The battle for your audience’s attention is fierce, so you must ensure you don’t bore your prospects. Storytelling is the key to interesting presentations. The good news is that you’re already a storyteller.
On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, David Hooker of Prezi explains how to keep your prospects interested and provide the information they need to make decisions.
8 seconds
Some suggest that our attention spans are only 8 seconds at best, but it simply isn’t true. Ever binge watch an entire season of a show in one sitting?
More accurately, there is more competition for our attention. The immediacy and availability of information gives us a subconscious desire to never be bored. People can check Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, or any other platform at will.
Storytelling prevents boredom during your presentations.
The truth is that your prospects know what you’re coming to tell them. They’ve looked you up. They’ve read about your product. They know 85 percent of what they need to know to make a decision.
The good news is that they’ve invited you in, which should be encouraging. The bad news is that you don’t know where the gaps in their knowledge are.
Conversations, not pitches
You’re selling a product your competitor sells. You might have a slight advantage at some point, but it likely won’t last long.
People buy things because of relationships. They’ll decide that “Vendor B was attentive, courteous, punctual. If something doesn’t work right, Vendor B will likely be there for me.”
Conversations help you built those relationships. Storytelling helps you keep your prospect engaged.
You can practice your storytelling skills every day when your family asks about your day. Talk about your day in a way that engages their attention.
Check their facial expressions:
- Are they engaged?
- Am I talking too much?
- What is their body language telling me?
The great thing about practicing on your family is that they’ll tend to be honest.
When it comes to sales, you’ll end up telling the same story again and again, so you can workshop it.
- If I add a detail does it get a laugh?
- Does this fact help my customer understand better?
Always work on developing your story so you don’t bore your prospect.
Visuals complement
If you ask your prospect to list the appliances in his kitchen, he won’t visualize a list of appliances written with bullet points in Comic Sans. He’ll visualize his kitchen in order to list them.
Prezi allows you to arrange your content in a way that makes sense. It allows you to navigate the way you need to.
If you have a prospect who only needs information about pricing, Prezi allows you to segment your content so that you can go straight to the content you need. Your prospect will appreciate that you skipped the information that wasn’t relevant to him.
Prezi requires a little bit more time than other presentation programs, but it will help you keep your audience engaged so you don’t bore your prospects.
Episode resources
You can connect with David on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Find Prezi at www.prezi.com, and get to know Prezi’s YouTube channel for tutorials that will help you make the most of Prezi.
Finally, check out The Narrative, a podcast dedicated to helping professionals craft better business stories.
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