The maxim, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is not a Chinese proverb, nor is it attributable to Confucius – he never said it either. From Wikipedia
It is believed that the modern use of the phrase stems from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal Printers’ Ink, promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars.[1] The December 8, 1921 issue carries an ad entitled, “One Look is Worth A Thousand Words.” Read the rest of this entry
The subject of your presentation should be fairly straightforward to define. It could be something like:
It is the broad general topic you are speaking about and should be known to the audience beforehand. Just because you have a subject or topic doesn’t necessarily mean that your presentation will stand out.
A theme is a single idea; a continuous thread or recurring segue. It should be short, simple and memorable, up to to ten words that you repeat, repeat, repeat throughout your presentation. It is the angle or direction of your presentation, the glue that holds it together. The theme is the one message you want the audience to take back with them. Much like theme music in movies. Very few people can hear the theme from The Godfather without being transported into the narrative.
Returning to the subjects here are some hypothetical themes:
A good place to use the theme is at the beginning of the presentation, the start or end of each of each major point, and the conclusion.
Questions you can ask to discover your theme are:
What is the compelling benefit of my product, service or solution?
95% of the time we will fix your problems before you even know you have them.
What is the major effect of the problem I am presenting?
$300 billion will be spent on illegal drugs today
You can also use the “journalistic six” to develop your theme.
Good advice is not to have more than one theme – it will confuse the audience.
If you don’t have a stated theme, the audience may ask themselves, “what was that about?”
You’ve dazzled the audience with your brilliantly constructed powerpoint presentation, shuffled your papers on the lectern, banged them on the end to align them, given a half hearted smile and said,
Well, that’s it. Any questions?
I’ve seen plently of people do similar. What a lame ending!
Your conclusion should incorporate these elements.
You might like to show the agenda slide again and summarise from that. Emphasise your main points with passion and conviction.
What you’ve seen this morning is how the government neglects the sciences through inadequate funding, the result of this on our research programs and the action required by all of you to turn this around. It’s not going to be easy, but it will need your feedback to your local representative’s and your company’s feedback in industry forums.
You’ll encounter many blocks on this road to nation building but don’t be dissuaded, it’s vital for our future!
You’ve been presented with some controversial information and challenged to task yourself to turn things around. What’s your opinion?
This is a crucial time in the presentation and one of those where you must use silence to effect. Someone will start speaking and you can expect a lively session of Q and A. In a sales presentation, this is where you will get a lot of information on the status of your propsal and a lot of ideas to close the deal because if you ask, they will tell you what they really think. It’s far better to do this than “hope” that things went well.
Never leave a presentation without a call to action. Why did you give the presentation? Probably because you wanted people to do something. Ask them to do it! Get them to make a commitment.
Summarise.
You’ve been presented with a lot of information.
You’ve asked a lot of questions today, that I’ve been able to answer for you.
You’ve been most generous with your time.
What are our next steps?
More silence. Let them tell you. If they’re ready to commit, they will, if they’re not, they won’t. Trying to close someone who is not ready will only cause future problems.
Thank the audience and invite them to chat with you after the meeting.
This is the heart of the matter. Presenting convincing arguments to the audience so that they will take the action you want them to.
There are several ways of assembling the information for the main body. I like to use a combination of the “journalistic six” together with mind mapping.
Journalism students are trained to answer these questions somewhere in their news article – it is also a good process for establishing whether there are any other facts that need to be stated and provides a number of angles from which to view the story. These are a few examples of the thinking process.
Don’t say things like” a team investigated the process” – who were the people in the team?
The building collapsed in the windstorm.
Why?
Because the foundations were weakened
Why?
Because of the ingress of water.
Why?
Because the flashing was inadequate.
Why?
Because the builders didn’t fit it correctly.
Why?
Because they were not trade qualified.So, the building collapsed because the builders were not trade qualified.
As well as the above, once you’ve established a fact, ask youself “so what?” as many times as you need to establish the importance of the fact, or whether it is indeed relevant. Just because it’s a fact doesn’t mean it’s important.
These is a simple technique. You can see from this series of posts that I have used a mind map to outline what is needed in a presentation. A mind map is a central topic with radiating sub-topics down to an appropriate level. It assists in non-linear thinking, which is the way the brain seems to operate and adds to your creative output. You can find out more here and I like to use the free mind mapping software XMIND
When you present your main points here are some ways to structure them:
In creating the body of points you wish to make you follow a simple pattern of using a compelling introduction, make the points, segue between them and finally segue to the conclusion of your presentation.
A simple statement should be OK.
You’ve now seen how this impacts on the proposal.
Compelling evidence, isn’t it?
Nobody can be expected to know everything. From time to time you’ll be thrown questions you can’t answer.The best answer I’ve heard for a curly question was:
As yet I haven’t accumulated a sufficient database on which to make an assessment.
what he really meant was’ “I don’t know”.
Some techniques for handling these are:
Trust me – people aren’t interested in your life history. My wife went to a presentation by an expert who spent the first hour of a two hour presentation talking about himself. The presentation ended up taking three hours. Do you think she was impressed? Read the rest of this entry
Training courses designed to improve your presentation skills. Not only in the use of Powerpoint, Keynote etc, but also speaking skills and organising your presentation. I am in Brisbane Queensland and have conducted assignments world wide.
