By Asad Zaidi
Remember the last time the guy from the web development company came to do a presentation for you and showed you all those wonderful slides about:
-Company profile
-Products and services
-Pricing packages
-Reference customers
-After-sales support
and you had to suffer through his impassioned presentation wondering how many more Powerpoint slides you’d have to endure..?
But wait! What’s the problem? Isn’t this also the way you present? It seems after all a very logical sequence of topics. If he does not talk about his company and services, then what else is he expected to say?
Well, there is a problem. Although this information about the company, products and pricing packages are of interest, your primary concern is after-sales support. This is what you want to focus on because you have had quite a rough experience with the previous vendor’s service.
The presenter does not know this so he rattles off as usual with his standard script and sequence of topics… and loses your attention and interest.
Now suppose he used another approach. He first put up his standard agenda on the screen and asked “I hope to be able to present to you the topics I have listed above. But before I start, I wanted to ask if there are any areas of specific concern or priority…perhaps a topic from this list that you’d want me to focus on first? I am happy to start with that”.
Wow! Now you have an opportunity to express your issue upfront and ask him to elaborate on the level of support his company can provide. Satisfied with his answer, and glad that this guy has given you “ownership” of the presentation, you are probably much more likely to now take an interest in the other stuff – the range of products, the pricing, etc…
You leave the room with a warm glow, thinking why on earth doesn’t everyone present like that! Why indeed don’t YOU present using this approach? This is called a Boomerang presentation approach – send it there then get it back. OK, I admit I’ve just invented the term right this instant but it sounds real good so I am patenting this Boomerang approach. Even the title of this post will include a reference to this boomerang thing.
So the next time you go out to present, don’t dole out your agenda, work with the client’s agenda. Throw a boomerang! When you defer to the client’s agenda in this deliberate way, you gain respect, credibility and attention in a way that no amount of slick presentation techniques can hope to achieve. Comprende?
Good suggestion, Asad.
Ali Jafari
Or maybe The Potohar Principle and its application in Consumer Behavior
Thank you Nasir. This could be the beginning of a new management vocabulary or perhaps even a paradigm? First there was FAFI, now the Boomerang Presentation. Who knows, we might even get the MDi Syndrome..
This is excellent! A very simple approach, logical and indeed effective. I like how you refer this to a boomerang. What a good analogy 🙂