The 4 keys to high-impact product presentations
“If an idea doesn’t fit on the back of an envelope it is rubbish.” — Sir Richard Branson
Branson built a business empire and yet doesn’t make it a secret that he always had difficulty learning and paying attention. For him, his “dyslexia” is one of his greatest strengths.
“I need things to be simple for myself. Therefore Virgin, I think, when we launch a financial service company or a bank, we do not use jargon. Everything is very clear-cut, very simple. I think people have an affinity to the Virgin brand because we don’t talk above them or talk down to them…”
It’s a lesson that I’m taking to heart because that is exactly what a Product Manager needs to do. We bring everyone in on the product plan and vision and most importantly WHY we are building our product. It is our job to educate people and everyone involved in our product development. That is how we get the team excited and believe in our product. Then they can help us build the right product for the use and share our excitement.
I had to learn this and went through some situations that helped me realize how important it is. Our message needs to be understood and for that, it needs to be simple.
I am going to share four of the tools I use that help me with that.
1. Tell the customer’s story
Always start with the story! It’s not the technology that gets everyone’s attention. It’s the story. But how do you bring a story into a product pitch?
Classic stories always have a hero and a villain. Our villain is the problem we are solving. It is the common enemy we want to defeat — or solve. And the hero? Of course, the user.
On a higher level, Story Writers structure stories in three parts. It’s worked for thousands of years. It works well for product stories, too. I tried it.
Here is the cheat sheet for your next product pitch
The Setup
This is our user (hero) living their normal lives. Doing the things they do. Here you can describe a typical user, how and why they use your product.
Imagine the classic workplace 10 years ago. Email is the standard for all digital communication. Sometimes replaces real-world communication.
They schedule meetings, attach files and send around funny Powerpoint presentations.
The Confrontation
Everything is great until they encounter a problem (the villain) — the common challenge all our users face. Our user always runs into this issue. They can’t find a way around it and it creates a conflict. If only someone could solve it. They need help from a friend or new skills.
First thing in the morning they need to check their emails. Because our inboxes are now flooded we invent new “best practices” for subject lines. Because we all know that nobody can keep up. [Action required], [Urgent] and [RSVP]. Users need to check email every few minutes in case another [Urgent] requests comes in. The asynchronous and delayed communication through email is making it really hard to get anything done.
The Resolution
Fear not, there is a product with a solution! This is how it will help our users solve their problems.
In the example above, Slack came along and made workplace communication real-time. Slack drags them out of their email misery and makes work real-time, even if people are remote. Back to efficiency.
Our happy end is that our users love what we do for them, find value and can’t live without our product. They can move on with their lives. And we, the good product people, move on to solve the next problem.
It will be easy for your audience to relate to a story like this.
2. Keep it short and precise
People’s attention span has declined significantly in recent years. According to a study done by Microsoft, people now lose concentration after just eight seconds! Take that into account when describing your project.
Structure your story as I described above but do not go into too much detail. Let your audience ask for it if they need to know more. Focus only on the parts that matter for the progress of the story.
You need to know your audience. Know who is in the room and what their goals are. Focus on their goals. Engineering, Marketing or Customer Support all have different requirements and specifics they need to know. Only go into detail if it needed. Keep it to the point.
Break out extra sessions if detailed questions come up. Take a note for the end of the meeting. Often, you get distracted with details that half the room doesn’t care about. They will begin to loose attention. Remember Branson’s envelope!
I will keep this paragraph shorter than the others to make a point!
3. Visualize with concept and design
A picture is worth a thousand words. I almost feel bad putting a cheesy comment like this in here. But it is true. Nobody wants to read bullet points or long texts on a slide.
Several years ago, we had a big product launch coming up and I prepared documentation for everyone. The goal was to catch people up on the features that will go into our MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The slides had user stories (written) and bullet points on how we address them.
When presenting I realized how people didn’t seem very engaged. Everyone struggled to understand how these features work. People asked questions that didn’t make sense. Some of them were looking at their computers. The presentation went out of control. The worst!
I had the folder with the MVP designs on my desktop. So I exited the presentation, opened the design folder and walked them through the visuals png by png.
All of a sudden I felt like I was giving a completely different presentation. Everyone was super engaged and active. After the meeting, everyone was very excited about the launch. I never presented anything without visuals since that day.
Even if you don’t have pixel perfect designs, simple concept drawings and wireframes will win your audience’s attention. And that is your ultimate goal, right? If you can’t get your stakeholders to care about your product, how will you succeed with customers?
Our human brains prefer visuals over text. So remember this simple rule: if you have to present something to humans, use visuals. I don’t have much insight into how it works with non-humans yet.
4. Use analogies and metaphors
“We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky — the sun” — Elon Musk at his presentation of introducing Tesla Energy.
If you want your audience to understand what you are telling them, you need to pick them up where they are. Give them concepts that they know and understand.
Elon Musk is doing a great job with that when explaining Tesla Energy.
Full circle — Musk uses a VISUAL analogy to explain his concept.
He explains the required surface area to supply the US with 100% solar energy and shut every other energy source off. He wants to make a point that “very little land is needed”. To do this, he shows a map of the US with one little blue square in the middle. “That blue square there is the land needed to transition the United States to a zero carbon electricity situation.” Later on in the presentation he talks about the batteries needed to store this energy. It is represented by one pixel within the blue circle. Musk makes an incredibly difficult problem seem very easy to solve. People start applauding. They feel inspired and more importantly, they were able to follow what he was talking about.
Analogies help us explain difficult concepts. People make much easier connections when they hear them.
People expect you to explain things in terms they understand. They are there to learn from you. Explain it like they need it.
Conclusion
These tools work for me time and time again. After failures and successes, I can tell you that there are nuances that differ between audiences. But these tools always set me up for the best outcomes with any audience. And as you have read, they’ve also worked for others.
And if in trouble, just remember KISS — Keep it simple stupid.
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