Here are the 2 elements we need to clarify to make a presentation plan.

1. Necessary information

2. Priority

Let’s check one by one.

 1. Necessary information

I think there are 3 items we need to consider for a business presentation.

• Provide our information

• Get customer information

• Discussion

We need to make sure what we need to provide, get, and discuss. Let’s look at each one.

Provide our information

In my case, typically we provide the following information.

• • Company introduction
  • Market trend
  • Product roadmap and spec
  • Comparison between old product and new product
  • Common issues and challenges in the industry
  • Share the example of how others use the product

Make sure what is new for attendees?

Now we can use the information we collect in Step1. So if we already explain “Company introduction “ in the previous meeting, we don’t need to explain it again. Same things for “Product roadmap and spec”. We can skip explaining the same information that we provided in the previous meeting.

So we can focus on new information which we did not deliver yet. If the previous meeting is 2 weeks ago, we may not have so much new information. And if the previous meeting is 1 year ago, we may have much new information. I think we should address each customer’s interest so I prefer not to show the same slides again unless there is any update.

Avoid unnecessary slides

If your company has some products, you may have products that the customer is NOT interested in. I would like to remove that product information from the slides. I try to keep the contents as simple as possible and avoid spending time on unnecessary slides.

Our company has a general presentation which is a slide deck to cover information typically requested. I may use the part of the slide deck but I don’t like to use the same presentation slides for different customer meetings without customization. That’s my style come from my failure story.

Get customer information

I assume you know what information you should know. Usually, I would like to get the following information.

• Customer’s product schedule
  • Next-generation plan
• Product requirement and Priority
  • Performance or characteristics
  • Quality
  • Price
  • Longevity
• Competitor’s information

Make sure customer requirement

We need to understand the customer requirement for our product and priorities. In other words, we need to make sure what is the “Must have” feature and “Nice to have” feature.

“Must have” item means if we can’t meet the requirement, our product won’t be selected. If there are some “Must have” items we can ask which items have No.1 priority.

Regarding “Nice to have” items, it’s better to meet the criteria but not mandatory. In other words, if we can’t meet the requirement of “Nice to have” items, we still have a chance.

For example, when customers are doing some proof of concept stage to make a prototype, the sample schedule is the No.1 priority which is “Must to have” and the price might be a “Nice to have” item.

But if customers’ product is a million-seller product, the price might be the No.1 priority and others are “Nice to have” items.

So priority might be changed over time depending on the customer’s development status.

Prepared the slides to get information

I recommend preparing slides for your questions. For example, if you like to get a customer schedule, you can prepare a slide that includes a timeline of our product development schedule and customer schedule in parallel. If we can visualize the schedule image we can easily understand if we can meet the schedule or need to pull in our product development schedule.

Discussion

For “Discussion” items, I typically talk about the following.

• Future architecture
• Future market
• Potential solution

No one knows the future

Why do we need to discuss future architecture or markets? This is because we would like to get some feedback from customers regarding architecture and the market. This is because no one knows the future so we need to discuss our guess is same as customers and potential challenges and solutions.

For example, we are working on an ongoing project which starts mass production next year. And when we talk about a next-generation product, let’s say, it will be 2-3 years from now.

In this early stage of development, customers don’t have a clear image of their end product. We can discuss future architecture based on our assumptions.

The new technology could be a trigger

Historically we know the new technology adaption was a trigger of brand new architecture resulting in different product requirements. The key point of the discussion is that we should discuss what is the impact of those new technologies on customers’ future products.  

A customer may say ” We will support 5G technology to implement new application or service for next-generation product” but the other customer may say “5G technology adaption would be far away since 5G signal coverage is still low.” There are presentation tips to get feedback on unknown future.

2. Priority

From my experience, I learned priority is one of the important factors of making a plan. We should decide the priority based on customer interest and needs. I would like to introduce 3 examples of slide order. Basically, we would like to show the most important topics first. Because we lose the opportunity if we run out of time or a key person may leave in the middle of meetings. We have to avoid that is happening.

We have 3 items such as “Provide”, “Get” and “Discussion”.

• Provide our information (“Provide”)

• Get customer information (“Get”)

• “Discussion”

Example1: Provide -> Get -> Discussion

This slide order is used for the case that a customer requests us to provide a product portfolio or specific product info. So the most important thing is to provide our company information such as Who we are, What we are doing. Then we can meet the customer’s request.

Also, we may use this slide order for 1st meeting for a customer who may not have any information about our company and products.

After we provide our information, maybe we can spend some time on “Get Customer info”. At that time we can consider if we can discuss it now or will do it in the next meeting because the discussion is a low priority now and so not an urgent item.

Example2: Provide -> Discussion -> Get

I usually use this slide order for getting feedback on our future product or our proposal. For example, we are planning the next product or service and need some feedback from key customers. In this case, getting customer info is not important for us and also for customers. So we may propose the target spec or candidate architecture of our next generation product. Or we may propose a brand new idea of a new category of product or service. Firstly we show our proposals that we would like to have feedback on. And then, in the “Discussion” phase, we assume the future industry and market trend, and based on the assumption we can discuss how our idea may work or may not work.

Example3: Get -> Provide -> Discussion

This slide order is also frequently used in case customers want to provide their info first. And also when we know we have a business opportunity but don’t know the detail, it’s better to get customer project information first to understand the detail of the opportunity. Then based on the information from the customer, we can provide our product information from the customer’s point of view.

After we provide our production information if we still have some time, we can have future market discussions and exchange both side estimation and outlook.

Thank you for reading this post.

Now we can define the necessary information and priority. Then we can move to the next step. Step3: Design slides.

Here are the other steps for how to prepare your presentation.

1. Collect information

2. Make a Plan

3. Design slides

4. Review

5. Rehearsal