Go over the bar backwards
In front of a hushed crowd of 80,000 people he rocked back and forth at his starting position. He was searching for the moment when he knew he would clear the height. The fans at the 1968 Olympic Games didn’t know they were about to witness a new Olympic record. Not only that, but witness the complete revolution of a sport. Before his jumps in at the 1968 Olympics the world hadn’t heard of Dick Fosbury.
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City Dick Fosbury took the gold medal and set a new Olympic record for the high jump. He did it by going over the bar backwards. The crowd gasped because they had never seen anyone go over the bar backwards before. It seems that Dick just got tired of being ordinary and went out and pioneered a new way. He completely changed his style and his “Fosbury Flop” completely changed the sport of high jumping.
Changing your presentation style may feel like going over the bar backwards. It will be new and different. But using a new style will be impactful. Every high jump Olympic medalist since 1976 has gone over the bar backwards. Maybe it’s time you stepped out of the ordinary?
How do you win your presentation?
The goal is to create a sales presentation that is more interesting, more focused and memorable than your competitors. Interesting, focused, memorable presentations have the best chance of being persuasive. In selling a product or service your sales presentation must be more than informative. It needs to be persuasive and you can only be persuasive by design.
What are the roadblocks to winning?
Many sales people use presentation design concepts that date back to the 1940s and 50s. Presentations which used visuals were first done by the US military at the end of World War II. They used a new device called an overhead projector. The instructors projected instruction manual pages rather than writing them out on a blackboard. They found this method to be time saving and much less work than using a blackboard. The overhead projectors made things easier and more efficient for the instructor. But what about for their audience? What about for your prospective customer?