A Flawless Presentation Beats a Strengths-Focused One, and Vice Versa

Let’s proceed here assuming a presentation in the early stages of product planning. This is a setting where you explain to senior decision-makers and get their approval.

First, what does a flawless presentation look like? Perhaps it’s a presentation that covers everything—the concept of the plan, the market research results based on it, the specific product and service specifications, the schedule, the budget, the necessary personnel, external partners, promotion plans, unit pricing, etc.—all woven together with perfect coherence between them and perfectly consistent numbers.

That’s obviously too much.

There’s something called “the peak-end rule.” It’s a rule stating that people’s impression of an entire conversation is controlled almost entirely by how the “most exciting part = the peak” and “the last part = the end” went. You might think “surely it’s not that extreme,” but this is a well-established phenomenon in behavioral psychology. If we simplify this—and this is more of a rule of thumb from experience—it might make more sense put this way: “No matter how many minutes you talk in a presentation, the other person ends up remembering only 2 or 3 points.” No matter how much you line up, in the end there are really only 2 or 3 points that leave an impression.

When I was pitching in Silicon Valley, I ran into a very interesting phenomenon. You rarely see this in Japan, but “investors stop the pitch partway through to ask questions.” I think there are a few reasons for this.

① They don’t want to waste time watching a long presentation ② If they don’t ask when the thought occurs to them, they’ll forget ③ They don’t think that many factors are actually needed for an investment decision

Regarding ①, I was told this directly. “Sorry, but if there’s even one slide I can’t get interested in, I’m leaving the room.” (Scary.) Regarding ②, I think this can be understood as a countermeasure against being misled by the peak-end rule mentioned earlier. And as for ③, whether it’s a business plan or a product plan, what matters in the early stages is actually very limited.

Conversely, what often happens is falling into “discussion of unimportant points (unnecessary nitpicking)“—and this is exactly the pattern of “the flawless presentation.” (This might sound contradictory, but it’s true.)

For example, suppose the plan is for a product themed around “healing.” The most important point (the one you want to convey) is how you interpret the somewhat vague indicator of “healing” and how you approach it. In a case like this, something like market size is meaningless. I’d say there’s virtually no one who says “who needs healing, yeehaw.” Everyone seeks their own form of healing to a greater or lesser degree. Market size depends on how you slice that segment, so it isn’t something that’s naturally determined. But if you carelessly bring up data like “we surveyed 100 women in their 30s,” you’ll get unnecessary nitpicking like “so men in their 50s aren’t the target?” Also, I very often see presentation materials that, despite being at an extremely early phase of planning, have precisely detailed budgets and business plans written out—and this is a textbook pattern for inviting unnecessary nitpicking. Even if you do write something, it’s more effective to present a rough budget broken down by milestones—quarterly, for the project as a whole, or up through the end of the first phase—since this conveys the message “it’s not that we haven’t thought about it, but at this point it’s not a major priority,” which is far more effective.

Now, I’ve been writing negatively about getting nitpicked, but actually you can give the act of receiving nitpicks a very important role. It’s a kind of presentation technique.

This is know-how I often heard from development team members at Yamaha who enjoyed product planning. Simply put:

• Deliberately leave an easy target for nitpicking in the presentation
• Naturally, that “spot” should be somewhere not very important to the overall project
• Don’t think on the spot and give an answer, and don’t say things like “I recognize it as an issue, but I consider it low priority.” Just say “thank you” or “I hadn’t noticed that,” and end things there without giving an answer
• The next time you get a chance, breezily say “Regarding what you pointed out the other day, I looked into it / put together some data / thought it through myself”—and that questioner becomes an “ally,” taking a cooperative stance going forward

In other words, it’s actually better to have some flaws. Rather than eliminating them, it’s smarter to spend your time conveying your idea, your originality, your sharp concept—and getting people to understand it.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2021/08/473/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.