How To Run Presentations That Will Glue Customers To Your Message

(4-min read)

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Running presentations is a key component of customer success.

You have two options:

  • deliver a stellar and engaging experience to build trust and credibility.
  • or ruin the opportunity with boring slides and content your customers won’t remember.

The choice is clear.

And yet most people fail to captivate their audience’s attention.

The reason is they don’t speak to the most representative person in the room.

They try targetting everyone instead, which ends up addressing no one.

Solution?

1/ Run your presentation as if you were telling a story

  • Set the scene on your first slide.
  • Give your audience a glimpse of the conclusion.

But do not give full details till the end.

Keep the tense high.

2/ Add research, data, or social proof to your arguments in support of your story.

3/ A big title for each transition of your story.

Now, let’s see what it looks like in practice for each slide👇

# Slide 1: set the scene

Here are the 3 components to add to your first slide:

  1. current status
  2. reasons to change
  3. and finish the slide by asking a question: how did you (or can you) solve it?

Don’t give the answer yet.

Think of this first slide as a hook for your audience to keep listening.

Example:

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# Slide 2: your answer

This is where you give the solution to your audience.

But no details, yet.

Just the raw material so your audience can think and reflect about it for a few minutes.

Example:

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Title Examples

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# Slide 3 and more: develop your answer

Now that you’ve got your slide titles set, time to bring in the supportive arguments, facts, and figures.

Keep it simple and direct:

  • Provide one argument per slide.
  • Drive everything back to the 1st slide: current status, reasons to change, and the ask.

Example:

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And that’s it!

As a bonus, a few critical points to consider:

  • Follow the rule of 10-20-30: no more than 10 slides, delivered in under 20 mins with a 30-point text style.
  • All of your slide titles must be related to your story.
  • Do not add full text but only quick takeaways written in large. Nothing worse than showing text your audience struggles to read.
  • Always ask yourself: “So what? why should the audience care?”. If you cannot find an immediate answer, remove the slide.

This is how you capture your audience’s attention.

Just make it a great experience and you’ll glue your customers to your presentation. 100% guaranteed!

Hakan Ozturk

Hakan Ozturk
Founder, theCScafe.com, #1 Weekly Customer Success Newsletter

Hakan Ozturk is a Paris-based Customer Success leader with over 15 years of experience in the computer software industry. Passionate about driving growth and delivering value to strategic customers, Hakan has established himself as a trusted industry expert. As the Founder of The Customer Success Café Newsletter and TopCSjobs.com, Hakan provides valuable industry insights and daily-updated job opportunities worldwide in the field of Customer Success. Connect with Hakan to boost your career in CS and your company’s potential for massive growth.

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