Part 12 (1/2)
”Whatever rolls your socks up.”
Ben sighed and pulled out a chair and slumped down into it, folding his hands on the table. Holly tried not to stare at them. G.o.d, they were huge.
”So where do we start?” he asked. ”Guide me, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi.”
”Star Trek again?”
He widened his eyes, then pantomimed stabbing himself through the chest. ”Are you kidding me?”
”What?”
”Star Wars. Holly, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi is from Star Wars. How can you confuse the two?”
”For starters, I've never seen either one. I only got your Star Trek reference the other night because I had a roommate who was really into it.”
Ben shook his head in mock dismay. ”How is it possible we're from the same planet?”
”I've been wondering the same thing myself.”
He grinned and leaned further back into the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. ”One of these days, we'll have to have a Star Wars marathon.”
Holly bit her lip, not sure whether the idea thrilled her or just created more potential for temptation. She was saved from deciding when he swung the subject back to the task at hand.
”Sorry, I didn't mean to digress from the purpose of our meeting. Where were we?”
”You asked me for public speaking tips,” Holly reminded him. ”Here's one: get your b.u.t.t out of the chair.”
He grinned and straightened up in his seat, but didn't stand. ”You mean I can't deliver a sales presentation from a seated position?”
”You order drive-thru tacos from a seated position. You watch bad sci-fi from a seated position. You use the bathroom in a seated position.”
”Hey, I'm a guy-”
”My point is that you need to establish a commanding presence right off the bat.” She moved across the front of the room, keeping her posture straight in ill.u.s.tration. ”You have your height, Ben. Use it to your advantage. Take charge of the room right from the start.”
Looking bemused, he stood up. Holly stared up at him, startled by the sheer size of him again.
”Better?” he asked.
”Much.” She took a step back, needing to put a little s.p.a.ce between them. ”Okay, that's a starting point. So tell me about this sales presentation. What are you going to be discussing?”
”Substrate-level phosphorylation in the absence of a respiratory electron transport chain.”
She stared at him. ”Was that in English?”
Ben shoved his gla.s.ses up on his nose. ”I might have to dial it back a little for the intended audience.”
”Unless your intended audience is comprised of nuclear physicists, I'd say that's an accurate a.s.sessment.”
”The audience is a team of executives from Kleinberger. Some of the same guys you met the other night.”
”Aren't they a brewing company?”
”Yep. Second largest craft brewery in the nation, and we're trying to sell them some top-of-the-line fermentation equipment we've engineered and manufactured. It's going to revolutionize their whole process.”
”So-beer? You'll be talking about beer?”
”In a roundabout way, I guess so.”
”Well, there's a topic you know and love. Why don't you start there?”
”Maybe. But I also need to discuss the engineering aspect of things.”
Ben shoved his hands in his pockets, but Holly shook her head. ”Nope, no slouching, no sitting, no hands in pockets. You're in a boardroom, not a video arcade.”
”That's unfortunate. I'd be a lot more excited about this if I got to play Frogger with the audience.” His face brightened suddenly, and Holly thought for the hundredth time how attractive he was when he smiled for real. Then he pulled his hands out of his pockets and held up a jump drive. ”I almost forgot, I have a PowerPoint presentation.”
”Perfect! Let's take a look at it.” She held out her hand, and he dropped the little device into her palm. It was warm from his body heat, and she had the ridiculous urge to press the little electronic gadget to her cheek just to feel something he'd kept snugged up against his thigh.
She ordered herself to stop thinking about Ben's crotch and start thinking about his presentation. ”When did you put this PowerPoint together?”
”About an hour after my dad came into my office and asked me to do this. It's probably a little rough.”
Holly dropped into a chair at the conference table and shoved the jump drive into the slot on the boardroom laptop. She waited as the computer brought up a list of files. There was only one to display. ”Is this it? Kleinberger Sales Presentation.”
”Yep, that's the one.”
She clicked the file, then waited as the computer whirred and flashed. When the PowerPoint file popped up, Holly stared at it for a few beats. ”Your presentation is t.i.tled Eukaryotes, Glucose, and You.”
”Too long?”
”Too-well, a lot of things.” She clicked through a few of the slides, dismayed to see they all looked a lot like the first one. There were no graphics. Just a whole lot of really big words.
”Look, I have a great graphic designer who does amazing PowerPoint work,” she said. ”Let me give this to her in the morning and see if she can spiff it up a little for you.”
”I appreciate it.” Ben shoved his hands in his pockets again, then grimaced and pulled them out. ”Sorry. Okay, what's next?”
”Have you rehea.r.s.ed any of what you want to say?”
”I have a few ideas. I could use help organizing them. What's the best way to approach that?”
”A good strategy is to present your information in an inverted pyramid.” Holly folded her hands on the table in front of her, feeling more in control of herself now that they were talking about a subject she knew well. ”In other words, you want to give your audience the flas.h.i.+est, most pertinent, most important information right up front.”
Ben quirked an eyebrow at her. ”I'm talking about the metabolic process of converting sugar into alcohol. What part of that is flashy?”
”The part where it becomes beer.”
”Good point.”
”Let's try this a different way,” she said, minimizing his PowerPoint slides on the screen. ”Is there any cost savings involved? Projected outcomes? Anything that might make an audience of business professionals sit up and pay attention?”