The first step to creating winning business presentations is to understand who you are presenting to. But it is not possible to understand every member in the audience at the same time. So let’s take an example of one typical person and try to understand them better…
Meet Joe…
He represents a typical business audience.
A quick note: It doesn’t matter if the name is Joe or Jane and whether s/he is in Tokyo or Texas, your audience faces these exact same issues.
There are three characteristics of Joe you might be interested in as a business presenter.
1. Joe is always busy.
There are a hundred things competing for his attention at any point of time. He is already pressured by…
Missing deadlines on his projects
- Missing turnaround on his weekly reports
- Piling mails in his inbox
- Unopened messages on his cellphone, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Not to mention the constant demands from…
- His boss – to deliver on his monthly quota
- His staff – to train on the new reporting software
- His wife – to spend time with the family.[/column]
As you can see, Joe is torn between too many things.
So, he has developed a useful habit of scanning and ignoring:
- He scans subject messages of his mails and ignores the ones that don’t look important.
- He scans the headlines of a report and ignores the portions that don’t look useful.
He is in a constant search for quick cues that allow him to ignore the routine and mundane.
He carries the habit to the boardroom too.
When you start your presentation – he scans your slides to ‘get’ the message as quickly as he can. When your key messages are buried inside a ton of text – he ignores your slides. Period.
So, if you need to engage Joe in your presentation – your slides should convey the key message quickly and clearly.
2. Joe’s working memory is already overworked.
He doesn’t have the time nor inclination to think and process your content to infer the message.
If you want to stand any chance of ‘reaching’ Mr. Joe, you need to…
- Chunk your content into small digestible messages
- Present the messages in incremental steps
- Make your messages utterly plain and obvious
3. Joe is not just your audience but also is your ‘message distributor’.
Realize that most business decisions are taken long after you make your presentation. Usually, it is up to Joe to relay your key points to other members involved in the decision making.
So, if you want to win business, you need to make your message memorable for Joe. Countless studies have shown that a simple way to increase the recall of your message is to make it visual.
Your next steps…
In summary, here is the key to creating business presentations that will engage Joe and make him take the action you need:
- Chunk your content into bite sized messages
- Make your messages plain and obvious
- Convey the messages visually
- Present your message in incremental steps
Over the years, we’ve found that presenters need help in following these steps. So we’ve put together steps you can follow to achieve this…
A useful resource to help connect with Joe:
If you want to learn how to create winning business slides that incorporate all the 4 aspects you saw just now, I suggest you take a look at our ‘Ramgopal’s PowerPoint Mastery Program’.
In the program, you will find…
- How to convert your text-based slides into clear and memorable visuals in a simple 4 step process based on cutting edge neuroscience. The 4 steps are surprisingly simple that even a beginner can master them in a short time (Covered in Visual Slides Mastery Section of the program)
- How to sequence your message with purposeful custom animation, so your audience will engage with your content, even if your subject is bone dry (Taught in Custom Animations Mastery section)
- How to design your slides, so it bypasses the spam filters of the brain (Taught in Visual Slides Mastery Section)
…and so much more.
Ramgopal’s PowerPoint Mastery Program is the most comprehensive and creative PowerPoint training online for business presentations.
It is the only program you’ll ever need to master your PowerPoint skills.
Why don’t you click here and check out the details of the program?
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