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O P I N I O N
Power pointless You might think about ditching the fancy slideshow in favor of something much more engaging and authentic – the story of your firm and its people!
W e’ve all been there; the highly anticipated meeting with an exciting new client. You’re armed with an exhaustively prepared presentation, complete with myriad PowerPoint slides that are guaranteed to impress everyone in the room. The presentation starts, and the nightmare begins.
Aaron Tippie GUEST SPEAKER
The audience is different than you prepared for. Your slides aren’t geared to their interests or needs. Why’s it so hot in this room? You’re losing their attention and the energy is draining from the room. People are checking emails. Crap! Despite the sinking feeling in your gut, you feel chained to the slides. The only option is to speed through them as quickly as possible, ultimately devaluing and discrediting all the information along the way. That was awful! The effort spent to perfectly craft each bullet point, crop pictures, and position graphics is now just a steaming pile you want to forget. Can I get an early flight home? Whether you’ve lived this scenario, witnessed a colleague struggle through it, or been audience to an epic crash and burn, the lesson to be learned is the same: People enjoy and respond to conversations and stories, not lectures. When
it comes to interactions with clients, the most value we can get from that engagement, especially early in the relationship, is to collect information from the client. It’s nearly impossible to collect information if the mission of that first meeting is to get through an hour of your company’s “commercial.” For information gathering to occur there needs to be a conversation; a two-way exchange of information. That’s when you get to be a great “People enjoy and respond to conversations and stories, not lectures.”
See AARON TIPPIE, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER October 23, 2017, ISSUE 1221
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