Show them, don't tell them.
When making a presentation, we make lots of arguments and points. We talk about falling sales, competitors becoming aggressive, changing market dynamics and about our innovations.
The problem - most of the time we only tell them, never show it to them.
In our heads, we know what we are talking and why. But what about our audience? They are only listening and sometimes they do not even believe it. Take an example from a discussion I had with a client recently.
Client: "We are an innovative company. We constantly do product innovation."
Vivek (that's me): "Every company claims that innovation is part of their DNA. This will mean nothing to your audience. It will not even get noticed. Can you share an example?"
Client: "We make websites. We talked to many consumers and realized that they needed XYZ and hardly anyone was offering that feature. We decided to do it and we increased our sales dramatically. They explained the whole story and I realized they indeed were an very innovative company."
The problem is - when you say you are innovative, the audience is not even noticing. Since everyone claims the same. From now on... Show them, don't tell them.
Instead of saying you are innovative, share a story when you actually introduced a new feature into the market. This will get noticed and will be remembered by your audience.
This is the same reason why we are asked to share stories, testimonials and case studies in our presentation.
Is this the uggly truth
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