Winning Presentations Are Never an Accident

Three Steps to Success

As a speaker, it’s easy to overload people with too much information, confuse dense data with stunning insights or misjudge the amount of energy it takes for your listeners to absorb and process your material.

By mastering the following simple steps when developing your next virtual presentation, you will keep your listeners actively engaged and ensure that your communication stands out.  

1.    FOCUS

From the start, you must grab everyone’s attention and get them focused on the essence of your talk. You don’t want people checking their phones, fiddling with their Zoom link or putting the dog outside when you’re trying  to rally them around your key takeaway. 

Never underestimate the importance of your first few minutes to energize and excite your audience. Chris Anderson, Curator of the famous TED talks, says to literally get everyone thinking about the same idea before diving into the details. This applies to daily team updates, calls to a key customer, a Quarterly Business Review or a technical talk at a virtual conference.

Check out the first few minutes of his TED talk for a captivating explanation of how this works.

 (Chris Anderson: TED's secret to great public speaking | TED Talk). 

2.    ORGANIZE

Dan Wormenhoven, former executive chairman and CEO of NetApp, shared his insider tips on what’s most important when presenting to senior execs. What was at the top of his list? 

“Don’t make it a mystery novel.” 

In other words, don’t force your audience to wade through a forest of facts in order to figure out your most important ideas, recommendations and crucial insights. 

In a professional setting, one brilliant way to make your material irresistibly easy to follow is to use the famous Minto Pyramid Principle (The Pyramid Principle - Lessons from McKinsey. Using this deceptively simple framework, you arrange your information in a top down manner: 

·     Key Takeaway (opening)

·     Three Main points

·     Sub-points under each of these, followed by sub-sub points, etc.

·     Key Takeaway (conclusion) 

This is an especially effective approach when presenting to top executives because it sends a message right up front that you won’t waste their valuable time or lob a negative surprise at them at the end.  

By the way, if you have a dozen or so important points, cluster them under 3 broader topic headings. Easy patterns to follow are:

·     Past ~ Present ~ Future

·     Steps in a Process

·     Geographical Regions

·     Problem ~ Cause ~ Solution

3.      ELIMINATE BUZZWORDS

While every profession has its share of these, they’re often empty abstractions and confusing. 

Get rid of meaningless puffery such as industry leading, world-class, business persona, ideation, real-time engagement. These do nothing for your talk and rarely clarify, illustrate or make your main points memorable. Instead, why not bring your ideas to life with vivid examples, war stories, startling statistics, analogies, metaphors, a dash of appropriate humor or a personal anecdote? 

For example, we’ve all read thousands of lines of text about the coronavirus but how many specific details will you remember in five years? For me, it will be the experience of two close friends who were flattened by this awful disease and suffered greatly. They’ve recovered but their ordeal, described to me in painful detail, was horrendous and I’ll remember their agonizing struggle forever. And, of course, the relief that  they are both doing well!

It doesn’t have to be difficult to create more masterful presentations. Just remember to make them easy for your listeners to “get” by taking a few extra moments to Focus, Organize and Eliminate Buzzwords.

 Mastering these three simple but surprisingly effective steps can help you stand out and better reach your audience with stimulating, informative and lively material. You will also find that your presentations are lots easier to deliver!

To discuss how to feel less anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed or unprepared for your next virtual presentation, please contact me to discuss your unique situation. There are many remarkable tips, techniques and insights I can share with you.

    MAYLA CLARK EXECUTIVE SPEAKING SKILLS TRAINING AND COACHING www.maylaclark.com    clarkmayla@gmail.com