Story development begins at Setting

In well crafted story development, often lacking in many presentations, start by establishing your setting.

Robert McKee, the well-known screenwriting teacher and author of Story, will advise you that setting is four dimensional and includes: period, duration, location, and level of conflict. In fictional story your imagination is tempted to run wild but must still remain within the realism of your audience. In presentations, and especially non-fiction sales presentations, it’s important to establish the real-world setting for your audience. They need to know which way is up & down and how far you plan to extend left & right.

The major culprit I find is within mid-to-large organizations where the Marketing department is often tasked with developing a sales deck. Your marketing department may be wizards at overseeing the organizational brand and communicating memorable sound bites, but this doesn’t always translate well into a sales presentation. Your organization may be cursed by their knowledge of the product or service and shortchange the required investment of full story development.

In a sales presentation, the setting will require the same steps used by many credible screenwriters:

Period is your story’s place in time. Is your story going to begin with the past history of your organization or the problem currently being solved? Are a start-up tackling a new problem that will communicate a hypothetical future?