Present with Purpose

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the four elements of delivering a balanced message.
Define the presentation formula.
Describe the presentation formula process.

Create Balance and Achieve Success

Let’s prepare for an upcoming customer presentation. Consider including the following elements to create a balanced message to present your customers.

Element	What It Is	Examples
Perspective	The customer’s objectives, pain points, and needs	Review discovery findings Reference key customer initiatives Review the customer’s current state
Benefits	The value the solution brings the customer	Increase revenue through cross-sell and up-sell Reduce costs through decreased customer service average handle times (AHT) Mitigate risk through increased compliance
Features	The features and capabilities that differentiate the solution	Product features and capabilities Customer service and support Product add-ons and extensions
Evidence	Proof that justifies the customer’s decision	Customer success stories Solution demos Analyst reports Validated facts and figures

Use your customer research and discovery to inform which elements you cover in-depth in your presentation. Create balance by limiting the number of features and capabilities to the ones that best solve the customer's business challenges.

Introducing the Presentation Formula

Now that you’ve identified your presentation’s focus, consider using the following presentation formula to achieve balance and include the right topics that drive customer responses.

The presentation formula has three parts.

Launch: Make a memorable impact and convince your customer to continue listening.
Key messages: The 1–3 topics that are most relevant to your customer; they form the body of your presentation and support the overall theme of your launch.
Call to action: Summarize the value points of your key messages—what you want your customer to remember—and discuss next steps.

Part One: Launch

If you want your launch to take off like a rocket, capture your audience’s attention quickly or risk losing them for good. To do this, prepare a grabber to get the audience thinking and engaged immediately. Grabbers are sometimes referred to as limbic techniques, as they tend to evoke emotion in the brain’s limbic system, which helps in capturing and maintaining attention. Use a grabber to introduce customers to the presentation topic and apply it to their world.

Here are some example grabbers.

Grabber	How to Use It	Example
Big Value Claim	Present a big number or a large premise.	$50 million cost reduction
Numbers Game	Display numbers on a board and ask your audience if they know how the numbers relate to their business.	32 (percent increase in customer satisfaction)
Prop	Use an object to tell a story or present an analogy that relates to your customer’s opportunities.	Show the value of yesterday's newspaper vs. tomorrow's newspaper as it relates to the power of analytics
Story	Tell a story that helps your customer know that others faced similar problems and were successful with your product.	Personal experiences Customer success stories Customer quotes Customer videos
T-Chart	Compare numbers, like KPIs (key performance indicator) to show positives and negatives that are important to your customer.	Current state vs. future state Your product vs. competitor Current KPI vs. future KPI

Let’s say you plan to use the Numbers Game grabber with the following examples.

5: The current average wait-time in minutes over industry averages at a customer's call center
8: The number of minutes you expects your solution to shave off that long wait-time
25: The $25 million worth of customer savings

Use these numbers to set the stage and get the audience interested and engaged.

Now that you have a grabber,put together your launch. Consider using a customer story as evidence to detail the similarities between a current customer and this prospective one. Then show the potential benefits this new customer can look forward to.

Next, plan ways to credential, or qualify, yourself as someone with industry experience solving similar customer issues.

Before closing the launch, list three specific agenda topics that are most important to achieve business goals or solve business challenges. You want the customer to exceed industry averages. Plan the following agenda items to present.

Demonstrate how to reduce call center wait time by 8 minutes.
Present the ROI analysis to show how $25 million in savings is generated.
Review the implementation plan to beat your go-live goals.

Part Two: Key Messages

In the body of your presentation, deliver the key messages based on what’s most relevant and of greatest value to the customer.

For each key message, plan a grabber, at least one benefit, and a piece of evidence for each of your customer-focused agenda items. Do these steps look familiar? They should, because you also saw them in the launch step. Remember, the key messages tie back to meet the goals outlined for the meeting. And each key message incorporates the four balanced elements of perspective, benefits, features, and evidence.

Let’s take a look at an example of how you might incorporate a grabber along with the elements of a balanced message for your first agenda item. Begin with a customer story to show how a previous customer faced similar challenges at their call center, and how your product trimmed that customer’s average call times by 15 percent. As a benefit, describe how you expect to produce similar results for this customer through unified dashboards, predictive case routing, and knowledge articles. Finally, demo those areas to illustrate our capabilities and provide evidence.

Part Three: The Call to Action

Lastly, make the closing call to action by summarizing value points from the presentation and why they matter to the customer.

For next steps, you recommend scheduling a customer reference call and bringing in a team to do an ROI analysis. Also consider asking the customer to suggest their own possible next steps. It’s important that you both leave in agreement of who owns each step and the due dates for each.

That’s it! Remember to use the four elements of a balanced message and the presentation formula when planning your next presentation or demo. They’re key in delivering a story that resonates with your audience.

Now that you’ve learned from the pros, it’s time to get out there and put these tips into practice. Happy presenting!

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