Nice slides. So what?

Here's how to get an audience to remember or be engaged with a project, webinar, proposal, etc.

Marcus Sheridan’s pool company, River Pools and Spas, was hit hard by the 2008 recession. It’s a niche enough industry when times are good, so you can imagine how hard it was to sell backyard swimming pools during a financial crisis. In desperation, he tried content marketing, which is basically sharing helpful information for potential customers rather than direct sales pitches.

He started a River Pools and Spas blog by answering customers’ questions in a conversational way that followed a simple storytelling pattern. Business surged to the point that Sheridan’s company was the most visited pool website in the world. Potential customers who viewed 30 storytelling pages on his website had an 80% closing rate, compared to the average closing rate of 15-20%.

I’ve heard Sheridan interviewed many times over the years, and while he didn’t give the advice I’m about to share, it’s what I picked up from his experience. Maybe it’ll help you.

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Six or seven years into my career, I was invited to give a presentation at a transportation engineering conference. I enjoyed public speaking, so the thought of being at the podium with a microphone was exciting. But I was acutely aware of my lack of experience in the industry. 

My presentation strategy was to give a step-by-step explanation of the project: 

• the client’s request for proposals, 

• my team’s approach, 

• the results of our analysis, and 

• our recommendations. 

My slides would include large photos, simple graphics, and the text would be large enough for someone to read it from the back of the room. I figured this simple approach would be more memorable than the many “how many words can I cram on one slide” type of presentations that I’d seen. 

I gave the presentation. No glitches. It felt good. A few people made a point to compliment the slide design. But later that month, I gave the exact same presentation at my office as a lunch-and-learn, and someone asked me a question that made me feel like I belonged at the kiddie table. “At the conference, what was the point of your presentation?” I gave some sort of answer about the importance of company brand recognition at industry events, and making the client look good. I don’t know how long I took to answer, but I probably used too many words and lost the point of the question. 

My coworker didn’t understand the point of my presentation because the only interesting thing I did was use some font styles and image layouts he hadn’t seen before. 

Days later I was talking with a mentor about more conference speaking opportunities. He asked what I hoped to accomplish by participating. He wasn’t judging me or challenging my speaking abilities. It was a basic business decision: if we (your employer) send you to speak, what is the return on our investment?

At that last event, I had given an accurate presentation with confidence and quality material, but I still managed to be utterly forgettable. Why should anyone remember my “successful” planning study for an important client? They shouldn’t. I gave a technical presentation that could be filed alongside thousands of other similar presentations.

If you work in a technical and complex industry, and there’s no reason your neighbor, mate, or even potential client should care about it. Tom Cruise’s character in Mission: Impossible 3 hid in plain sight as a traffic engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Even in his faked excitement during a dinner party, nobody wanted to hear about highway congestion and travel patterns.

Storytelling is the key to standing out from the crowd. Anyone working in a boring industry needs to share stories that relate with our audiences to build trust and prove expertise without sounding elite or condescending. I wish I had known this from the start of my career. 

A quick lesson on storytelling

If you remember one thing, let it be three things: hero, conflict, and resolution. This basic storytelling structure has been working in the movies for 100 years. There’s no reason to develop some experimental new system when the standard movie script formula is proven to stick with audiences. Copy what works.

HERO

The hero is a sympathetic focal point. It’s the person we hope succeeds, or the project we hope is approved and built. If “hero” is too dramatic for you, use “subject” instead. Please don't get wrapped up in these terms. I'm using the word hero because I think it's helpful. 

Consider one of my favorite people in the world—the bike share operator. Perhaps you’re writing a blog post about challenges facing bike share in your county. You want readers to think positively about the operator. Make her relatable. Make her sympathetic. Relate to the car owner who wants the freedom to use sturdy bicycles for short trips.

CONFLICT

Conflict is how the hero gets into trouble. And please, get into trouble. If nothing happens to your sympathetic focal point, then no one's really going to care about the story. Describe the trouble. If something can go wrong, it will. This is the bulk of your story. No matter how long or short your story is, the conflict is going to take up the most space. 

Maybe the new bike share operation is losing business. Ridership is down and they can’t find local sponsors. Your narrative might include a policy debate about helmet laws, street conditions, and bike share station locations. Obstacles are real—spend time articulating each of them, raising the stakes for your hero.

RESOLUTION

Things get better in the end. There will be exceptions to this resolution, but if you’re selling professional services, most of your stories should end with a clear improvement. If you're documenting something that already happened and it has a happy ending, great. If not, then what would make the situation improve? How could the project or policy be changed to better serve the public interest? 

In the bike share example, maybe the mandatory helmet law is overturned, and momentum builds for a robust bicycling network. The county shifts its budget priorities to align with its safe streets policy statements. 

Storytelling is the key to your proposals, interview presentations, webinars, website material, and whatever else you’re churning out. Remember three things: hero, conflict, and resolution. It works for content about swimming pools, urbanism, and anything else.