As life becomes more complex, so do the presentations.
As the number of people, technologies, ideologies, crises, etc. increase in our lives, we can understand that prioritizing, integrating, balancing them will get more complex. But what’s the excuse with presentations?
No, it seems that people are confusing the goal of a presentation – enabling the “audience” to accept your proposed idea – with how much information can be “crammed” into it and how long it is.
We’re clearly forgetting the value of a succinct presentation is that it’s easy to follow – and therefore more likely to generate results. Less truly is more! There’s no excuse for your compelling reason (often your Competitive Advantage) to show up as a footnote on page 21 of a 38 page presentation!
Here’s a suggestion for developing more succinct and focused presentations:
- When you start your outline, identify your SOCO: the single overriding communication objective. This is the main message to your target audience, by which you would like to achieve your communication aim.
- Outline the presentation – with each “slide” providing a unique message and providing whatever support it needs from facts, statistics, social proof, etc.
- Practicing the trait that Steve Jobs used to acknowledge was a key to his success: saying no.
Review what you have and cut, cut and cut.
Then, when you deliver the presentation, remember to state your compelling point at the beginning, use the presentation to explain why it’s important and conclude by reinforcing the point.
If winning deals is even more important now, as you try to build a post-pandemic company, feel free to contact us for help: www.presentationexcellence.com