Two days after Steve Jobs died I appeared on ABC’s 20/20 to discuss the seven lessons I believe he taught all business leaders and entrepreneurs. Number seven was “master the message.” You can have great ideas but if you can’t deliver those ideas persuasively, it doesn’t matter.
Steve Jobs transformed computers, music, movies, entertainment, telecommunications, and retail. However, few people give Jobs credit for another breakthrough—completely reimaging the way presentations are delivered and how executives tell their brand story. I’ve shared many of Jobs’ techniques in this column (see 11 Presentation Lessons You Can Still Learn From Steve Jobs), but it’s always nice to hear from readers who have successfully copied elements of the Steve Jobs style to win over their audiences. Here’s one recent story.
Joe Mosed was flying from his company’s headquarters in Michigan to pitch a deal in another state. Mosed’s company makes and sells next-generation technology to record 911 emergency calls. He pitches the platform to public safety dispatch centers that usually put the projects out to bid. It’s a competitive market with at least fifteen other companies in the space including some publicly traded firms. This particular project was worth $400,000, much larger than the average purchase. Mosed’s firm was the only out-of-state bidder and, as Mosed later learned, he was considered a long-shot because of it. Mosed won the project and he credits the strength and clarity of his presentation as the primary reason.
“Typically when I fly I like to read a book. That book was The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” he told me. “Once I read the book I knew we were dead if we delivered the old presentation. I recreated the slides, added images and videos, and presented our value as three distinct benefits.” As soon as he landed Mosed shared the new presentation with his sales team, rehearsed, and delivered the presentation the next morning to thirty decision-makers.
Mosed said he received so many compliments on the presentation he kept using it and rolled it out to the rest of his sales staff. In the eighteen months since he began using the new presentation, Mosed’s firm has won several large deals totaling about four million dollars.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Mosed’s presentation worked because it told a simple story behind a complex technology. Jobs intuitively understood that to persuade customers or investors, communication must be engaging, interesting, informative, and, above all, simple.
There are more than seventy references to the word ‘simple’ in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Jobs was inspired by simply-designed homes, consumer products, and computers. “The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple,” Jobs said.
Jobs once called Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive his “spiritual partner.” Ive could have been talking about communication when he said, “We are absolutely consumed by trying to develop a solution that is very simple because as physical beings we understand clarity.” Jobs approached computer and presentation design in the same way. Instead of adding features, he eliminated them. By reducing complexity in communication, he made the message more memorable and ultimately more persuasive.
Let’s turn back to our small business owner, Joe Mosed, who adopted Jobs’ communication philosophy to improve his pitch. Mosed provided me with two slides. The first is a slide from his original presentation. It should look familiar. It looks like most of the estimated 40 million PowerPoint decks that are created every day.
Before slide
Now look at one of the slides Mosed created after he stole a page from the Steve Jobs playbook. By eliminating unnecessary words that cluttered the slide he was able to focus the audience’s attention on the three benefits of doing business with his firm (simplicity, reliability, speed).
This design concept is the same element that makes Apple products so easy to use. There’s only one button on the front of an iPad, so easy a two-year-old can use it. Steve Jobs would often have only one word on a slide. Why add features to a product or words to a slide when clutter will simply ruin the user experience? Since Mosed promotes “simplicity” as a benefit of doing business with his firm, he realized that his communication must be simple as well. He discovered that presentations are much more persuasive when the story is easy to follow.
After slide
Great ideas can change the world. It’s sad to see potentially great ideas die because they weren’t delivered effectively. Steve Jobs taught us that great ideas—simply communicated—can turn into products and services that make life better for all us.