Letters To RainToday: Jeff Thull: The Presentation Trap

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Article	The Presentation Trap: Why Making Presentations Can Cost You The Sale
Author	Jeff Thull
My Thoughts	Spot on Jeff. Thank you for a valuable reminder. My mentor in my early days of consulting was the best salesman I have seen. He would happily walk into a sales meeting with no presentation and list and talk - in that order. "If you must write a presentation for a sales meeting, talk all about the client's situation and mention your own background and cv in passing", he advised. Helping crystalize the problem and talk about ideas - without solving the problem - has proven to be the only way to sell work for me. I underestimated this approach until one day after being the last to present for a competitive proposal, I received this response. "Thank you so much," said the lead Executive. "We've had 8 firms through here today and you are the only people who talked about our problem. I disagree with some of your views but I am really looking forward to debating them with you during the project. It's going to be fun." Several years later I found myself invited to propose for work in competition with two international consulting firms. "Wow those guys can really roll out a ton of examples of where they have done this before and how to think about it," said my client contact. "But they didn't seem to understand us or how the problem feels to us." I write sales presentations, 12 pages about the problem in the client's context, 3 pages about me and the experts I've recruited to assist, 1 page about fees and a cover page. So the only disagreement I have with Jeff is this. Write about the client and their problem. Spend time polishing your understanding of the situation. Think about how to demonstrate relevance in their context. If it goes well, you've just run the first workshop of the project and crystallized the problem. Thanks Jeff.
My Name	John Lees
My Title & Firm Name	Hotham Associates