As we prepare to make an IMPAX presentation, a powerful strategy we often use is to review the presentation with a coach prior to finalizing it. There are several reasons to do this, one of which is to confirm and expand your understanding of the customer's business prior to presenting to the decision maker. As a result, we are reviewing several pages about the customer's business, which may include their profile, objectives, strategies, trends, business issues and departmental issues, among others.

When doing the coach review, it's not enough to hear that our draft is right on target. It rarely is. Instead, we need to ask the right questions of our coach to gain greater insights. If we ask "How does this page look?" they'll probably say that it looks okay. We need to probe deeper, and ask questions like:


What points are missing from this page?
If you had to remove one bullet from this page, which one would it be?
If you had to add a bullet to this page, what would you add?
Which of these bullets will have the strongest impact?
How would you re-sequence this page to make it more effective?


Asking these types of questions will help the coach to help you in improving your presentation and strengthening your impact with the decision maker.