Location, Location, Location

I’m going to apologize right up front here, because what I have to say is not particularly new. Unfortunately, it keeps getting repeated in different forms because people just keep getting it wrong. It’s about where you say something and how you say it. In this, the realtor’s essential mantra is also that of the good communicator:

Location, location, location.

You have a complicated story – perhaps it is technical or scientific. It is important that people understand what you’re bringing to the marketplace. So many people worry about the technical nature of their product that there are a million slide decks out there that have some version of this:

Some slide decks contain about ten versions of this type of slide. And just about anyone looking at someone else’s deck will say, “You need something different here. There are too many words, too many bullets, not enough white space in that slide.”

But the owner of that slide – he or she knows just exactly how complicated the story is, and that person is terrified of leaving something crucial out. There’s just one problem: if the story is that complicated, you are not going to explain it in a typical slide presentation. There is too much to absorb. There is certainly too much to read in the limited time available.

That’s where the realtor’s mantra comes in:

Location, location, location.

In other words: where can you put supplemental information that fills in the detail? The typical presentation is 20 minutes to a half hour. That’s an informational gatehouse with no indoor plumbing. You can’t house your weekend party of 12 guests in that kind of a venue. So what sort of communications real estate is appropriate for that 7-bedroom, 5-bath mansion of information and how are you going to direct your guests there?

White papers, journal articles, abstracts, federal filings, patents: all of these are structures where you can house those big informational galas. And the acreage you need is generally right there on your website. So do yourself and those sitting in your presentation a favor and use the presentation as a gatehouse to give out maps of the grounds and direct your listeners further up the driveway to your mansion on the web.

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