8/19/2024-“Ready to see my 34 slides?”

The book At My Pace by Jill Ebstein reports the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds today. You need to master the art of conversation, not pitching.

"Thanks for your attention through my obnoxiously and atrociously long presentation…any questions?"

The fictional buyer responds, "Yeah, I have one…who taught you it’s okay to run through that many slides without breathing?"

(Namaste.)

Whether you’re presenting slides, a demo, or yourself, your preso needs to be tight because you’re competing with the buyers’ phone.

One data source claims an individual checks their phone 1500 times a week, so obviously, you’re up against them checking the weather or stock quote.

Prepare for your next customer conversation by focusing on you and the pitch in these ways:

1. You. Do you present yourself confidently and engagingly? Are you knowledgeable yet humble at the same time? Are your answers brief and clear? (They’re buying you as much as your offering.)

2. The pitch. Don’t shove all 36 slides in your deck down your buyer’s throat. Pick the best two or three and leave the rest of your meeting time for needs analysis and why your offering is differentiated.

Let the customer feel like they own the conversation.

Eye contact. Voice modulation. Pausing. Energy. More eye contact. Strong intro. Pointing to slides on the screen, pointing to parts of a hand-out. Question solicitation. Listening. Snappy answers and a little back-and-forth.

And finally: "…yeah, that was great… thanks so much for your time."

That pretty much sums up the traditional stand and deliver routine, eh?

You can do it any day without thinking.

The problem is, that’s yesterday’s formula for a pitch meeting, and that routine isn’t satisfying to the customer these days.

Your customers have perfected the art of the "I’m listening stare" when they’re off in space. Your buyers have evolved, so now you have to. It is time to adjust how you run your meetings.

Integrate "conversation into your presentation to the tune of about a 90/10 ratio and you’ve arrived at something closer to what the customer wants.

Everything posted above still stands – eye contact, voice modulation, pausing, questions, listening – but now turn down the salesmanship and you stand a chance at being trusted and remembered.

But instead of obsessing over the color scheme on slide #26, you’ll want to spend time building your question menu* and working on your "tell me more about that" conversational skills.

As you know, presenting means a lot of different things to a seller. But the core of presenting is how you speak.

In this Ted Talk titled, "How to speak so that people want to listen," you will get inspired by sound and communication expert Julian Treasure.

This talk – viewed 40 million+ times – will inspire you to think strategically about how you speak and present to your customers in those meetings that took you great pains to secure!