Comments on: The Secret of a Steve Jobs Sales Pitch

By: Angela DeFinis

Angela DeFinis — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:51:58 +0000

Martin, first of all thank you for contributing this excellent post to our Blog Carnival. Your behind the scenes peek at various rhetorical devices is enlightening. The fact that Jobs can deliver so well in just about any venue is a tribute to the powerful, technique laden prose. Who is his speechwriter? And on an entirely different subject–tell me about your last name.

By: Angela DeFinis Blog; Best Public Speaking Blogs; DeFinis Communications Blog; Top Blogs; » Blog Archive » The Impact of Public Speaking on Top Sales Performance

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:55:11 +0000

[...] The Secret of a Steve Jobs Sales Pitch Martin Shovol – Creativity Works How does Steve Jobs create such effective sales performances? [...]

By: Neil T

Neil T — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:29:09 +0000

Too cool Martin – thanks for the introduction… hope i can learn something for my next public talk… if audiences can make the effort to turn up, the least we can do is make an effort to communicate properly.
I also didn’t know climax meant ladder – thinking about it logically, it kind of makes sense

By: Martin Shovel

Martin Shovel — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:01:17 +0000

Thanks Marion. Phil’s piece is well worth a read!

By: Marion Chapsal

Marion Chapsal — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:38:35 +0000

Great post, Martin. It reminds me a counter example, which happened last week at the hyper mediatized SXSWi event in Houston.
Reading some comments on Twitter, I eventually learned about what happened thanks to PhilPresents ‘s Blog.
Read Twitter CEO Evan Williams at SXSWi : Why it went wrong http://bit.ly/cOMEjC
Or how to fail at building the climax, and eventually the Coup de Foudre!
(Evan Williams should have taken the “Stairs” or the ladder to success!)

By: Martin Shovel

Martin Shovel — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:55:06 +0000

Delighted you like my blogpost Roger. And many thanks too for the book recommendation – they’re always welcome!

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:50:52 +0000

Great blog. More Jobs anecdotes in Jon Steel’s book, Perfect Pitch – an excellent read by an entertaining and very successful adman. He also uses the OJ Simpson trial and the London 2012 final pitch in Singapore to illustrate technique.

By: Martin Shovel

Martin Shovel — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:33:10 +0000

Really pleased you enjoyed my post Isobel. Thanks too for your example of how Jobs transforms an abstract technical idea into something concrete and understandable – i.e. gigabytes into songs in your pocket.

By: Isobel

Isobel — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:18:52 +0000

Martin, Great article, thanks v much. I’d always heard that one of the factors in Jobs’ success is down to the amount of preparation time he gives to every talk (lots); one of my favourite aspects of his presentations is how he makes information meaningful e.g. the i-pod x gb storage=”1,000 songs in your pocket”.
Max, I agree-I think fitting the laptop into the envelope was a fabulous visual aid!

By: Max Atkinson

Max Atkinson — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:37:51 +0000

Applause here after ‘an iPod’ and ‘a phone’ is also a version of the ‘clap on the name’ technique I blogged about yesterday (http://bit.ly/cCXMua) – only in these cases, it’s ‘clap on the name of a product’ rather than a person.

As you know, I too am quite a fan of Steve Jobs presentations (not to mention Apple products), and any of your readers wanting to learn more from him might also like to inspect his brilliant use of an object as a visual aid when announcing the MacBook Air laptop: http://su.pr/1wZ7Di.

But even he occasionally manages to get things wrong, as with the premature timing of some of his slide changes that can be seen at http://su.pr/2E5VQP – so he is human, after all!