Get Unstuck

Question

If you only had half the time to complete your presentation, where would you prioritize?

Insight

This should likely form the core of your solution, regardless of the amount of time. To further refine, revisit what you cataloged during the Relevancy phase. Based on the highest priority of relevance, how does that help to inform your choices?

Exercise

Close your laptops, put your mobile phones away and without using any of your visual assets, try telling your story. Talk through the open, product pitch and close.

Benefit

This technique is a great way to test your comfort, clarity, and understanding of your message. Verbalizing can help you see the forest for the trees, rather than focusing on minutiae within particular slides or materials. 1 2 3

Scenario

If you knew the customer was likely going to select your competitor and this was your last opportunity to share, what specifically would persuade them to select your solution?

Reminder

Remember that your customer may only know what you share with them. You may not be excited about a feature, but it could make a world of difference to them.

Question

If you could only show one visual to summarize your solution, what would it be?

Test

If you opened and ended your session with this visual, would you be able to effectively tell your story?

Benefit

People will forget details of even the best presentations, but this can help ensure that we leave our customers with the most important takeaways.

Scenario

After focusing your energy pulling together key materials to share within your session, it is not uncommon for it to feel flat and lack the engagement you envisioned.

Solution

Look at shifting segments of your delivery to swap your current talk track for an anecdote, trend or customer example that accomplishes the same goal. Hearing something shared from another perspective will help to add variety in the pace and focus of delivery.

Challenge

When you have been working closely on a project for a long time, it can become difficult to appreciate what it is like to consume your content for the first time. A set of fresh eyes can go a long way to identifying and resolving tricky portions of your session. 4 5 6 7 8

Alternative

If you are unable to get an outside perspective, try recording yourself and identify areas where your flow seems to lag during playback. It may make sense to break sections into smaller parts, combine or remove them altogether.

Benefit

Sometimes pen and paper or a whiteboard help to quickly identify where your session may not flow well or could be adjusted to better reinforce a key point.

Warning

Though tempting, working with a design tool on your laptop or tablet can create a feeling of quality or final product. This makes it difficult to see where it could be adjusted to create a better experience or outcome.

Insight

When we are stuck behind a keyboard it can be difficult to think of new ways to approach a problem. An automotive documentary highlighted how BMW's designers would often take field trips to museums and look at the lines of classical instruments to break away from their day-to-day automotive focus. 9 10 11

Reference

Chris Bangle, former Chief Designer at BMW gave a talk at Stanford entitled "Designing Difference in a World of Sameness". The same constraints easily apply to the world of technology and business. Looking at non-traditional materials for inspiration can help spark new thinking for our demonstrations.

Research

According to a Stanford University study, a person's creative output increased by an average of 60 percent when walking. 12

Benefit

Besides being good for our health, getting away from a keyboard and unplugging, it is amazing the insights that can become obvious to us.