Some people might think of it as a book for advertising professionals, because John comes from an agency background. But it’s really just a book for anyone who ever makes any kind of presentation — business or otherwise. This common-sense view of the art of presentations focuses on how every presentation is essentially a conversation. It doesn’t matter whether your audience consists of one person or a thousand. Whether you’re presenting an idea, proposal, or your potential as a great employee, you’ll benefit from this viewpoint.

John gives the example of a meeting with Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, contrasting a briefing by Steve with an earlier one by two senior Apple marketing executives. The account is humorous and insightful. After the two executives attempted to bore the agency team to death with a bad, rambling Powerpoint presentation, Steve used a marker pen on a whiteboard to give an unforgettable, highly focused presentation that cut to the heart of the problem. He was transparent, clear and passionate. This is the essence of a great presentation!

Think of every ad, every brochure, and every website you create as a presentation. Then take it further and think of them as part of a conversation you’re creating with potential customers. What are the questions they’re asking when they begin to engage with the content? What do they need to know? What are their dreams? What’s their vision? What does a successful outcome look like?

Imagine yourself face to face with each one of them. How would the conversation flow? How would you make the same pitch if sitting across from them in your local coffee shop?

I’ve enjoyed a pretty good track record in new business presentations, with more than 80% of all my presentations leading to a business relationship. This success rate has been the result of having great mentors when I was first getting started, people who were honest and firm in forcing me to evaluate what I was doing from the customer’s perspective. It has also been the result, in many cases, of having a great team around me who did the rest of the work, from researching information I needed to building relationships with the prospective client. But I’ve noticed that one element has been consistently important: caring about the other party. You have to listen, really listen, to what the other person is saying. If you don’t, then nothing you say will be relevant.

I recall one presentation made after I started my young ad agency when I was just 24 years of age. The prospective client had already been pitched by four large agencies who wanted the account. Here I was, young and inexperienced, though passionate about what I could do with my small but talented team. I asked the company’s marketing team what they wanted to achieve, what their goals were and how they saw their business five years down the road. I mostly just listened, yet it was a conversation. A few minutes into the pitch, the company president stopped me and said something I’ll never forget. He explained that every other agency had come in and shown a bunch of work and talked and talked endlessly about what they could do. They were pitching without understanding. I was the first person who had even asked any of these questions. He awarded me the account on the spot.

Perfect Pitch is an excellent book and a worthwhile read for anyone, especially people who have to pitch new business. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. The heart of the message is to think of your presentation as a conversation.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

“At first, it was pure passion,” she whispered with a silky voice I was still getting used to, her sapphire-blue eyes flashing in the shadows. She leaned forward, glancing around before continuing. “I couldn’t help myself,” she added lustily. “I’d never experienced anything like it. Nothing else mattered. I just wanted more and more of the same.”

Her face slid back into shadow. Silence, except for a sultry jazz tune working its way from table to table as I pondered her confession. Blue smoke curled slowly in the air like the lazy circles she made with her finger in blonde locks flowing to her shoulders.

“How long did it last?” I asked. Her eyes drifted away, remembering, then came back to mine.

“It was a couple of years until the magic stopped. After a while I realized my needs were no longer being met. Now I was more concerned about time. I wanted it faster.”

“Faster?”

“Faster or not at all,” she responded. “Ten seconds or less was the magic number for me now. It began to feel so superficial. Meaningless. Maybe I just got bored, but it no longer seemed to be about satisfying my needs. It was just motion and sound for the sake of entertainment.” She downed the rest of her drink in a single gulp. I waved for another round.

I was investigating the disappearance of web animation. What had once been proclaimed the future of advertising on the Internet was now a mere shadow of it’s original promise. It had all but disappeared from the landscape, especially from corporate or brand-related web sites. Yet there were few answers. Flash designers didn’t think anything had changed. Corporate marketing types didn’t want to talk about it. Nobody wanted to share their experience, or were too busy to give it much thought. Then I found her, someone who valued the ability to interact directly with the brands that mattered to her. We had met in the rain outside the bar and went in without a word spoken.

“I began to resent splash screens and animated intros,” she sighed, leaning back against the hard wooden frame of her chair and twirling a plastic swizzle stick between her fingers. “They no longer seemed honest,” she explained. “All that razzle dazzle. It was too often manipulative. It took extra time and seldom added anything of value to our relationship.”

“I no longer cared,” she said. “We saw less and less of each other. I thought the relationship was over. All that mattered was the information. I wanted it fast and simple. Flash was dead for me. Forgotten.”

She suddenly leaned forward and gripped my arm. Hard. Almost hard enough to hurt. “But I was wrong,” she exclaimed passionately. “It’s back!”

That got my attention. She must have noticed the look in my eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. I strained to hear.

“Flash MX,” she gasped.

A computer monitor throbbed in the corner. She continued. “Just when I thought life was returning to normal, it’s starting again. Flash is back. Now with video. And an application architecture that can give me everything I ever dreamed of in a brand relationship. More interactivity. Database management. All combined with the motion and streaming audio that started it all.”

Flash MX. So Flash wasn’t gone after all, I realized. Just the victim of inappropriate use. Instead of using its power to provide an experience that mattered to the audience, Flash had typically been used as a self-serving instrument that wasted people’s time offering nothing of value in return for their patience. Flash revived. Would it now be used the way it should have been all along? Would it truly enhance the brand experience? Would it make the experience worthy of the extra download time? What would the future hold?

A saxophone wailed its plaintive notes as a drop of condensation slowly traced its way down the side of her glass. Her blue eyes pierced mine, the same question deep within. Have marketers learned? Will it be different this time? Outside the rain slapped at the windows with streaky wet fingers. The waitress brought a new drink.

Life moves. From the moment our eyes behold their first blurry view of the world around us until they close for the last time, life is a blur of activity, colour, sound. Is it any wonder we’re fascinated by video? Movies, and then television changed our world. After more than 100 years, motion pictures still capture our imagination, holding us in their enthralling grip for hours at a time. On a recent flight, I was amazed by the number of people watching DVDs on their personal computers. We love moving pictures! No wonder advertising people feel that being part of an industry churning out creative 30-second mini movies is one of the best jobs in the world.

CROSS DISSOLVE. NIGHT.

My family reviews some footage I recorded when my kids were little, edited to music and burned to DVD for the grandparents. We laugh. But emotions soar, roused through a simple combination of moving images and music. So, with our universal fascination for moving pictures, why don’t more companies use video for marketing?

CROSS DISSOLVE. OLD MOVIE FOOTAGE.

It used to be a big deal to use video in a corporate setting. Few people knew how to use these high-tech tools. Equipment was bulky and expensive. Editing suites were big rooms with lots of buttons and dials that only experts understood. You had to find a specialist just to script the thing, never mind finding someone with an eye for motion graphics to produce it. And getting decent production values required a financial commitment beyond all but the biggest firms.

HIGH ENERGY FAST CUTS WITH MUSIC.

No longer. Today, high school students armed with mini camcorders and free software like Apple’s iMovie are turning out products that are staggering in both creativity and quality. The tools for video are getting better, faster, cheaper. Eventually even e-mail will be video-based (I’ll bet everyone who has trouble typing can’t wait for that day). Have you seen what today’s young visionaries are doing with video? While helping judge the Alberta New Media awards, I was amazed at the high production value of student submissions. They not only had the tools, they showed vision and a creative understanding of how to edit footage to communicate effectively. Young people in summer camps and churches are doing more and cooler stuff with video than are most corporations.

Here’s an idea. Put them to work on marketing projects and watch how it infuses your brand with power and energy. Equip enthusiastic employees with a low-cost video suite. Invite them to use these powerful tools to create motion-based brand messaging. Training videos. Corporate newsletters with on-scene footage of the manufacturing process, new products, or interviews with new staff. In our agency, we use video as a way of enhancing new business presentations.

Don’t worry so much about the quality. Modern equipment is good. Just get started. Find people in your organization with vision and enthusiasm. Empower them. A new Macintosh computer and a $1,500 digital camcorder is all they need to turn out above-average productions. They’ll even be able to burn those videos to DVD for easy distribution. Double that investment and the quality will come close to that of professional-grade tools.

Is it really that easy? Yes and no. You do have to provide leadership, management and accountability. You need to get signed releases from staff appearing in your productions to ensure that you can continue to use the material after people move on. But those are minor issues in terms of the big picture. Sales. Not to mention the future of your brand.

The point is that there are virtually no barriers left to using video to enhance your brand messaging. Corporate video is now affordable. It’s accessible. It can be reformatted for other media such as Web delivery. It’s dynamic, vivid, fresh. Getting started now will breathe new life into your brand.

SUPER: “Life moves.”

Technology isn’t going to stand around waiting. Imagine how your company’s digital streaming video annual report 20 years from now might show some of the archival footage from the past. Sure, people might laugh. But emotions will soar, grateful you showed the way.