The Art of selling Business Ideas

(My first port on this blog is about 3 months old now. It was what i called the 777 rule. This new post builds on the art of selling business ideas through presentations. Often and increasingly in the middle management, i find that there are situations when you have to sell an idea to seniors management or the network as a whole. This post details a few points on the "how to do it" in such situations. It would be unfair at this time to pay my gratitude to my boss, who apart from being a good boss and human being is also the source from which i maro-ed this pointers to good presentation.)

1. Every living being has a soul. It is the essence of life in itself. Likewise, it makes sense to have a theme in the presentation. It should be the either be the central idea, or the direction pointer or the general guideline of the presentation. In essence it is the USP of the presentation in some sense. You need to put this theme in the first introduction slide of the presentation. In pictures if you may like it, in abbreviations, or mnemonics or the initials... how you choose it for your audience is essentailly a test of how well you know your audience. This actually gets people hooked on... hardwired! You have the bull by its horns and you can now direct the flow....

2. The second slide could be a recap of events, if you have a story that way. By putting up a graphic representation of whats happened so far, (or where you are and how you fared), you have actually done the flashback and the memory. The best way of doing this is by putting up the activity/decision on a chronological scale. It actually sets the mind in the groove.

3. Thirdly, you could get into the Agenda and set the groundrules. More often then not, the only groundrule that matters is to hold back any/all questions that one may have, till the end of the presentation.

4. Get into your themes now. Unveil it, before your audience kisses you good bye and switch off. This is obviously under the presumption that you have chosen your theme with some thought and with an appeal.
Normally your theme is the most important part of your presentation and there would be a lot depending on the buy in of the themes. Be carefull as to not chose everything in themes. Not everything can be a theme. The theme is probably three top of the mind things, three most important point, three indicators.. idea is your theme cannot be many!

5. SWOT: One of the most effective tools of objectively evaluating the impact of things discussed/ tabled or being sold. Your audience does this all the time, in his mind. He is always evaluating and trading off between solutions and their impacts/costs. Sometimes, they forget adding the right way, add up your negatives a little more than it really is: You dont want that to happen to you. Letting your audience judge you from what they "feel" can be a critical error. Instead do the SWOT/ do the analysis for them. Be honest and if you got a bad idea, it may still sell given your efforts. If its a good idea.....

6. Lead your aaudience thru the agenda points. Revisit your agenda to show them how you are moving. So a indicator slide, showing what the agenda was and how much has been covered is a swell idea.

7. Support your heroes, your themes. Use experential quotes, use data, use pictures. Build the credibility of the themes. That was what you were after anyways thru this presentation. So show them sure and full data to back it up. Substantiate your claims, prove your point. It is best if these are presented from different angles, different perspectives, different levels, different situations and outcomes.The more you cover in terms of width of the solution, the better its acceptance. Some time, it might make sense to sell depth. Well then, please yourself.
Use score cards, researches, data and all your experience to push the point.

8. Challenges and Resources: If you have an idea, there would be risks as well. There would be challenges and you will need resources to strenghten the core proposition. Make's sense to list them all down and make any requests/demands basis these

9. What to expect? A cost benefit analysis, cash flow statement, comparative numbers with which one can benchmark is a bonus for your audience. If this is bit confusing with point number 7, i would show you thru a example:
Point 7 speaks about power,mileage, performance, style, interiors,design of a Car. Point no 9 is the one line agenda (any one of those point) --> Think of no.9 point as a summary to no.7.

10. Close the Presentation with a short status thing on your themes/solutions, how they are good/bad/better and what to expect in the summary.

.. and in doing all this, please stick to the 77 rule, 7 lines per page and 7 words per line...