Rule #23 Point of the Slide

As The Challenger Sale points out, we must teach in order to continue as successful salespeople. To teach well, we need to acknowledge that sales aids work. Then we need to use them! (Confess your selling sins now and get more out of this chapter!) 

Visually stimulating pictures and videos are more powerful than your oratory alone, no matter how great your point is. The iPad and other technologies have transformed our ability to deliver messages and support them visually. If you haven’t embraced visual aids yet, prepare to get left behind and go hungry. Not only do visual aids stimulate the minds of customers but you are also perceived as being more sophisticated and credible. PowerPoint or Keynote slide decks are particularly useful when built well—and damaging when poorly executed. Most of us, however, don’t create the slides that are approved for use with customers. In the modern era, marketing teams and regulators approve claims and materials for use with customers. 

Simply stated, someone else authored the slides we have to use. And that person created each slide to make a point. So what is the point of the slide? Can you articulate it in one sentence or less? Yes, one sentence or less! You need to make your thought process extremely concise. Then work to make your verbiage tight and precise, choosing the best words to convey the message efficiently. 

In a very real sense, you are getting paid not by the hour but by the word. And the fewer words you use, the more valuable they are. 

I love everything I have ever read or known about George Washington. But I think if I had met him at a party, I would have had a hard time not finding him amusing, more so because he wasn’t trying. For your reading pleasure—and to make my point—try a few of these gems from his Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rules_of_Civility_and_Decent_Behaviour_in_Com pany_and_Conversation

90 | J ASON E LMORE

1st Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present. …

17th Be no flatterer; neither play with any that delights not to be played withal. …

35th Let your discourse with men of business be short and comprehensive. …

44th When a man does all he can though it succeeds not well blame not him that did it. …

50th Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement

of any. …

61th Utter not base an frivolous things among grave and learn’d men, nor very difficult questions or subjects, among the ignorant or things hard to be believed, stuff not your discourse with sentences amongst your betters nor equals.

Now that’s a classic quote! “Stuff not your discourse with sentences …” I think George must have been a great communicator in word and deed— but surely in very few words.

As I mentioned earlier, your job is to talk to people. You better become a terrific communicator who chooses your words carefully. Constantly look for the best way to say everything. A long argument is not necessarily a winning argument. Be concise, pithy, and brilliant because of the contrast you create for yourself in comparison to the long-winded blowhard who couldn’t find a way to say it well. Also, try to make it sing, and try to make it memorable. If you were not a marketing major in college, buy a book and learn what marketing professionals know: Words matter, and there are some messages that are simply more memorable because of the way they sound. I am not referring to sloganeering as much as I am encouraging you to understand that “brevity is the soul of wit,” and choosing your words carefully is your job. 

I get to teach sales messages to people all the time. I have to search for ways to help them connect dots and remember key points. The way I phrase things helps them remember. Do the same for your customers. Filler words, stammering, beating around the bush, ten sentences to

E LITE E XECUTION | 91

express what could be said in three sentences, sloppy grammar, unprofessional vocabulary, limited vocabulary that prevents you from using a more accurate word to convey the message, etc. are all just the result of laziness, which is egregious and painful for your listeners. 

Furthermore, the absolute kiss of death is reading PowerPoint slides. Talk about useless words falling out of your mouth! If you have been guilty,

repent! My personal rule is to try to spend ten seconds or less on a slide. Ten seconds per slide, and customers will listen attentively to 1,000 slides. One minute or more, and you tend to lose the audience after four slides. Hollywood editing for TV and movies has programmed people to expect a cut to the next camera angle every three to six seconds. I am not advocating that. I admire the debaters and audience of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which lasted three to five hours. The first gentlemen began with a one-hour opening statement followed by a one-hour rebuttal! But in this instance, we must go with the flow of entertainment’s brain, moving quickly and not losing our audience.

Whiteboarding is no different. Yes, it is a different medium with an interesting dynamic. But you still need to stick and move and draw that next thing to complete that next idea just as fast. Steve Jobs said, “People who know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint slides.” But he used them in his presentations … kinda. He got on stage and introduced new products with images that helped him guide the thinking of his listeners and reinforce his point. So the best sales aids will always favor imagery over words. You may have to use what you are given. If possible, point to the images or key words on screen as you present.

In an effort to encourage people to be more effective and actually utilize PowerPoint and or Keynote while being much more concise, I recommend an exercise I developed call the “point of the slide” (POS). When I first got involved with sales training as a rep years ago and was tasked with introducing slide decks to the teams, a very strange thing happened. The class would get out their cell phones and videotape me presenting the slide deck. They really liked the verbiage I used and the energy I demonstrated. But this proved to be very ineffective and, at times, completely discouraging to the audience, as the challenge to succeed, in their estimation, became rote memorization and exact replication. Attendees were diverse and had very different delivery styles and ways of speaking. 

Today I teach use of new sales aids differently. Usually, I make three separate presentations of the sales aid. 

92 | J ASON E LMORE

? First, I go through the slide deck, declaring the one point of each slide in one sentence or less. I also use my laser pointer to point to an image or key word or phrase on the slide that I want my listeners to use to remember the point of the slide. I cover the whole slide deck in less than three minutes and then point out how little time it took. 

? Second, I go through the slide deck again with a little more commentary than just the point—again in under three minutes. I select a member of the class to stand up and declare just the point of each slide as I remotely advance the slides as quickly as the student makes the points—again, in less than three minutes. To everyone’s delight and amazement, the new hire, who has only seen the slides twice, successfully states the point of each slide. 

? Third, the class partners up to take turns delivering just the point of the slides to each other one time, in less than three minutes, to reinforce the memorization. We emphasize articulation of the key point without too much embellishment. But in this manner, the new hire is free to say it in their own verbiage in their own style.

That is the key to the success of the POS exercise: Everyone is saying the message their own way, but everyone is on message, making the same point. In this manner, an organization can gain message mastery, message consistency, and sales discipline!

In the following training days, we revisit the 1:1 exercise with partners in order to practice and ingrain the messages. But the short, sweet exercise at the beginning is enough for students to absorb and digest the overarching ideas, get them through role-plays, and take the first steps to mastering the presentation. It also forces them to be concise and to beat the clock, so to speak! But most importantly, it builds confidence in new hires!

Used in this fashion, PowerPoint presentations consisting of from six to thirty slides suddenly become sales tools that can be used any time a customer has from two to four minutes. And it’s very easy to ask for and get two to four minutes of a customer’s time. If they ask us to go back to a particular slide, we have achieved attention-getting buy-in! But regardless, it is very rare that a well-done two-to-four-minute presentation doesn’t encourage the customer to initiate a productive conversation that lasts more than two to four minutes.

E LITE E XECUTION | 93

Try it. Take any slide deck, and in the notes section at the bottom of the slide (or on a separate piece of paper), write out the point of the slide in one sentence or less. Where a slide legitimately makes more than one point that must be articulated, very concisely summarize those points as bullet points, not sentences. And limit those points to three or less—even if it means completely skipping over other points. You must prioritize. In the classroom and in the field, I have seen a remarkable transformation. Our organization has produced slide decks for years. Most of them were rarely used. What we discovered is that our sales force had concluded long ago that PowerPoint slide decks were only appropriate at sit-down appointments of thirty to sixty minutes and not appropriate for shorter interactions with customers. That has changed. Now our people are using slide decks effectively, consistently, and constantly.

I need to now point out a dynamic about presentations that are delivered in only a few minutes: If I tell a customer I have important information that will only take two minutes to present, they will typically refrain from asking questions and permit the presentation to flow to its conclusion without interruption. That is important. You want the questions! But a good presentation pre-handles objections while generating interest and excitement, which generates different and better questions. “Better?” you ask. Yes. Premature questions are not as good, not as in-depth, and not as helpful as mature questions. And premature questions usually get answered on the next slide. When customers interrupt you, they interrupt a stream of logic that leads to questions based on incomplete thoughts. Better questions and discussions flow from complete thoughts following a complete presentation. To capitalize on these truths, the presentation has be short—three to four minutes at most.

I can remember the days of handouts and leave-behinds before computers and iPads. I remember how excited I was when I started to see PowerPoint slides that could be used with customers. Videos of products and applications or videos of debates among thought leaders were even better! Then the iPad came along and made visual aids so portable and quick to fire up. There will be something else in the future. Holograms, maybe? 

Active participation is great, too, if it can be inserted. Insert interactive surveys that require responses from your customers to provide real-time feedback. Demonstrating how the customers rank against their peers in regard to their answers to those particular questions is an exciting new way to use presentations. For example, instead of asking your customer what they

94 | J ASON E LMORE

think about a point you just made, have them complete a multiple-choice question and then automatically tabulate the answers to the same question. Once they select their response, a graph should pop up, showing them the percentage of responses to the four choices—and demonstrating to them that they are in or out of the mainstream in comparison to others who have answered that same question. It is very interactive and helpful for engaging the audience. How interactive can you make your sales presentations? Elite execution demands that you master sales aids and make them interactive for your customers.