13 Dos and Don'ts for a Killer Presentation

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:09

Hello, good afternoon, and welcome to The Sales Scoop. This is a fortnightly live show for startups who want to improve how they sell, and tech startup founders who are looking to extend, and improve their sales function. I'm Alastair Cole, your host for today, and a Co-Founder of The Uplift Partnership. My background is in Computer Science. I'm an ex-Software Engineer with two decades experience in B2B Sales and Marketing. And I'm delighted to say that I'm joined today by my partner in business, long time friend and a man who spent Sunday celebrating his birthday on one of Austria's very scary summer toboggan runs. Hi, Kiran.

Kiran Gill 1:12

That's off to a flyer, as always! Hi. Alastair, hello, everyone. Hi. My name's Kiran Gill. My name, sorry, my name is Kiran. I'll say that again. That's how good it is. I'm also a Co-Founder of The Uplift Partnership. I have 25 years experience in B2B Strategy that includes frontline sales, sales management, and sales operations. I've been working in FinTech, and also been working in the technology and banking sectors.

Alastair Cole 1:45

Thank you, my friends. Thank you. And so today we're talking about a very exciting topic, about 13 do's and don'ts to create a killer presentation. We're not just talking about a deck and slides, but the whole experience of having that opportunity, of getting in front of buyers and presenting to them, which is super important. Our impact through the uplift partnership has been varied and large. Over the last five years, we've worked with over 50 startups and taken almost all of them through our 360 sales diagnostic tool, and thinking about the presentation, we realise that actually it's the culmination getting in front of buyers is the culmination of a huge amount of effort right on behalf of of your sales team, Your sales function, and your sellers. And we estimate that there are 618 sales actions that need to happen each month to deliver action within a sales function. Tell us a little bit about what's involved in that 618 Kiran,

Kiran Gill 2:59

it goes from everything that you're potentially doing to trying to get that meeting with that client, or that first, first interaction with the client where they actually respond to you. So from sending out messages, it could be networking. It could be LinkedIn messages, emails. It could be, you know, WhatsApp messages, phone calls, you name it. It It could be that these are interactions that you're making with the client just to try to get that first meeting, you know, that first meeting where, you know, potentially could be a discovery meeting, or it could be even just having coffee, just, you know, some people call it a discovery meeting, some people just call it a chat. But this is what you need to do to generate those leads. And those, those 618 things that you're doing in a month. Now that's the calculation I've made. If you are looking to do around eight sales a month, you should be aiming to do around 618 small actions. And these can be automated. Some of them will be automated, and some of them will be hyper personalised. So you will have to sit there and do them yourself. However, the vast majority of those can be automated to make your life a lot easier,

Alastair Cole 4:10

and that's fantastic. Thank you. All that stuff that happens in the background. And you know, you have those first meetings, you have the follow ups, you may be doing a demo, and then you get to a point where, as a seller, you're able to go and present, present your solution. And that's what today's show is all about. How to make that absolutely fantastic. And as promised on LinkedIn, we're going to run through 13 rapid fire do's and don'ts. That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to get started right away and launch straight into the first one chronologically, which is knowing your audience right, absolutely paramount that you've not just done your research on the people who are going to be in the room, that you've built the relationships with them and a whole host of other stuff. Where would you advise? Text? Alastair founders cleared to start if they were thinking about what they needed to do to know their audience in that room.

Kiran Gill 5:07

Well, you've made all the hard work, or you've done all the hard work prior to the actual meeting itself. So you should know who you've invited. Now, whether this is in person, live, you know, at the office presentation, or it could be a virtual presentation. What tends to be the norm nowadays, the majority of the people are doing their first kind of sales presentations, actually online. You know who you've invited. Also, there's a good chance that maybe some extra people could be invited to that meeting without your knowledge. The best thing to do is, even prior to everything you know the purpose of your actual presentation, what are you trying to achieve with it? Are you trying to convince people? Are you showing you know? Are you showing the technology, what is the purpose of it? And then, who are the key people in that room, who are actually going to be the people that you're targeting now, those people are the people you're building that presentation for. Now, if there are extras who turn up, that doesn't mean you have to ignore them, but just be aware you're building it and it's a presentation that you're giving to someone. It's a present. That's what you're doing. So make sure that you tailor it to them and to the audience that you're actually targeting.

Alastair Cole 6:27

Yeah, that's a great shout. There might be lots of people in the room, lots of people online, but actually there's a core, you know, a core group, one, two or three, maybe absolutely critical to be, to be convinced. And it's all about getting them to a place where they can make a decision, they can choose to make an action. One of our previous shows, we've talked about complex buying groups and the seven different personas that are that could be in those bigger meetings. You know, champions, influencers. You've got end users, blockers, who might be a challenge during a presentation, evaluators, executive sponsors, and the seventh one, decision makers, so really important that you identify those. But as Kiran says, it's about picking the absolutely key people and talking to them, getting them to make the movement and make the decision you need. The second of our 13 is about starting that presentation with a really strong hook. You know, so many stories begin with an intriguing, exciting what's behind that door, what's the opportunity? And so creating an exciting hook at the start is a way to grab people's attention and get the presentation off to a great beginning. Anything you'd like to add on a strong hook? Kiran,

Kiran Gill 7:47

Yeah, you know, the way I always try to coach people when it comes to sales presentations is to get them to think about it like a Hollywood movie. You know? What you're trying to do here is you're trying to get the audience to be gripped by what you're doing. And I know what we do doesn't feel like a Hollywood movie sometimes, and you might think it's actually quite dry or whatever. That doesn't mean the delivery or how you present. It needs to be that way, and you can pep that up as much as you want. So just think to yourself, how can I make my presentation stick in the person's mind long after that it's finished, that they think to themselves, wow, that was amazing. Now, could it be that you use a quirky piece of music? Is it that you start off with a video? What would you do? There's so many different ways, and there's hundreds of ways I could reel off to you that you could attempt to do it. But think about the first go back to number one, who's your audience? You know, is it a bunch of, you know, elder people who might not want something quirky, or is it, you know, Zen, G is then v that where they, you know, they're expecting something to, you know, fly off the page and make it more either, tailor, tailor your presentation and tailor your hook. Yeah,

Alastair Cole 9:02

that thinking about that hook ahead of the show made me recall a story about George Lois, who was an American ad man, super famous, and he his one of his most famous quotes is that he thought advertising should be like poison gas right now, I know that sounds a bit bellicose and a bit dangerous, but it should grab you. And even though this might not be advertising, it's that same idea that when you that hook is, is, you know, arresting and it and it could be, you know, it can be edgy, right? Because at least that grabs attention. So make your hook like poison gas, you know, grab, grab them. Early doors, the third. The third do and don't is a classic see all the time, which is people reading from their slides, right? And this is so easily done, especially if you have too much information on each slide, right? I love Guy Kawasaki's rule. I Of 1020, 30. You know your presentation should be 10 slides, no more than 20 minutes and 30 point size, or half the average age. So if you've got a bunch of 80 year olds, it should be 40 point size. But Guy Kawasaki is 1020, 30. It's about having fewer slides, few words on the slide. And if you can keep those words to an absolute minimum, right? Then you're, you're you're not encouraging people to go and read they're listening to you. But if you have words on the slide, which happens, if you're reading them, you're reading them. With about 120 words a minute, people are reading them at double that, 240 so they've already read all of it by the time you got halfway through. So you should be, if you've got information that you are reading, then your voice over what you're saying should be extra bonus content, supporting that. And it can be very boring, right? My friend, people turning around, you see the back of their head, you know what's what are your thoughts on that

Kiran Gill 11:01

Well, on digital presentations, what tends to happen is that you might have an in camera kind of zoom thing, where you've got the main screen in front, and you'll see the person's eyes suddenly shoot to the other side, and they'll start reading. Now, most people at that level in management tend to be able to read, so all you're doing is pretty much just wasting time or hiding behind the slide. The other thing to remember is, don't worry if you feel that the slide that you have in your presentation doesn't have enough detail on because potentially what happens is you feel that you need to pack more detail on the slide, because the slide there is what's transferring all the knowledge to the person. No, the knowledge is you. The slide there is there to support it doesn't mean that that slide with lots of words on it can't be put in as the slide that you sent to the client to then help illustrate what you were trying to get across in that moment of the presentation. But however, in the presentation itself, you could have a very slimmed down version of what you're trying to do, because you want the emphasis to be on you and the connection with the human that you're talking to, not the connection with the slide that you put. And then what you can do afterwards, in your follow up, you can put that more detailed slide into there, and that way they'll have something to jog their memory and say, Ah, yeah, that's why they had that picture of that raccoon then, and that made total sense. So, yeah, so

Alastair Cole 12:32

and the takeaways after the follow up were covered. But they are two different things. What you send later doesn't have to be exactly the same. Thought then about connecting, you know, with the audience. And that's our fourth point, which is you've got to engage and interact, right? If you start out just talking and you don't get an early response from the audience, you don't get somebody asking a question that it's very easy for it to just turn into kind of a one way delivery, and people will get bored if they're not involved. So our recommendation would be to try and elicit a response, try and catalyse some kind of engagement and interaction as early as possible. You know, if you can get buyers commenting and involved early on, then that sets the tone for them being involved for the rest of the presentation. And there are different ways to do it. A lot of people talk about Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic engagement. Some people are visual. They want to hear words like you know about painting a picture. Can you see this? Their visual words, others respond to auditory. You know, do you hear me? You hear what I'm saying? And others still are kinesthetic. It's about feelings. You know, do you know? Does that make sense? Does that feel right? So choosing a variety of language that speaks to people you know, visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning slants is a good way to cover all the bases as well and truly interact with people. Any watch outs from you, Kiran, in terms of making it a two way conversation,

Kiran Gill 14:15

the major thing here to remember is try to use the people's names that are in the presentation, the people that you're trying to point out, you know Chris the CTO, you know Sandy the CFO, you know, and if there are things within that presentation when, as you've been doing your prep work for that meeting, and you want to now present to that stakeholder team that you understood exactly What they've been saying to you, and you understand all the things that have been coming out in all those meetings you've done prior. And now you're presenting. The major thing here now is what you can do, is you can actually say, look, James, I heard what you said. This is what I'm, I'm, you know, this is what my presentation is. And don't be, don't be afraid to actually, please read. Remember whether they prefer to be called by their first name, or whether they want to be called by their, you know, be more formal.

Alastair Cole 15:06

Yeah, sure. So that engagement is absolutely critical. Our fifth point is about telling a compelling story. And you've already talked about, you know, Hollywood, and that is such an, you know, trying to tell those grand stories that are both memorable but interesting and fun. We know that not everybody's going to be able to come up with a Toy Story, Disney, um, kind of story of excellence every time, but certainly, there are techniques that we can use. What? What? Would you recommend tech startup founders in terms of a technique here? And

Kiran Gill 15:44

technique wise, my go to technique is the hero's journey. What if a gentleman forgot his name? Her name was Campbell in the sense from the 1940s. I think it was James Campbell, actually. And what you had there was where he created an actual graph of how stories were told, and how people understand stories, and why humans tell stories. And pretty much that same foundation can be used for our sales decks. Again, our information is going to be different compared to a Hollywood blockbuster, but we're going to use the same premise where you're going to have a challenge, you're going to have a solution, and you're going to have a benefit. And that's the same thing that happens to somebody in their journey in a movie. Now you think about the character, you know, this character tends to be the hero. That hero has a challenge, that they go off on a journey, on the way there, they find something that's going to help them. And as you can if you're listening to and you're thinking, Oh my God, that's every single film I've ever watched. Don't know whether, whether that's Star Wars, matrix, Lion King, you name it, they've all used the same formula. And by the end of it, you know, they all get to the point where they achieve something amazing, and the hero is changed. And the hero there, pretty much for us in sales, is our customer. You know, we want them to make this trip. We want them to know that when we hear their challenge, we know that they come from this desert planet that's been marauded by aliens. And now we're going to give them the plans to the Death Star that's going to help them overcome this. And by the end of it, they're going to make all the sales in the world, and we'll be able to, you know, help them on their way.

Alastair Cole 17:25

Yeah, fantastic. And you might have heard of the hero's journey before, but it's a good place to go when you've got your kind of presentation, story, art, mapped out. Go check in again. Maybe you've missed something, you know, structure your presentation along that, you know, it's kind of three acts as a beginning, a middle and an end, right? So go look up the hero journey again. Before your next presentation, you might get a few extra nuggets. Uh, thank you, mate. Talking about the Death Star brings us very nicely onto our sixth point, which is about staying focused on outcomes. Right? Outcomes are so important, and because that's what you're going to deliver, your solution, your product, your service, is going to create a better outcome for the buyer, or buyers. And so staying focused on those outcomes is critical. It might be that there are blockers in the meeting coming in. It might be there are other questions trying to derail, or other points of view trying to derail the presentation. Keep coming back to outcomes. You've got to stay on, on target, stay on task with, firing those pro photon torpedoes into their star. Block out the other things . Just keep coming back to the positive outcome that is going to be delivered by you and your offering. Great segue. Lots of star wars going on. Let's continue to the seventh point of our 13, which is about leveraging data and evidence. On screen here, you can see an example of our 360 score, where we've scored a tech startup in our seven areas and they've got 42.1 numbers are numbers can be incredibly powerful, certainly by adding a detail, in this case, a kind of decimal point that's adding, you know, more data, more evidence, more believability and authentic, authenticity to to those numbers. And at the same time, it's important to have testimonials that work. How powerful are words and testimonials? Kiran

Kiran Gill 19:41

and again, you don't need to show this as a slide. You can do this as a video. It's easy to tuck away testimonials just to verify others. And obviously the audience loves to hear that other people in the same situation have had amazing outcomes doing the same thing with your solution. So please. It always puts testimonials into your presentation, the more the better, and make sure that they actually are tailored to the people that you're speaking to. So if you've got a testimonial from a CFO and you have a CFO that you're speaking to, that's the one you should be using,

Alastair Cole 20:19

which is why we've pulled out a testimonial quote from Justin Lyon, CEO of an AI powered simulation company. Absolutely our kind of ideal customer profile and the kinds of people that we help. And that's why we shot it, right? Let's roll for nine minutes. Number eight is about, you know, not overloading with information. You know, it's really easy, as we showed in the last point, that it's really important to bring in data and information to back it up, back up with evidence. And you can overwhelm buyers. I think a recent Gartner report suggested that 43% would be the drop in quota attainment When sellers are overwhelmed by information and technology. So keeping that information to a minimum is also important. I mean, the countless times I've both been overwhelmed by information given that have been presented to me, and I've fallen foul and probably shown too much. What are your tips to keep it at the right level?

Kiran Gill 21:35

Think about, think about trying to finish your presentation five minutes before you should finish it, and that will help you tailor, try to do some prep beforehand so you have some running time. Obviously, there might be things that like technology or something might go wrong, so give yourself a bit of a breather. And also remember the other point that I made before, if you have got something that's very detailed, that doesn't stop you sending that information afterwards. It doesn't mean you have to go through it there. And if the customer wants you to go into that, into more detail, that's fine. That's them. For them, giving you the green light to say you can have those slides in the background and bring them up. If someone says, Actually, can we go into that a little bit more there? Because that was really interesting. Do the homework. Have it there if they don't want to have it, but make it punchy. Keep everything moving as quickly as you can, but at the same time, make it understandable.

Alastair Cole 22:29

Yeah, yeah, great, great, great point. You know, removing stuff, you know, you think you want to pack so much in, but actually less is more. And continuing on the kind of overload of information number nine is about not using jargon, right? There's a load of abbreviations here and acronyms . And on the right hand side, kind of some of Gen Z's most recent terms that are annoying or have been described as annoying in the World Economic Forum's report recently, all of these things right? Are jargon. They're difficult to get through. People might not know what those abbreviations and acronyms mean, so just keep them out. Keep it plain spoken, and things are a lot easier to understand for everybody. I think that's especially true in today's kind of modern global workforce, where things like sarcasm aren't always understood by everybody in different languages, and so trying to make it as simple as possible in your language means that other nationalities or other mother tongues would be able to understand it. Number 10, we're talking about bringing too much information. And one of the things that people often do is just going too fast, talking too quickly, trying to pack too much in, instead of slowing down and taking it easy. What can we do? Kiran, to kind of force ourselves, or help ourselves to be to slow down,

Kiran Gill 24:06

really be conscious about the speed that you speak at, because the chances are you're speaking quicker than you think. And it's quite easy to have the adrenaline push at the start of a presentation where you feel like you need to get everything done very quickly. The best thing to do is take a breather every so often through the actual presentation and just modulate your your kind of voice and to keep it easy and you understand, but keep an eye on the timer, because it's quite easy to go a little bit slow, and I've seen disasters where we've had somebody overly relaxed who is really taking their time over doing things. So it's about understanding where you are and what you need to do. But also remember, like Alastair just said, what is a great tip is, if you've got an international set of people that are listening to your presentation or. Where English potentially is where, you know, I tend to work in and I've done 1000s of presentations where English isn't their first language, maybe not even their second language. It doesn't mean that they can't converse and do business in that language. It just means that you need to be mindful of the level of English that you have if you're a native speaker and that goes in any language. Just, just, just be mindful of the people you're speaking to and and, you know, keep the speed to a point where everybody understands it.

Alastair Cole 25:28

And part of being slow is being prepared, right? And something that we all need to be prepared for when we're presenting is, is objections. Right? Objections come up all the time, and our recommendation is to address them immediately. If somebody brings it up, brings up a challenge, you know, speak to it immediately. If you can answer it and deal with it there and then. Fantastic. If you can't, you can tell them, I will come back to you after this presentation with the necessary information. That's absolutely fine. In fact, that's fantastic, because what that audience member has done is, effectively, you know, empowered you to do a more detailed follow up and connect with them on email or some other way afterwards. So address those, put those fires out as they come up and that could just be saving it for later. So now, getting towards the end of our 13 tips, number 12 is to make sure that you've got an absolutely crystal clear call to action, really powerful at the end. It doesn't just have to be at the end, does it? Kiran,

Kiran Gill 26:35

nope. You can have other calls to actions as you go along. The major thing is, think about what your presentation is trying to do. What do you want the customer to do in the end? Is it to purchase your product? Is it to continue a conversation? Is it to start a proof of concept? What is the purpose of presenting? So whatever it is, there has to be a call to action, and you have to be able to make that as easy as possible for the client to follow up or do that thing that you expect them to do. So finish your presentation with a thank you slide. No, that is not the way to go, because that's not the call to action that you want the client to have. You want the client to do something. So don't I always see the end slide as your, that's your Malibu Beach Real Estate. Don't waste it on a thank you slide. Do something amazing with it.

Alastair Cole 27:27

Yeah, totally. It should be the one takeaway, the one thing they should do, the next step, which bleeds quite nicely into the final, the 13th point, which is about following up with intent, right? The presentation is not over when the meetings are finished. You have an opportunity, you've engineered an opportunity, to follow up with intent, and that that is both, you know, with a maybe a slightly different set of slides or slightly different information, that can be much fuller now that it's going to be read rather than presented, but also it's reiterating your call to action. And it's a fantastic opportunity to keep the ball moving, the ball rolling. You could argue that, you know, that's what it's all about. The whole presentation has been about sharing the journey, sharing the message, sharing the call to action. Then you have an opportunity outside of the meeting to move things forward, and hopefully, hopefully they have moved forward by the end of the session. So there are 13 do's and don'ts for a killer presentation that is, as we said at the start, the culmination of all of the sales efforts, all 618 sales actions that you're doing month on month that all rolls up into getting this opportunity. And one of the ways that we work with our clients is to measure that 618, how well they're doing. We use our 360 sales diagnostic for that, and what, what's, what is, what's behind that? 360 sales diagnostic. Current,

Kiran Gill 29:01

We have 7 categories that are split into 52 different parts. And what we do there is assess different parts of your sales process just to see what level of kind of maturity you have and where you are in your journey of making your business, as you know, as successful as possible. And what we'll do there, after taking that benchmark, is build you a report that is tailored to your company, that then also gives you recommendations and a revenue roadmap on how to increase your business in the next well, anywhere between three to six months, depending on what you're trying to achieve. And we'll then bring out this great, this kind of platform for you, where you'll be able to judge what you're doing, what needs to be done, and all your next moves.

Alastair Cole 29:51

Fantastic. Thank you. And if you're interested, you can head to TheUpliftPartnership.com/360. Ok it's 1231, all that’s left for me to do is talk about our next show. We're very excited to start thinking about the next calendar year. In three weeks time, we're going to be presenting our five pillars, our five sales foundations for 2025 there's five that have emerged for us in the last few months that are going to be absolutely critical for sales teams at tech startups next year and three weeks today, on September the third, Tuesday, September the third, we will be live here on LinkedIn again for five sales foundations for 2025 so come and join us and hear what we think the crucial pillars are for sales in tech startups next year. Fantastic. Thanks for your time. Any final thoughts? Kiran on presentations,

Kiran Gill 30:51

yeah, the major thing I would turn around to say to everybody, think about your customer. Think about the 13 things that we've spoken about today, and tailor your presentations to the people you're speaking to. It's horrible to see a generic presentation being dragged out to every single client, and especially when you're selling something that can be tailored. So, you know, don't be afraid to tailor that. But at the same time, think about the, you know, the things that we've spoken about today. Awesome.

Alastair Cole 31:19

Thanks very much for your time. Thanks for watching, listening, everybody until next time.