Rule 4: Connection & Engagement

This is a continuation of The Rules: Create & Deliver Effective Presentations Every Time, providing detail and depth on the fourth rule – Connection and Engagement (put away the dog and pony).

Put the Pony out to Pasture

Connecting with your audience is important, everyone knows that, right? Right? You know what else is important? Connecting with your fellow presenters.

Seriously, I’ve heard from clients about how the palpable disconnect and tension between presenters distracted everyone from the actual presentation. Who cares if the slide deck looked good if you're distracted by how much the presenters appear to virulently dislike each other.

This is not good. If what you’re selling is a service, it’s even worse. There you are, taking the time to tell the prospect about the excellent service they’ll receive from your great team…all of whom actively despise each other. Again, not good.

How do you ensure your team is engaged with each other, and that everyone connects with the audience?

Rule 3: Visuals Matter

This is a continuation of The Rules: Create & Deliver Effective Presentations Every Time, providing detail and depth on the third rule – Visuals Matter (but not how you think they do)

Picture and a Thousand Words

If you’re worried about following the presentation design guidelines – five bullets per slide, no more than ten words per bullet – you’re doing it wrong. Seriously, stop it.

If your slide deck is edge-to-edge words, you may as well tell your audience to read the proposal, or article, or hand out your notes and be done with it. Because reading is what they’ll be doing anyway, right before they nod off.

Text-heavy slides and bad visuals are where the death-by-PowerPoint meme was born. Endless, bulleted text on presentation slides are a crime against humanity that needs to stop.

Rule 2: Know Your Audience

This is a continuation of The Rules: Create & Deliver Effective Presentations Every Time, providing detail and depth on the second rule – Really knowing your audience, and what they actually need, is the foundation of your story.

Let me Tell You Your Story

 “Well, what should we tell them?” 

This is frequently the first question asked at presentation kick-off. When we insist on having an established story before building a slide deck to illustrate the message, it's sometimes asked with some tension...or shouting. The answer is actually simple – so simple it can seem difficult.

You know what story to tell by knowing your client, knowing what matters to them most, and then using that knowledge to tell them their story.

First, you need to understand the problem or challenge you’re trying to solve, then you can articulate your solution and its value for the client. You may not always be focused on solving a problem, but you do need to figure out what your audience cares about.

Why would they want to sit and listen to what you want to say?

Answers include: because it’s about them, it’s about a topic that concerns them, they feel emotionally invested in the outcome, or you’re telling them how you’re going to solve their challenges.

Rule 1: Story First

This is a continuation of The Rules: Create & Deliver Effective Presentations Every Time providing detail and depth on the first rule – Story is Everything (and it comes before visuals)

What Does that Even Mean?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a sales professional say, “Just send me a standard deck and I’ll figure out how to fit what I want to tell my client into the slides.” Um, no.

Without a compelling story, all you have is cool wall paper.

There were times we were forced to accommodate this type of request and it never ended well.

The aftermath resulted in two scenarios. Either a panicked call from the sales team one day before the presentation because they realized during the group practice session that they didn’t actually know what they were supposed to be saying. Or, in the final week leading up to the client meeting, the team would begin making extensive edits to the “standard deck” as they tried to manipulate the content into something that would appeal to their client. By the time they were up to version 15, the slide deck was a mess, and they still didn't know what they were supposed to say.

Both scenarios involved a lot of stress, last minute scrambling, blame and recrimination. So, bad things leading to bad presentations.

The Rules: Create & Deliver Compelling Presentations Every Time

For more than seven years, my team of Presentation Specialists and I supported client-facing presentations for a national organization of some 300 individuals. Over that time, we created thousands of slide decks. Conservatively speaking, at least half bombed.

No, I’m not confessing to being bad at my job or criticizing my team. They produced clean, professional slide decks with accurate grammar and clean formatting that met brand standards. Yet, at least half of the presentations were, subjectively speaking, bad.

Why? How? What could we have done to fix it?

At the time, our control over presentation development was limited to providing strategy input, building slide decks, editing content and coaching presenters. Our impact on the final product varied based on the quality of engagement with the team delivering the presentation. As much as we wanted to ensure everything was great every time, success relied on the people who stood in front of the client – how well they prepared, worked together and executed the presentation.

The moral is this: even the tightest, best looking slide deck is just nice wall paper if the presentation flow, content and delivery are off. Also, a really bad deck can ruin your presentation (we’ve all seen it), but the best-looking deck out there can’t save a presentation that is otherwise bad.

So, how do you ensure your presentations are compelling, effective and successful? For that matter, how do you know if they’re even any good?