5 Easy Ways To Prepare Your Next Presentation
When you have to present, imagine that the room is your restaurant and your presentation the food
When patrons walk into Michel Roux Jr’s two Michelin starred Le Gavroche, they expect dining perfection. This perfection is no accident – it is nurtured, refined and earned. At Le Gavroche, the customer is at the heart of the experience, the most important person in the restaurant. Michel knows why they are there, what they expect and exactly how to please them. Without his customers, there would be no restaurant, no Michel Roux Jr.
The customers are there for the experience and ultimately, the food. The kitchen crafts the ingredients, the wine is decanted and perfectly paired, the waiter performs the service rituals, and the white pressed linen provides the flawless backdrop.
Tasting the food is the ultimate moment of truth
Ingredients are never just thrown onto a plate – each recipe, each ingredient is considered with great care and thought. Each cooking process is developed and refined to produce the perfect plate of food, and there is an elegant, precise performance when the food is finally presented.
Customers experience the food at the end of this journey, not at the beginning
‘Okay’ is not okay, customers need to be impressed. Perfection is the aim of the game – the reputation of Michel and Le Gavroche depends on it. How would a mediocre dish be received by a customer, what would it mean for the restaurant? Nothing should leave the kitchen until it is perfect. It’s important remember that the reason you’re presenting is vital to the business.
Deliver a presentation which is less Big Mac and more Filet de Boeuf Grille
Why spend time and money attracting customers, developing the restaurant, the reputation, hiring the best staff and buying the best ingredients – if what you serve is just a confused mess on a plate. It is essential to put your customers at the heart of the experience, to consider what they want to hear, feel and the impression they walk away with. Nurture your message and refine it until every word, sound and image counts. Give your customers the presentation they deserve.
Five easy tips to creating a personalised customer presentation
1) It all starts with knowing your customer
What are their business and personal objectives, what are they trying to achieve?
2) Show that you understand them
Think about what challenges stop them from achieving these objectives.
3) Then make every presentation personal
Put these challenges at the beginning of the presentation and explicitly ask them to elaborate, you’ll be surprised at the insights they’ll be willing to tell you.
4) Show them the opportunities available to them from working with you to solve these challenges
Now that you know their challenges in more detail show them how using your product or services they can turn these challenges into opportunities for them and their business.
5) Make it interactive and engaging
With all of the above points make it as visual, interactive and engaging as possible – just because it’s business doesn’t mean it has to be formulaic, controlled and unimaginative.
Stuart Janicki
Latest posts by Stuart Janicki (see all)
- 5 Easy Ways To Prepare Your Next Presentation - 6th May 2016
