Presentation As Art
- Dan Greenberg
- Oct 22
- 4 min read
Sales presentations are like art in one very informative way. People have to be excited by them, emotionally. If your client is not interested in, and excited by your presentation, you will have lost the opportunity to be influential in that setting. Your buyer may learn a bit and take information back to the team, but the eventual decision will be made based on a myriad of outside influences, and none will be your presentation. If the client is emotionally interested in your presentation, then, and only then, will they start to look for intellectual justification for their excitement.
The same is true for art in the sense that if a potential buyer of art is not emotionally interested in a piece, they will not evaluate its worthiness for purchase.
All of the above is relevant because it means that when we are creating presentations and planning for their execution, we need to think about emotional connection and excitement rather than imparting information and expertise. Building presentations in this way is, in and of itself, an art form, and what comes out on the other side should be considered to be a work of art.
Bad sellers sell products, and good sellers sell solutions; but the best sellers sell outcomes and value. The question is, how do you illustrate an outcome or the value of something? It is abstract. A product is easily perceivable, and a solution is understandable. But, an outcome changes the state of being for the client and is therefore not perceivable given their understanding of their current situation.
Because of this, sales is one of the most creative of all professions. The only way to illustrate an outcome is through telling a story. Illustrate everything. Whether it is whiteboarding, videos, graphics, visual slides, or illustration through storytelling, we should not be talking to people, we should be showing them a new reality and helping them grasp it and understand it.
We should be telling a story in which the client is the protagonist. The story is one in which they can eventually achieve an outcome that is a fundamental shift in relation to their current reality. For that reason it has to be explained via a story where the beginning is the status quo, which has to be shown to be an issue that must be overcome. If a seller cannot show the need for a new reality which would lead to a new set of outcomes, then no matter how well the solutions are explained, it won’t matter because the need for a new reality is the only thing that would make the buyer feel a need for solutions to get them there.
One of the things that made Steve Jobs so incredibly effective as a presenter of information was the simplicity and illustrative nature of the slides he used. You rarely saw words on his slides, almost never saw sentences, and never saw pros or bullet points. In Carmine Gallo’s book, “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” he notes that, “New research into cognitive functioning — how the brain works — proves that bullet points are the least effective way to deliver important information. Neuroscientists are finding that what passes as a typical presentation is usually the worst way to engage your audience.” In other words, what most people put on slides does not work. It is not engaging and it does not paint a picture or tell a story that will show the client what a reality that they are currently not existing in could feel like.
Sales presentations really can be like art. Sure, it’s nerdy, somewhat boring, and definitely not culturally relevant art, but art, nonetheless. Buyers have to be emotionally engaged in the story, and then will find intellectual justification for their excitement and decisions. Jobs’ presentations explained the status quo with his voice as the narrative and his slides as the illustrations, in a similar way to how you would think about telling a story to a small child. He allowed the slides to simply illustrate and his words to complete a narrative from start to finish. He would explain and introduce, and then animate the problem, which was the status quo, as well as those trying to imprison the buyer in that status quo. Then he would talk about the vision of a future desired outcome, and what a different reality could look like for the currently imprisoned buyer. And then, he would resolve the matter by reassuring that buyer that the outcome is simple to conceive, and does not require heavy lifting on their part. Sounds a lot like the progression of a simple story. It starts with a problem which rises in tension and climaxes. We understand the outcome we want to get to and eventually the problem is solved and we see what the resolution looks like.
I’ll leave you with one other quote from Gallo’s book on Jobs’ presentation style, because it does a good job of illustrating the starting point and ending point of the story that every presenter is trying to tell. It comes directly from his interview with Jobs himself. Jobs says, “A leader carries a vivid image in his or her head of what a future could be. Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo.” He continues to explain, “As a leader, you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’ burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership.”
It is the job of a presenter, of you, as a seller, to bring the buyer along, and instill that same sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo so that you can show them what that future can look like.
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