Consulting Journal: Techniques - Controlling your presentations

Techniques: Controlling your presentations

by David Blakey

Here are some simple techniques for designing presentations - including when to take a sip of water.

[Monday 10 September 2001]

Many consultants get involved in planning, preparing and delivering presentations to clients and prospects. A few consultants are trained instructors. We have been trained in how to plan, prepare and deliver classes and workshops and in how to use debriefings after each training session to evaluate, to change and to improve the content and method of our classes and workshops. We have not necessarily studied full time at a teacher training college - although that is an excellent path for presenters' training - but we have learnt what is involved in delivering information and knowledge to other people. It is a fact that many more consultants get involved in presentations than have been trained as instructors and presenters.

It is useful for anyone involved in presentations to understand how people learn.

People usually learn by listening, or seeing, or by experience. Most presentations today are based on a visual delivery, using software like Microsoft PowerPoint and incorporating video and animations. Traditionally, presentations used to be speeches, with some “visual aids” added. These visual aids were mainly static slides, and were often photographs or drawings of the objects or places that were being talked about. Some people believe that today's almost exclusively visual presentations are better. They are wrong.

Here are the stages of constructing effective presentations.

List the information to be delivered

Include anything that you think will convince them to choose you as their consultant. This can include “Get them to trust me”, “Show them I have a sense of humour”, and so on, as well as the more obvious “Show them how the methodology will be applied”.
Decide how to interest them

It helps if you know something of your audience. If you know, for example, that your prospect is very keen on consultants who use methodologies, then your task will be relatively simple. You will be able to interest them immediately you start to talk about your methodology.

If you don't know this, you will have to be more subtle. Your prospect may be interested in methodologies, in which case you can say that you're about to talk about your methodology. If you see that this is not working, then you may want to mention an advantage that the methodology will have for them. You may choose to mention a set of reasons, from the use of a tried and tested approach, through the ability to tailor your approach to their individual needs, through the certainty that your outputs will match their expectations, until you reach a reason that clearly captures their interest.

All of this should be in your plan.
Decide how to deliver the content

In some instances, you may be able to show an image and then talk about it. In others, it may be better to just face the audience and talk to them directly, without any visual aid. In others, it may be better to let them see or even handle an object.

This last technique is moving towards experiential learning. You may have imagined that presentations always have to be based on visual or auditory learning - slides and speeches. You can, however, bring some experiential techniques into play as well. In many forms of selling, getting the prospect to touch and handle the product is important. If you have something that your prospects can actually experience, it can reinforce your visual and auditory messages. How you deliver your content should be in your plan.
Write a script

Scripting is important. You should have a script, even if it isn't a word-by-word account of what you are going to say. The script should describe the information that you intend to cover, the results of delivering the information, and any alternative actions if the results are not achieved.

You should rehearse this script several times. You do not need to remember all the words that you will use, but you do need to know how the parts of the presentation fit together and how they continue on from each other.

My tips

Here are my tips.

Have a plan.

Ignore people who tell you that you can just stand up and present without a plan. Giving a presentation is like being a stand-up comedian. It may look as if it's “off the cuff”, but it rarely is.
Keep the material relevant.

If you have standard presentations, then go through them and drop anything that isn't relevant or include additional topics that are. Be particularly careful with international material.
Don't try to talk about anything that you don't fully understand yourself.

You will be less nervous as a presenter if you're confident that you know what you're talking about. The most nervous presenters I've seen clearly did not understand - or prepare - their material.
Don't try to answer questions that you can't - or shouldn't - answer.

It's acceptable to say “I don't know the answer to that, but I'll find out for you”, provided that you make a note of the question right there, in front of your audience. This will convince them that you will attempt to answer the question later and that you're not just dismissing it.
Be careful with jokes.

Include jokes only when they have a useful purpose, such as changing the pace of a presentation. A joke and its subsequent laughter provide a pause to change pace or mood. I only ever plan to put one joke into a forty-minute presentation, and I usually miss it out.

Whatever else you “ad lib” in your presentation, don't do it with jokes.
Take pauses.

If you need a pause to let your information sink in, then take one. Before you begin, make sure you have a glass of water. When you stand up to speak, make sure that you're at least three paces away from it. When you need a gap, stop, say “excuse me”, walk to the glass, pick it up, sip some water, put it down and walk back. Then carry on. That's a five second gap, which is a good time for your audience to absorb what you've just said. Such gaps can have an enormous impact on your audience, and I include them in my presentation plans.

Be prepared to ad lib water breaks if you can see that your message is something that your audience had not thought of before.

Finally, there will be times when you will be presenting as part of a team, with one of you speaking while the others remain seated and silent. Do not gaze at the current presenter and nod and smile knowingly. This does not look good to the audience, whatever you may have been told to the contrary. It is a much better idea for you to listen to the presenter but to watch the audience. You may be able to observe their reactions better than the current presenter. You should note them and discuss them with your colleagues at the presentation debriefing. You do have debriefings, don't you?

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