5 Don’ts when presenting your product’s excellence: Reflections on the Taiwan Excellence Consultations

After reviewing my notes from helping 7 of the 30 companies competing for the 2022 Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal in TAITRA’s sponsored Consultations, I came to a clear realization: success in this product presentation competition depends on understanding and creating a logical argument. 

Unfortunately, many companies do not understand this. And if they can’t produce a set of slides to logically demonstrate the uniqueness and innovativeness of their product, their chances of winning a Gold Medal shrinks. Based on what I saw, here are the five biggest Don’ts if you want to build a persuasive product competition argument.

What are the Taiwan Excellence Awards?

The annual Taiwan Excellence Competition has been held by TAITRA (Taiwan External Trade Council) for almost 30 years to help develop innovation and branding in Taiwan’s business community. Because the Gold Medal winners receive promotion help abroad in Trade shows and events to help find potential foreign B2B buyers, the award is coveted by many Taiwanese companies. 

Out of hundreds of new product applications, 30 finalists are selected to compete for 10 Gold Medals in a live 3-day competition with 8 local and international judges with 2 of each focusing on one of the following evaluation categories: Design, R&D, Quality, and Marketing.

Not all product presentations are sales presentations

Make no mistake, this is not a sales product presentation. In sales, the success of a product presentation depends largely on how closely the sales person understands and communicates the problem that the product solves for the customers. In other words, it is more about empathizing, resonating, and using emotions to influence customers’ decision-making.

In the Taiwan Excellence Competition, in contrast, the audience is not customers, but judges who are often academics and experts who are trained to be analytical. (Read this for the ingredients of a strong competition presentation.) In other words, the presentation needs to offer evidence and a logical argument to influence their decision to choose the 10 most excellent products. 

As with any form of communication, success depends on knowing who your audience is and how to talk to them. The analytical judges will respond most effectively to logical arguments and credible evidence.

What is a logical argument?

Because the judges are mostly professors and are expected to objectively evaluate the products from the perspective of their specialization, it is helpful to review the concept of a logical argument. 

Here is an example of a logical argument:

1. Taiwan Excellence awards a Gold medals to a brand’s product that excel in four categories (Design, R&D, Quality, Marketing) 
2. These four categories are evaluated by a panel of four local and four international judges who are experts in individual categories
3. In 2021, TECO won a Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal 

Conclusion: Therefore,  TECO’s product excels in all four categories. (Argument 1)

A logical argument has a three-part structure. The first three sentences are true statements called premises. They define evidence and provide proof for a conclusion. Taken together, the  three premises allow us to make an inference that the fourth statement – the conclusion – is true. The logical truth of the fourth statement follows directly from the evidence in the premises. When the conclusion’s truth is clear because of the obvious truth of the premises, this is a valid logical argument. 

5 Don’ts that undermine Logical argument

If you do not ensure the logical structure of your argument, it will not be logical. And to the trained analytical judge, it will not be persuasive.

Here are the top 5 Don’ts I saw in the presentations during my consultations:

1. Mistaking slick marketing images and slide design as logically persuasive 
2. Not fully addressing or clearly identifying the four categories
3. Vague slide titles that make it difficult for judges to follow the logical argument of the presentation
4. Not describing the problem the product solves; this is a key part of showing the need for this product
5. Showing product data with no comparison or benchmarks to help the judges understand how credible the data is; this also relates to competitor analysis.

The first Don’t, which I saw in two presentations, involves misunderstanding the basic purpose of the presentation and the expectations of its audience. The slides were very slick and minimal. But the competition presentation is informative and is expected to be logically persuasive, not emotionally persuasive like a sales presentation. The slick slides would be much more suited to marketing or sales types of presentations that aim to more directly manipulate audience feelings. 

However, for the audience of the Taiwan Excellence competition, this could have 3 negative consequences: 1. The lack of visual details will force already tired judges (30 presentations with Q&As over 3 days) to pay attention more closely to spoken words; 2. They expect to see more informative slides and may take offense to a slick marketing presentation; and 3. Since they probably print out the slides (as I do for the consultations), the black backgrounds are frustrating because they made the slides illegible for the few words that were on them. 

The second Don’t should be obvious. The overall presentation should have a logical argument structure like this:

1. Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal products excel in all for categories,
2. Product X excels in Design in these ways (give evidence)
3. Product X excels in R&D in these ways (give evidence)
4. Product X excels in Quality in these ways (give evidence)
5. Product X excels in Marketing in these ways (give evidence)

Conclusion: Therefore, product X is worthy of the Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal. (Argument 2)

Product X is worthy of a Gold Medal because it covers all four categories. So, if the presentation only covers 2 or 3 categories, the conclusion will not follow because the first premise requires 4 more premises – one for each category. Not all presentations I saw made enough effort to add – or discuss – all of the premises.

The third Don’t is not providing enough evidence to support a premise. Impressive sounding data is only impressive if there is a context to help the audience understand what it means. For example, when 1480 hours is data offered to show how durable the Product W light bulb is, is this evidence really convincing? No, because there is no comparison or accepted benchmark to help us understand how Product W outperforms its competitors. In contrast, I enjoyed seeing a competitor analysis in another presentation that clearly showed how their product outperformed 3 other competitors. This evidence was persuasive evidence.

The fourth Don’t is more about clearly communicating the premises to make it easier for the judges to see the logic of the presentation. In general, slide presenters have weak slide design skills and use very general titles for slides, like “Quality”. A much more informative slide title would specify in a phrase or even sentence what is unique or effective about the Quality processes. A slide deck designed in this way will let the judges vertically skim through the set of 14 slides or so and clearly see the logic of Argument 2. 

Designing good slide titles will also force the slide designer to identify and concisely communicate the main point of the slide, while at the same time seeing how that slide fits into the main logical argument of the presentation. I did not see one set of slides that managed to do this.

The fifth and final Don’t suggests a deeper argument for the actual existence of the product. An excellent product exists because it solves a real problem for people and makes their lives better somehow. The more important the problem solved, the greater the value of the product. This can be a very important strategy for persuasion in the competition: if many of the 30 products are like Product X and have strengths in all four judging criteria, then products like the below Product Y that clearly define the solved problem and its importance will stand out. 

1. Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal products excel in all for categories,
2. Product Y excels in Design in these ways (give evidence)
3. Product Y excels in R&D in these ways (give evidence)
4. Product Y excels in Quality in these ways (give evidence)
5. Product Y excels in Marketing in these ways (give evidence)
6. Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal products should solve important consumer or business problems
7. Product Y solves an important consumer or business problem

Conclusion: Therefore, product Y is worthy of the Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal. (Argument 3)

In this presentation competition, product Y will probably be scored higher than product X and will win the Gold Medal.

Companies competing for the Taiwan Excellence Gold Medal should avoid the 5 Don’ts above and design their presentation with the competition theme and audience in mind. It’s like a game of chess. If they follow the logical rules and create – and communicate – a logical argument showing their product excels in all four categories, they have maximized their chances to win the Gold. Checkmate!