The best proposal we've read all year
The challenge: get your parents to buy you a tortoise. The solution: a PowerPoint deck, naturally
We learn the arts of persuasion at an early age. In the language of grown-ups, it’s called ‘pester power’.
There are different techniques the budding young salesperson can deploy to get a result. The most basic is to yell and scream until the budget-holder is embarrassed into stumping up for the chocolate bar/bag of crisps that’s your core objective.
But causing a scene and deafening the parent is a short-term fix. It’s seldom a good idea to instil anxiety and annoyance in the client body. They may even impose sanctions that make a steady future supply of chocolate bars/bags of crisps unreliable at best.
So the more advanced junior sales professionals try more sophisticated methods.
This highly skilled practitioner uses one that will be familiar to executives everywhere who sell personal finance and electronics products. Deluge the client with a succession of talking points and move on quickly whenever they try to settle on one.
Three-year-old Matteo also uses a favourite tactic for politicians faced with a difficult media interview: repeat the interlocutor’s name as often as you can. Matteo also builds up to the core point: that someone could pull the tablecloth and the cupcakes will fall on the floor, so it’s better that he eats them all before that can happen.
He achieved his aim in ways he could never suspect. And ‘Listen, Linda’ clocked up 28 million views.
But now let’s look at the finest example of juvenile salesmanship we’ve ever encountered.
Children want to have a pet. That’s a given. There are several techniques they can use to get their way – blackmail (‘I won’t eat any more greens until we get a Spaniel’), threats (‘Unless we have a hamster I am going to be depressed FOR LIFE’) and a straight emotional appeal – crying inconsolably when the subject of kittens comes up.
But one 13-year-old eschewed these crude tactics. She approached the goal of persuading her parents to let her have a tortoise with a rigour and skill that would put most proposal writers and bid professionals to shame.
Here's the tweet that started it all off.
Her 23-slide presentation begins, as they should, in an upbeat fashion:
Let the tortoise meeting commence!!
This is great. Get some energy in the room, especially if your targets are sceptical about having the meeting in the first place.
She focuses first on benefits: keeping a tortoise in her bedroom will guard against insomnia and anxiety. She doesn’t need to spell out the obvious message: what parent wouldn’t want that for their child? And note the assumptive close: instead of arguing whether she should have a tortoise, she focuses on where the tortoise will live and even which direction he/she will face.
The aside on tortoises in Hindu mythology may seem gratuitous. But it makes an important point: this girl really knows her tortoises, and potential clients are always impressed when you display an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter.
There’s a slide on logistics next, in which our petitioner offers a comprehensive list of the things her tortoise is going to need, including sphagnum moss, a UVB basking bulb and a water mister.
This is a potentially dangerous moment when your audience realises the financial outlay and complexity of bringing the scheme to fruition.
But from long experience of some very long meetings, I’d argue that you should always spell out, honestly and in detail, what the client obligations are going to be. It’s far worse to, say, get the tortoise installed and then tell them out of the blue, ‘oh, did I forget to mention the sphagnum moss? We’ll need a ton of that, of course’.
The closing slide is the real clincher.
So many slide headers are overlong and unclear. Here’s some simple advice: tell your listeners what they need to know, what they are about to read and why it matters.
This one reads: Now All That’s Left To Do Is Buy Your Tortoise.
It’s so satisfying, so simple – and the call to action could not be clearer. Note that rhetorical trick too: it’s not ‘my’ tortoise, it’s ‘your tortoise’.
All that remains is to make the purchasing process as straightforward as possible. She explains why she favours a particular breed. Again, you see skilled sales practitioners do this all the time. You went into the showroom with a vague idea it might be time for a new car. Before you know it, you are weighing up the virtues of the 1.2 hybrid in racing green versus the 1.5 automatic AWD in cornflower blue. The third option – not to buy a car at all – has mysteriously disappeared.
And like all the best car salespeople, she comes up with a killer finance package: put down a £25 deposit, fully refundable if you're not completely satisfied.
But we are not talking about mere satisfaction here.
All presentations need a strong, upbeat ending and a clear call to action. This takes some beating:
Click here to make the best decision of your life and buy yourself a lovely little friend!
Did it work?
The tortoise presentation has had 2.1 million views so far o Twitter.
Did it work? Of course it did.
“She’s won. We haven’t told her yet, but there’s no way of denying this.”
That’s the girl’s somewhat bemused father, writer Matthew Horton. He then added another comment:
Wow. Well then, if you like tortoise presentations, you’ll, er, love my book on George Michael’s Faith, available from all good stockists and Amazon
Good try. But maybe he should bring in the experts next time.
We can help you win a tortoise…among other things
We think a lot about the language and techniques of persuasion. Check out our latest courses at Forthwrite – the business of good writing.