Episode #72: How To Design Our Sales Talk

Designing our presentation well is critical. We have identified our target audience for our key messages. We have selected the title to really engage our audience. We know the purpose of the exercise - inform, persuade, entertain or motivate to action.

Designing the conclusion is always a good place to start. The conclusion is really the summary of the key message we want to get across. The actual content delivery of the concluding message may vary from what we design at the beginning, but it is still a very good discipline to force us to focus on the one central thing we want our audience to take away from our speech.

Having prioritized all of the various things we could say, down to the one most important thing, we can now work backward and think about how we get our audience to agree with our conclusion.

Too many points and our audience will have trouble following the thread of our argument. Too few points and the argument may not seem convincing for lack of depth and evidence. Usually three key points is easy for an audience to follow, but if the subject matter is complex or if you have been given a longer time to speak, then five may be needed.

Having derived the key points we are going to make, we go back and design two closes. One is for the very end of the speech. This is to tie the whole presentation together. We might review what we said or we might focus on a particular key point.

Having designed that close, we now design a second close to follow the Q & A session. We need this second close, so that we can keep the whole proceedings on track. We have no control over what people will raise at the end, by way of questions. It often happens that an audience member will take the discussion completely off topic with their question. If we just allow the event to finish at that point, we have lost control of the messaging. We need to wrap it up in a way that the audience have our key point ringing in their ears, as they leave the venue.

Finally we design the opening. This is a tricky one, because it is wrapped tightly together with our first impression with the audience. If we try a joke that is weak and falls flat, our initial impression is negative. If we start rambling, we lose our audience's attention. If we commence with something very mundane, we are going to have trouble breaking through the noise that is humming away between the ears of our audience. We need to break into their attention and capture them for the receipt of our key message.

These are the basics of planning. Before you even think about reaching for the mouse to start working on your slide deck, do the planning first. It will make the difference between success and catastrophe.