How I Made 300 Sales Reps Remember One Message
Read Time: 2 Minutes
I'm writing this from my hotel room in San Francisco, still buzzing from presenting to ~300 sales reps at a major partner conference. The stakes were high – we needed their sales team to understand and champion our software alongside their hardware solution.
But instead of delivering our standard pitch deck (you know, the one with 47 feature slides), I took a radically different approach. Here's what happened, and more importantly, why it worked.
The Common Trap
Most partner presentations fall into a predictable pattern:
- Company overview
- Product features
- Market differentiators
- Technical specs
- Integration benefits
But here's the problem: when you try to say everything, people remember nothing.
The 3 Things I Did Instead
1. Start with Their Pain, Not Your Product
Before the conference, I spoke with their CEO and sales leaders to understand one thing: what's keeping their sales team from hitting their numbers?
The insight was clear. They were struggling to expand their audio hardware sales beyond their traditional customer base. They knew our software could help, but their team wasn't confident in positioning the joint solution.
2. The KNOW-FEEL-DO Method
Instead of listing features, I focused on three questions:
- What do I want them to KNOW?
- What do I want them to FEEL?
- What do I want them to DO?
KNOW: We're not selling "digital note-taking" (their previous way of describing us). That's a nice-to-have feature. We're selling "workflow transformation" – a must-have strategic initiative.
FEEL: Excited about the opportunity to close bigger deals by expanding their reach within enterprises. Our product partnership would help them be relevant to different departments.
DO: Mention our solution whenever discussing workflow challenges with enterprise prospects.
3. Engage, Don't Script
Here's where many presentations go wrong – they script every word. Instead, I practiced my key points until I could deliver them naturally, then focused on three delivery techniques:
a) Ask A You-Oriented Question: I opened with: "How many of you have used the phrase 'digital note-taking' with customers?" (Many hands went up) "After today, I want you to strike that word from your vocabulary. Instead, we're going to talk about workflow transformation." This immediately grabs people's attention.
b) Repeat What Matters: I hammered home the shift from "digital note-taking" to "workflow transformation" throughout the talk. I repeated the phrase, "We're not digital note-taking. We're workflow transformation," at least 4 times. Simple, memorable, actionable.
c) Close With The Know-Feel-Do: I ended by explicitly stating what I wanted them to know, feel, and do. No ambiguity.
The Results?
- 20+ LinkedIn connection requests from attendees
- The VP of Sales pulled me aside to say: "Love how you simplified it. 'Not digital note-taking. Workflow transformation.' My team can remember that."
- Multiple reps approached me after to discuss specific customer opportunities
The success of your presentation isn't measured by how much you say, but by how much people remember and act on.
Your Task This Week
Before your next presentation on stage, try this exercise:
- Write down everything you want to say
- Cut it in half
- Cut it in half again
- Now you're getting close to what people will actually remember
Want to master speaking techniques like this? Join the ā€‹The Impromptu Speakers Academyā€‹ today, where we do live practice sessions to help you nail high-stakes moments like I did this week. If you want to be a confident and memorable speaker who doesn't need to script, you'll be a perfect fit for this program.
And remember: if they can't repeat your message, they won't act on it.
Go crush it.
Preston
