One of the reasons we get into a business that often prepares videos for large groups is the possibility of instant feedback. Getting a group to respond at 7:45 in the morning isn’t always easy. But it can be done, and its very rewarding for the client, for the next speaker, for the audience, and for us.

I was reminded this on a sales call for a meeting opener and closer the other day.

Selling custom programming is difficult because there is never a "perfect" sample you can show a client that will mirror exactly what he or she (or their boss) wants.

In this case, the potential customer showed us what they had done at their last big meeting some years ago. It was a closing video that included shots from thoughout the meeting’s on and off-site agenda, including footage of the opening video and the staging effects and crowd reaction.

Similar to dozens of things we’ve produced over the past decade or so.

Confident we could see them and raise them so to speak, we pulled out a DVD with a recent very "large" closing video we had done in Las Vegas that was wildly– I mean wildly– successful. Part of the success was the fact that the lead singer of the original music we produced suddenly showed up live on stage toward the end of the closer– he lead the crowd in clapping, dancing, and singing– both pre-taped on the big screens, and live in person on the stage.

I hit play. The video ran. About two thirds of the waythrough, peering out from under my glasses at our potential client’s reaction,I realized there had been a major mistake. See, we had cut together a subsequent version of this video that including the on-stage excitement and crowd reaction. But what was being played now was the original version of the video, with no live footage or crowd reactions. It just wasn’t the same.

The room was quiet. "Well, that’s not exactly what we want," said one of the client team. While I knew we could deliver exactly what they wanted, I couldn’t at that moment show it to them.

When I returned to the office I dug up an old demo we had used to sell some meetings with four or five years ago that our Editor Dan Ramsey had put together. It features lots of crowd reaction. I updated it with new scenes and that’s what I’d like you to review here when you have a chance.

Now that’s more like it!!