Episode #97: Go Broad, But Also Go Deep When Presenting

When you hear an excellent presentation, it is easy to be well satisfied. When you are giving such a presentation and the audience are wolfing down your information, it is also easy to be self satisfied. The good is the enemy of the great we say, don’t we. The difficulty is when things are going so well, to know exactly how to take them to a higher level.

I was attending such a presentation recently and the speaker was very, very good. The content was right on topic, for an area which has real attention grabbing power for audiences. The room was a sell out. That is always a good thing isn’t it. The information itself was new, well designed and cleverly arranged in terms of the cadence of the argument. The actual delivery was probably one of the best that that particular business audience will see in a long, long time. All good, so how to make something already working extremely well even better?

This is not easy, but I did notice one thing which I thought could have been added and it may be something that we can all consider when we are constructing our own presentations. When we are delivering an “inform style” of presentation, of course we need to be clear, concise and on topic. We also need to have fresh information that is new to the audience, so that they feel they were in the box seats for a very value deep presentation. This presentation knocked it out of the park in that regard.

When we are doing that inform type of presentation, we can be spending quite a big chunk of our time on the broad brush strokes of industry direction, the shape of the trend, the predictions for the future. This is great because as audience members, we are getting treated to a business equivalent of a massive star show of the outer galaxies, like we will see in a Planetarium .

Future direction is good, but to really take our talk to the highest possible level, we need to do one more thing. We need to connect this broad and scale based projection analysis to the day to day reality of our punters in the audience. The talk I attended could have gone one more step and have reached out to the audience, with some steps they could take to connect the information with their daily challenges. It didn’t have to morph into a complete “how to” presentation, but the inclusion of a few takeaways would have been the super icing on the cake.

The problem is that usually we are so wrapped up in the macro scale of what we are talking about, particularly when we are involved in discussing broad directional changes in an industry, that it is easy to get stuck at that general direction level. We are fully focused on the big picture.

We need to pick up around five things the audience can walk out with, which they can put into immediate action, to link the macro with the micro. There are bound to be things that our audience can do, as a result of hearing this speech, which will better prepare them and their companies for the coming changes. Everyone wants to know what is coming down the pike and what they need to do be ready for it.

The addition of these concrete steps brings the talk even more alive and makes it more relevant for our audience. Why five? Of course, we could probably list ten or twenty items, but the smaller number is easier for the audience to apply, without feeling overwhelmed. Trying to make too many changes too quickly, usually results in nothing getting done. Five is also good as a quantity because it has volume, which gives the talk a greater feeling of worth and credibility. These five points are sufficiently significant, without being off putting.

So the next time you are giving a presentation of the “inform” variety, look carefully at your macro points and try and pull out some practical steps, some juicy takeaways, that the audience can feast on and integrate into their own businesses straight away. If you do this, they will leave the room with a sense of they have seen the future and they are better prepared with some practical steps to deal with it.