Sales is all about action

… and action results from thoughts.

Presentations are about changing thoughts and therefore, if done well, presentations are a great tool to move people to take action.

Obviously, the difficult part is to find – and then change – the thoughts that trigger the action. Understanding this relationship informs us about where to start:

What do your customers do currently? What action should they take? Why would they want to? Why don’t they already? What needs to change so that they will? How can we make them see it? Even better: feel it? …

These are much more powerful questions for a sales pitch than to start with a list of all your product features that your audience already knows from your sales brochure but didn’t act on.