Hacker News Reader

Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

> A lesson I learned is that if the topic is interesting enough you can skip the intro and jump straight in to that material, and if you combine that with a joke you can capture the audience's attention just fine.

This is important in sales as well.

I hate getting a sales pitch where they tell me the history of the company. Big Japanese companies are the worst in this regard for some reason.

For each slide, imagine the audience is going to get up and leave unless you give them a reason to read the next slide. You don't need to justify your existence if I don't really know what you have to offer.

Plus it's all about me (the listener) not you (the presenter).

View on HN

> I hate getting a sales pitch where they tell me the history of the company. [...] Plus it's all about me (the listener) not you (the presenter).

Excellent point. Many presenters probably see the talk as an opportunity to give their organization some publicity/marketing[0] in addition to the content of the talk. But... no, no one wants to sit through an ad about you and your company's background in order to get to the interesting stuff.

I think a reasonable compromise there is that your last slide can have a blurb about your company on it, and maybe you just leave it there for attendees to read themselves (or not) as you wrap up, without reading it to them.

[0] I imagine this is a component of why companies encourage their employees to go give talks at conferences. I remember one company I worked at would completely reimburse employees for conference attendance, no questions asked, if they were also giving a talk there. But if they just wanted to attend the conference, they had to justify what they and the company would be getting out of it, and write up and present something useful they learned when they got back. I wouldn't be surprised if they booked some of the cost as a marketing expense in the first case.

> For each slide, imagine the audience is going to get up and leave unless you give them a reason to read the next slide.

This is great advice, and I’ve been trying to apply it to my writing in general. Each sentence, and even each word, should give your reader a reason to stick around. Fluff has its place in fiction and long-form writing, but most day-to-day writing should be information-dense.

Just to share a perspective. Doing business in Japan often requires a certain level of trust. Showing that you (the presenter) have something to count on is thus important.

I should have written that I hate such presentations when the history is up front. Tell me what you’re gonna do for me, tell me how so I believe you, tell me that you’ve been doing it a while for others so I believe you, then, if you want, tell me that you’ve been around for a while so I can depend on you.

But all that should be provided my my interests in mind, not your own ego stroking.

That said, different countries have different cultures in this regard. But peoples’ attention isn’t different and it’s a shame to waste the period of maximum attention on the thing that helps the least in sales.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com