Six minutes to sell

photo by @waynemah

Imagine that you have been given six minutes to stand in front of 200 prospective customers and that you have to convince them that you have a solution to their problem.


How are you going to make those minutes count?

To make those minutes be as productive as possible, you have to know something about the audience in front of you, at least.

You also need to understand the environment they are in. For example, are you facing them in a webinar or at a conference? Are they there having been invited by you personally? What are you going to show to persuade them that you can help them? How are you going to show them what you can do?

These are all vital questions to ask as you plan to turn six minutes into sales. Those 360 seconds are often all you get these days when you have sponsored an event and have a window of opportunity to get people interested in your solutions.

So, still what would you do? What is going to capture the imagination of the audience enough to motivate them to pay you a visit?

You will have seen product demonstrations or Powerpoint slides full of bullet points trying to spark your interest. And yet, your six minutes is usually tucked between two long sessions of presentations already. Your audience is likely to have reached their limits already in their ability to absorb any more information. They will have cognitive overload by now and will want to stop for the upcoming break and all that sits between them and a cup of coffee is your six minutes of persuasion.

Let's think about it like this: The presenters before you are likely to have required their audience to do something difficult. They will have asked them to do three things at once which human brains were not designed to do, namely read, process and listen at the same time.

The presenters will have shown them a set of information in the form of lists or bullet points, or graphs which they are likely to be struggling to understand the main point being made. The human brain is not designed to handle this multi-channel information blast.

So, here's your chance to capture their attention, make what you your point clear and to engage your prospects.

You stand up and show them slides which have one sentence which clearly states your point for the slide, with one simple graphic to illustrate the point. You reinforce your point by speaking.  No bullet points; no crazy, complicated diagrams and no images which just fill space but don't help you get your point across.

You tell a story which has a beginning, a middle and an end. It's a format we've all been brought up with and which we understand.

You spend 30 seconds or less on each slide which means, in six minutes, you can show 12 to 16 slides containing glorious images to support your points and to tell a story as if you are film director.

This approach works. I know. This happened to me last week and prospects came to see me straight away when none had come before. My presentation is below.

If you want help with creating presentations like this, I'd be delighted to help you.