…And like all art forms there’s a lot of science, skill and technique behind them. Think of it this way: dancers might look great, singers might sound great and painters might create stunning visual stuff – but unless you’re an insider you don’t see the rehearsal, the practice, the hours in the gym or the training room…
… or the failures.
Beethoven wrote some rubbish. Van Gogh painted stuff he tore up or painted over. We just don’t hear about them.
And so it is with business presentations. You’ll need to put in the hours in the metaphorical gym and you’ll need to risk writing a few bad tunes before you’re genius is recognised Fortunately, you don’t need to be a genius to be good enough.
To be honest, the standard for most presentations in meetings is so low it’s not going to be hard to stand out from the crowd! 
The question is, of course why you’d want to!
Well, in this column, my intention is to take you through the art and science of business presentations. Obviously what’s in it for me is that you like what I’m producing and pay me to give you some training or to design some presentations for you… after all, the written word can only scratch the surface. What’s in it for you might be equally obvious. If you need funding, if you need investment, if you need a contract, if you need to report on progress, if you need to convince people around you that your ideas are the way to go… well then, that’s when there’s something in it for you!
We’ll do some work on the tools and techniques that will help and we’ll take a look sometimes at presentations or speeches that other people have made – perhaps we’ll have a look at what’s going on in the news, too.
So how about I simply get started, eh?
Okay.
I’ve been training people in how to make presentations for about seven years now and one of the most common mistakes we see is that people fire up their computer and turn on PowerPoint (or another slide-design piece of software) as soon as they realise (or get told!) that they have to make a presentation.
Because of they way our brains work, this is pretty much always the wrong thing to do.
Human brains are pretty good at being logical and many of us are pretty good at being artistic, too, but practically no one can do both at the same time. And because of the way we’re taught and the way our society works if we try both, logic will win.
Computers are logical. (They may not feel that way when you’re trying to get one of them to do what you want, I know!) As soon as your computer sits there with Powerpoint turned on your logical brain starts to kick in and your ability to think creatively and design your presentation is cut away from under you.
To make matter worse, of course, because most of us don’t use Powerpoint frequently (although the chances are we sit through enough of it!) we’re not sure how to use it and we end up pretty much taking the default set of options it presents to us.
Where’s the inspiration in that? Where’s the effectiveness?
I’ll talk another time about how to make your presentations (and your slides if you use them) effective. But for now, let me just suggest that instead of hitting the PPT button as soon as you can, you stop first, make yourself a cup of tea (coffee will do, I suppose!) and as yourself three questions.
What does my audience already know?
There’s no point in starting to talk to your audience about things they already know. You’ll bore them and patronise them. Either way they won’t listen and you’ll look silly. Equally there’s no point in assuming things they don’t know – you’ll lose them, they’ll not understand you, and you’ll look silly. See the pattern here?
By the way, the most common form of not answering this question that I see is using jargon and other types of assumption. The more you know about your topic, the greater the risk of doing this – so test your presentation out on a tame friend who knows nothing about your field of expertise!
What do I need them to know?
If you can’t answer this, pretty much instantly, you’re wasting your time and your audience’s. Here are a couple of things you might not be aware of that could help here… people can generally only handle three new ideas so don’t try and tell them too much! And remember, that’s three new ideas from their point of view, not yours!
A pretty common mistake we see here (at curved vision) is that presenters try tell people everything they know. All at once. In a rush. Or at least they try to. There’s a reason your teachers didn’t do that when you were at school!
Typically we hear people tell us that their presentation is about X, Y and Z. Sadly that won’t work, either. Presentations should change things, otherwise they’re just an expensive waste of money. So get your mindset sorted out – your presentation is about something… it’s to do something. What do you want your audience to do differently by the end? If the answer’s not obvious, stop and ask yourself if you should be making a presentation in the first place!
What’s the best way to tell them it?
This question’s not exactly rocket science, is it?! Is a presentation the best way to do it? What about a written report? What about one backed up by the other? For us, the most common mistake we see here is that people try and use one document – typically a bunch of slides – to kill two birds with one stone; they use them for the presentation and as the handouts for people to take away. I’m going to say this only once (actually, that’s a lie, I’m going to go on about it a lot!)… slides don’t work as documents and anything that you can use as a document is not going to work as slides. Deal with it, accept it and set aside the time you need to write both!
WordPress Support for blogs and websites
Recent Comments