies, stock ownership, height between species (consider elephants and mice), financial markets (but your investment manager does not know it), commodity prices, inflation rates, economic data.

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Creative Capitalism

Not exactly the perfect source of economic advice but this comes from comedian Eddie Izzard.

“I am a creativist, not a capitalist. I like to make money to make things – not make things to make money.”