Back in the days of conventional photography it was simple. Mont a 4x5 or 120 transparency on a black board, plus I would have tear sheet to show the used image along side.
Now with the digital work. I have made some slide shows of my work and burn on lightscibe CD, print a background photo cover for the case and hand them the package after the meeting.
I don't put music on the presentation just by fear of not having the proper music, plus I don't know if they want to hear any music. I must say that I keep the presentation short, maybe 20 to 30 images plus they are chosen for the type of client.
Still I am not sure if this is the right way to present myself?
Maybe a small printed book might be proper to?
I would like your idea on how to sell your work to clients.
Let me give you the flip side of your request.
I am a recently retired Executive Creative Director, and before that an Art Director. I still do some freelance work and consultation. Just today I advised a promotion agency on local photographers, and selected 3 for their consideration.
During all my years as an art director, I sat through thousands of studio presentations ... sometimes two a week. We had a separate room stacked with DVDs from photographers, special effects houses and TV production studios ... and rows of photo books and portfolios. Unless something really struck us as directly germane to our immediate business needs, any given cold-call photographer's work was lost in the blizzard of stuff piled up all over the place ... no one had the time or energy to organize anything. Most of the time we just tossed it out after a while.
This was the same in every ad agency I've ever work at ... from giant Young & Rubicam to my own smaller partnership agency.
In the past 10 years or so, we found every photographer by looking on the internet and googling the category of work we needed (food, kids, lifestyle, industrial, etc.).
When we met with a photographer he/she was usually one of up to five photographers we had contacted based on their website and/or word of mouth from other art directors. Usually 5 because most agency client companies require a three bid process, and we had to allow for the possibility that a photographer would get booked on our shoot dates.
We then requested a portfolio from each photographer to provide to the client. Clients never liked DVDs (unless it was a cinematographer or film director) ... always a hard copy for still photography, which we would FedEx to them prior to the full bidding process. Then we would have a pre-bid meeting involving a number of client and agency people and hash out which photographers were to do the bidding ... and sometimes we had to hunt for more photographers if the clients didn't feel right about ones we had initially selected.
That is pretty much the real world, unless you deal directly with smaller companies that do not have an ad agency.
-Marc