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Freelancer Course: Storytelling

Photo credit Marc Wathieu CC BY NC

This is the fifth post in response to question prompts in Seth Godin's Freelancer Course, found on Udemy. Please feel free to include your answers to these questions in the comment section.
I'll frame these questions in the context that a contact agrees to have me come to their school and provide information about digital content options to their faculty and/or administration.

What is your client afraid their boss will think if they say yes? I need to effectively explain the purpose of the presentation lest they think I will:

Waste their time: This is a trainer's most inexcusable sin. Time, specifically planning time, is increasingly precious, especially with schools that are implementing wide-scale technology integration.

Only promote expensive textbooks: Textbooks are the four-letter word of education. And no one wants to listen to a pitch about how expensive content is the best for students. I don't even think I could do it with a straight face.

What would your client tell their boss to explain why they bought from you? Setting up a consulting presentation is sometimes like a game of telephone. The real meaning gets lost in translation. I think the easy sell that a contact could fall back on include:

Why not? It's free. This is not a horrible response. A lot of PD costs money. But we don't want the school to equate free with low quality.

We told them what to present. In a perfect world, we would work closely with the school to tweak the presentation to fit their goals. Sometimes we get a rigid outline of what they want to discuss. Sometimes we get crickets.

We can do it as a webinar. The kiss of death. When was the last time you gave even 3/4 of your attention to a webinar?

What would you like your client to tell your boss?
This will help our teachers make better decisions. They will talk about other options besides traditional textbooks. They even mentioned OERs!

It will give teachers a chance to ask them questions directly about different course materials. I know I don't know the difference between a digital textbook and an access code.

We had a meeting where we outlined where we are and some of the issues our faculty are having with digital materials. They will tailor the presentation based on those issues.

They offered a couple different presentations. If you don't think we're ready for this one, what do you think about one of these?
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