What the Oscars Can Teach You About Your Sales Presentation

I don’t watch the Academy Awards anymore. I love the movies. I love storytelling. And I love to watch what a group of creative people can put together. But the Academy doesn’t understand their medium or their audience.

The Hollywood insiders care about all of their technical awards, like best costume, best soundtrack, or best key grip on an animated short film featuring a mime. But the television audience finds those categories uninteresting, especially when there is more compelling television on—and especially since they withhold the big awards, saving them until late (when some of us are fast asleep, preparing to hit Monday morning running at full speed).

If your sales presentation starts with your locations, the amount of time you have been in business, and the logos of the companies you help, you are serving up content that is uninspiring, uninteresting, and unhelpful. Oh, you can have all those slides in your deck, but you put them in an appendix at the end of the deck and use them to answer questions or resolve concerns.

You lead with what’s hot. You don’t have three hours (and neither does the Academy). You spend your time on the most interesting, compelling, and inspiring content you’ve got. How do you make a difference? What do you different? Why have you made the choices you have made? Why is it so important that you are you, and how would the world be different without you in it?

If you’ve got everybody in the same room and you have their attention, don’t withhold, and don’t save up for a big finish. Give them a show. Start strong. Finish strong. And be compelling in between.

Questions

What do your dream clients really want to see?

What questions do they have for which your answers are going to be off-the-charts compelling?

How do you start strong?

How do you end with a call to action that your dream clients can’t wait to sign onto?