I was working today along with teammate Pat Ryan at the SAMA University program in Atlanta. Our topic was, "Using Presentations to Drive Customer Engagement". The group included some really strong Strategic Account Managers from companies like Emerson, Boehringer Ingelheim and Discover Card.

One of the things they all talked about is the challenge they face with the corporate presentation templates they are handed down from really well intended marketing people. The challenge - these presentations are almost always focused on us and our business. There may be 100+ slides all about us. Of course, no one would present them all but we would search the deck and pull out the 30 or 40 or so that best fit our situation. These templates fundamentally disagree with our desired presentation flow - Them-Us-Fit-Action.

The issue here is that these templates force us to focus on ourselves, instead of putting the focus on where it belongs - the customer. We need to create our presentations with the customer in mind - their objectives, strategies and issues.

As a group we came to the conclusion that we need to use these templates as tools, finding slides that support our efforts, while breaking the rules and developing truly customer focused presentations.