When it comes to meeting people and making presentations in person, you’re in a good position to “read the room,” to get a sense of what your information is like. or is not being accepted. You can see firsthand the nuances of body language, facial gestures, and signs of disengagement from people looking at their mobile phones.
With most of your meetings now taking place virtually, it becomes more challenging to take the pulse of your customer or prospect’s response through the small screen. It can get even more complicated when your audience of one or many has the camera turned off, forcing you to rely on verbal cues alone.
The good news is that you can still deliver a powerful presentation that converts. Before you sit down to craft your next presentation, consider these three things; the purpose of the presentation, the decision the client or prospect must make, and how much time they will have to deliver the presentation.
Once you know those first few things, you can sit down and reverse engineer the layout and content of your presentation.
The purpose of the presentation
When you just read the previous paragraph, you may have thought to yourself that the goal and the decision to be made are one in the same and they are not.
Before we can start writing the content of the message, you need to know what the goal of the presentation is. Determine if the message is intended to educate about a product or service; to inform the audience, such as a company advertisement or to get their buy-in. Lastly, is it to inspire or motivate the audience like many corporate leaders might be doing for their employees and stakeholders?
The business decision to be made
In preparing for any presentation you might give, you need to understand one key thing: that the presentation is being made so that the person or team members listening can make a decision. Your role as presenter is to give them the information they need to make a decision to say yes, say no, move on to the next meeting, raise your hand on an idea, or at least ask questions.
Delivery time
You’re starting off on the wrong foot with your presentation if you haven’t determined how long you have to deliver your presentation. It’s a big mistake to make a presentation last longer than the audience expects, and as a result, you could effectively squash an opportunity.
First of all, find out how much time you have to talk. Then immediately rest for 10 to 15 minutes. This will ensure that you finish early and have time for questions and answers at the end.
So if you are given an hour, plan around 45-50 minutes and then reverse engineer the presentation. This means that you should design your presentation with this moment in mind. Allow perhaps 5 minutes for the introduction and perhaps another 10 minutes for the conclusion and closing. That means I need to split the remaining 35 minutes for the body of the presentation.
The brain likes the number 3. That means your listeners will remember more of your presentation if you present the content in three themes. Those three topics, along with their talking points, would be distributed throughout the 35 minutes for approximately 10-12 minutes for each topic that is shared.
You can use this format for any given amount of time for your presentation.
So now that you know your goal, what desired decision the audience needs to make, and how long to deliver, we can now move on to creating a persuasive presentation.
Create a persuasive presentation
When it comes to giving your presentation, it is important that you have a structure for your talk, it allows you to establish a foundation for your talk.
There are two formats to consider:
A. Past, Present, Future
Start with a discussion about where your audience (customer, stakeholder, peers) was in the past.
Establish what is happening in the present (what they are or are not achieving).
Explain how you can improve their future, where you can take them.
B. Why you? Why your company? Why now?
Every time you give a presentation, there are three questions you need to answer for the prospect or client, even if they don’t ask you directly.
You need to answer the question why they should work with you as an individual.
You need to answer the question of why they should consider your company, product or service, especially if they currently have a current vendor or company that they are happy with.
It must answer the question of why they should work with your company at this time. This is where opportunity cost is demonstrated.
presentation format
The classic presentation structure has four main parts: an introduction, the body (the 3 main talking points), a conclusion, and a closing.
Building a persuasive presentation is never complete until you add a conclusion and end with a clear and confident closing.
The conclusion provides a quick reference to the opening that caught your eye, ties up any loose ends, and ends your argument. The presentation is only complete when you close it, that is, you include a specific call to action.
There you have it. A process that will allow you to write a presentation by first asking key questions, using your time strategically, and then building the argument for your presentation.
