Learning from Nancy Duarte
I’m a big fan of Nancy Duarte. If you don’t know who she is, check out Duarte Design, www.duarte.com a progressive and very successful graphic design firm built around Nancy’s passion for the art of presentation. She has a few great books out and the central theme of her work involves studying the techniques of the great storytellers throughout history and breaking them down into a formula that can be replicated.
Her recent blog post on linkedin entitled “Like Yoda you Must Be” ( read it here) inspired me to explore her concepts and how they apply to my own work performing visual marketing and demonstration for building products.
The Mentor Archetype
A good marketer, or salesperson will tell you without a doubt that a true product evangelist is an educator, a mentor. Yoda, for example, is a great example of the mentor. When Yoda trained Luke Skywalker, he did not waste any time boasting about his own credentials, His 800 years of mastery was not the focus of the training, his young student was the hero.
Your Audience is the Hero, not You
Duarte explains the most common mistake she sees after seeing hundreds of presentations. The presenters focus their presentation on themselves. She expounds us to remember that as the presenter, we are not the most important person in the room, we are merely the mentor. If we assume the role of mentor and make our audience, our prospective customers the heroes, we can resonate much more soundly.
Your Products are not the Hero Either, they are the Sword
If you could place yourself in the role of mentor the next time you present your products to the world, position your potential customers as the hero. Offer them your products as a sword with which they can achieve their goals and you will be much farther along than your competitors.