The stories we tell in presentations matter.
Imagine telling a child about Fredy Krueger for a bedtime story. It wouldn’t end well. You’d probably end up with a kid who’s too scared to sleep!
That can happen to customers when you tell them the wrong kind of stories during demos. You might not scare them (at least, we hope not), but they’re going to be bored.
So, how do you get the technical aspects of your solution across without putting everyone to sleep? Ben Pearce, coach, trainer, and founder of Elevates You, broke it down for us in a webinar.
According to Ben, there are two practices you need to get your buyers as excited about your product as you are.
The AOREN Framework
AOREN stands for audience, objective, remembered, emotion, next steps
Audience
Who will you be talking to, and how can you provide them value? Think of it from their perspective and figure out their areas of interest. These people are taking time out of their day to listen to you, so you need to be certain your message focuses on the things they care about.
Objective
What do you and your audience want to accomplish with this meeting? These can be two different things. You may want to build a deeper relationship while they want to narrow down the list of vendors they have to choose from. Knowing the goals of the meeting will help you focus the topics you discuss this time and what you save for another day.
Remembered
What do you want them to remember? Now that you have your north star to guide you through the meeting, you can figure out what content you’ll actually share. Your audience won’t remember everything, so you should choose only the most important topics for that meeting. You can always send a follow-up email, including a related automated demo to help refresh their minds after or even answer commonly asked questions.
Emotion
What emotions can you address in this meeting? Buyers are humans, which means they come with their own unique and complex emotions. Even though they might be using logic to make the decision on which solution to choose, they’re still going to have to deal with the anxiety that comes from making a decision. You can overcome these negative emotions by making your message inspirational or reassuring.
Next Steps
What do you want your buyers to do next? Your buyers want help moving their way through the sales process but often don’t know what comes next. Tell them what you’d like them to do and provide them the tools to do it. Just like we use call-to-actions in everything, you should use one in your presentations.
The Split Brain Problem
We’re constantly doing too much at once.
Checking LinkedIn while in a meeting or watching a webinar while working on a report.
The same thing can happen in your presentations.
Slide decks with too much text can actually take attention away from your message. Buyers might start reading what’s on the slides and stop listening to what’s being said.
Complex diagrams are another culprit to watch out for. Diagrams should be easy to understand otherwise the audience is going to stop paying attention to you and start trying to figure out what the heck they’re looking at.
You want your visual aids to complement the points you’re trying to get across. They can still contain text or illustrations, but they should be kept to a minimum so the buyers focus on the things you want them to.
Upping your Influence
You want your presentations to be memorable but for the right reasons. If you tell inappropriate stories, your audience will end up confused or bored.
You need your audience to remember the things you’ve shared with them, and you do that through the stories you share with them. The stories you tell need to be audience-focused and not detract from your overall message.
