I make presentations for a living and I have worked on sales presentations of lots of companies; from a technology startup to a large media house. Here are my thoughts on how to go about creating a compelling sales presentation which gets you the next meeting with the client. Never start your sales presentation with ‘About Us’. Most sales presentations focus too much on the seller and not enough on the prospect. Start with a ‘consumer story’ or 'name a big change in your prospect's industry’ or start with a problem which affects your prospect and then share how you are going to solve it. You face various challenges while delivering a sales presentation. Prepare well to overcome these four specific challenges. You will not have 100% attention of your prospect throughout the meeting. You have to earn the interest by talking something they care about. Make your sales presentation interesting, insightful, and useful. Your client will not understand everything you...

The year was 1999. I was an avid viewer of election results as a teenager. The constantly changing numbers, which candidate is leading where and who won which constituency excited me a lot. The counting of votes used to start by 8 AM. I was already glued to TV even before the counting started. There was a panel discussion. These experts and the news anchor were discussing EXIT POLLS which were announced a day before. The representative of the political party, which was predicted to lose as per exit polls, was also present. He was arguing that exit polls are based on small samples and are incorrect. In the panel was one psephologist (an expert who analyses elections). His name was Yogendra Yadav. He was convinced that sampling works and the exit polls, though not 100% accurate, needed to be taken seriously. Instead of arguing in abstract terms, he offered an example which silenced the political candidate completely. Mr. Yadav asked the candidate,  "Have you ever cooke...