AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerYour Next Sales Presentation Should be a TED Talk

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Your Next Sales Presentation Should be a TED Talk

We all love the TED-talk style and more than 2 million videos are watched per day. But with all this watching, sales presentations are not changing. Here are a few ideas to change your sales presentation to be more TED and less dead the next time.Working through ways to further maximise their profits

  1. 18 minutes. That’s the limit. TED has 30 years of experience with the best way to disseminate key information and less than half an hour is best.
  2. The first 10 seconds are key to winning the audience. Most TED talks don’t start with long introductions or organizational history
  3. 96 point type. You don’t see wordy PPT slides at TED. Not one set of bullets. Full screen photos or videos that help to move the talk along, not make you read.
  4. Tell a story or two or three. No need for a lot of facts and figures, but tell a compelling story. It is more memorable and effective at communicating ideas.
  5. Tell people something they don’t know. If you don’t have anything innovative, maybe you shouldn’t be presenting.
  6. Craft a strong ending. And then end it. Whoever said, “I wish that sales presentation was longer?” Or blog for that matter.

The End.

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.