At Trade Shows, Say It In Seven Minutes
Hey Newman, we’re in the midst of scripting our next trade show presentation. It’s coming in at 21 minutes. Is that too long? –Walter in Las Vegas
No problem, Walter. As long as you can talk three times faster than normal and bring it in at SEVEN.
Seriously, here’s a question for you: If you only had that seven minutes to tell your product or brand story, what would you say?
Imagine you’re the point person at a big trade show presentation. You’ve set up a small theater in your booth. You don’t have a professional presenter, so it falls on you to entertain, stimulate and inspire this throng of attendees that’s formed around you. The microphone has just been placed in your hand and you have to go … now! You have only seven minutes and then the mic goes dead. That’s it. You take a deep breath and step in front of the crowd. With such limited time and so much on the line, what do you say?
This is the essence of a compelling trade show presentation. It’s not how much you can say; it’s how little. What actually is your message when you’re “forced” to distill it down? The reality is those people in your audience are visiting 25-30 booths a day. They will only walk away remembering two or three key points, along with the “feeling” they got from the message and from your energy and enthusiasm. So, what are those two or three points they cannot leave without?
If you’re finding it difficult to answer that question, there’s an approach that can help: If you had to offer up all your messaging on just one piece of paper, what would you say? Many of my clients have 200 products and a worldwide audience. They deserve at least 10 pages, right? It doesn’t matter. No one is going to listen to that. It has to be ONE page — and not 2pt type!
Try to challenge yourself on that single page. Make a list of all the corporate jargon you’ve ever heard, read it over carefully, and then toss it. There are immense benefits in brevity, and even greater benefits in originality.
Now it gets even harder. Cut that in half, and give it to your booth staff as a guide for talking with attendees. Condense it even further and give it to the crowd gatherers as an elevator speech. For them, it’s perhaps one great phrase that encapsulates what you do and what your presentation will be about.
Many years ago when I began producing trade show presentations, I would have my client tell me their story. Their WHOLE story. That typically ran 45 minutes or so. Armed with that and a FedEx package filled with white papers and product brochures, I would craft what I believed was a tight, entertaining seven-minute draft. I’d present it over the phone and await my client’s response. Often they would rave about the comic framework, tell me that it really “moved well,” but then mention that unfortunately, I had extracted the “wrong” seven minutes. My heart would sink and they would say, “What we really want to talk about is ‘this.’” It was one of the things they’d mentioned, but there was no way for me to know that this was where the emphasis was supposed to be. The client didn’t know at the time, either. It proved to be a clarifying exercise, but not a particularly efficient one.
Now, I work with every client to first find out what they care about. And then I keep at them until we can fit that on a single page. We talk about the big deliverables. We talk about the key messages. We talk about how this product/service/brand will make people’s lives better. With this, I can begin structuring the routine and build the “right” seven minutes. I add in the entertaining elements, and this time, when I do the read-through, it’s 95 percent of the way there.
This may be more work up front, but it pays off in fewer iterations and a much better (and tighter) script.
Oh, and on the off chance you think it’s impossible to get your message across in only seven minutes, take a look at what professional trade show presenter, William Hall is able to do in just a One Minute Presentation.
Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.
Hear hear! Another blog post that nails it. Your presentation isn’t your movie – it’s your movie trailer. Use it to tease your audience, and get out of the way.
Paring down a 45 minute presentation to 7 minutes is obvious (even if the client has a hard time with it…); great post and very important point.
One thought I was struck with when I read the statement that you “work with every client to first find out what *they* care about…” is that it would make sense to me to have your client find out what their potential clients and customers cared about. They might find out it that it’s different than what *they* (the exhibitor that’s hiring you) cares about.
What’s important to the exhibitor may not mean diddly to their visitor…so the question they have to ask (and you may have to ask them as well): “is this what is most important to your client?”
A great point, Tim. Thanks for raising it. And you’re absolutely right: Clients and customers are who it’s ultimately ALL about.
Great article, Ken. I have been to several lectures that lasted an hour or two, reiterating the same points over and over. I wish every speaker could get straight to the point in 7 minutes.If your speaking longer than that, there’s a good chance you will lose the interest of your booth visitors and they will remember very little about what you spoke about.
I dont usually comment on blogs but i have to tell you awesome job