The document discusses the importance of effective presentations when pitching ideas to clients. It emphasizes that ideas are often rejected due to poor presentation skills rather than flaws in the ideas themselves. To improve success rates, the document recommends: thoroughly understanding the client's needs, getting feedback from others on the presentation, practicing the presentation, using visuals and storytelling to bring ideas to life, and reading the client's reactions to make adjustments. Building strong relationships with clients through regular communication is also advised to help secure approval for future proposals. Overall, the key is tailoring the presentation style to best match the client's personality and decision-making preferences.

1. What is the most important aspect of
our business?

2. The Right Presentation
Client Service & Account Management

3. The Right Presentation
More often than not, great
Communication concepts get rejected by
clients, not because the idea or execution
was wrong, but because the work wasn’t
properly presented.

4. The Right Presentation
• In Advertising, it’s difficult to
represent the same idea a second
time using better presentation
techniques.
• It’s usually one strike and you’re out.
• Firms have to get it right the first
time.

5. The Right Presentation
• If marketing communication companies put
more care into presenting their
recommendations, more work would probably
be approved by clients.
• Clients expect agencies to be masters at
presenting work. Poor presentations skills
bring into doubt the firm’s overall
competency.
• Remember it is your first professional
handshake with a client.

6. Before Presenting
• Understand what you are presenting. Really
know what you are taking in. Consider making
a logic trail of how your team arrived at the
recommended suggestion.
• Put yourself in his shoes. Try to gauge what he
is looking for and not what you want to sell.
That’s where understanding a client matters.
• Get help before you go. Discuss with a planner
or an expert the target audience you are going
after. Look for supporting facts and market
truths that will help your presentation.

7. Before Presenting
• Assemble your team. Consider holding a
stake-holder meeting with everyone involved
with the recommendation before you go. Seek
suggestions and recommendations on ways to
help the client better understand the
recommendation.
• Have individual and group meeting. Why to
have this approach?

8. Before Presenting
• Go in a great recommendation. Make sure you
and everyone else on your team believes you are
moving forward with a great idea or strong
recommendation to the client.
• Pre-sell the client. Use a phone call or e-mail to
create enthusiasm for what you are to bring over.
Tantalize in advance without giving too much
away. Use members of your team to call and add
their support.
• Plan the presentation. Know who says what and
when. Go in with a presentation plan and then
stick to the plan. Also make clear on what not to
say.

9. During the Presentation
• Bring the recommendation to life. Use a story or paint a picture
of your recommended course of action to help sell in the
client. Words have power. Picture words have more power.
• Use a should board. List out what the recommendation should
accomplish. And then show how your plan hits the “shoulds”
dead on.
• Show it, don’t tell it. When possible make your
recommendation real by showing it in a newspaper, magazine
or on the TV. People buy with their eyes. And then their heart.
Use that to your advantage. Gillette example.
• Read the room. If the idea wouldn’t fly, take it back and start
over. Avoid committee solutions. Be prepared to take the loss
and win another day.

10. After the Presentation
• Help to sell. Help the client sell the idea up the
organization. Work with the client to get the
idea sold in and offer to help.
• Thank the client. Win or lose. You asked your
client to be open to new ideas and hear you
out. If that’s what happened, then show how.
• Do a post-mortem. Review the check list and
be sure you followed the rules. Great teams
get better by reviewing game film and
correcting their mistakes.

11. Before the Next Presentation
• Start winning the next presentation now. Get the client
involved in looking at the creative landscape or
reviewing the market place on a regular basis. Show the
good, the bad and the ugly from what’s happening in
the client’s space on a regular basis. That’ll probably
make it easier to sell in your next suggestion.
• Share great work. Even from competition. You can’t
hide what the competition is doing and its better your
client hears it from you than someone else. So talk
about the business and what’s working and what’s not.
You are a business partner with your clients and
partners act like partners.

12. Before the Next Presentation
• Build relationships. Everyone on the team
should know and have a good relationship
with your client. It’s more fun when more of
your team members are personally involved
with the client. And it helps during the tough
times to have reinforcements who are up to
speed on the client and on the market place.

13. Key Reminder
• Use Personality Profiling as a way to help you
select your best presentation strategy.
• Strategy is the key to making a good
presentation to a client. It’s all about the
timing and what makes a client most
comfortable.
• You are not presenting to a corporation; you
are presenting to a person who has likes and
dislikes on how he or she prefers to receive
information and make decisions.

14. Personality Profiling
• REMEMBER: It’s not the creative that wins or
the smart planning or the cool interactive
tactics. It’s chemistry that wins in the end.
• That means you need to learn how to profile
prospects from the way they talk on the
phone, the way they appear, what they
wear, the way they communicate, and what
they show as most important to them.

15. Personality Profiling
By knowing this, you know whether or not you
need to:
• focus on process
• Results
• Relationship
• inspiration
• Or a combination of all of these. You also know
how to bring this focus to light in the way you
choose your new business tactics.

16. Key Reminder
• Agencies are never fired by the companies we
serve. Agencies are fired by people at those
companies who believe we don’t like
them, can’t work with them the right way, and
aren’t meeting their expectations in some
way. We are fired by people with whom we
don’t have good chemistry.

17. ENDS