Structuring Your Presentation for Greater Impact

Ever wonder why your presentations are not having the desired effect on your audience? You know the target audience. You include data or reference a case study about customers that have been successful with your product. You provide lots of benefit statements. What’s wrong?

You have failed to connect with your audience and they are not fully engaged with you. Telling a story that allows the customer to envision being in the story or a part of the presentation will enable you to make a connection and make your presentation so much more powerful. Painting a picture of “what can be” for the customer helps him/her to clearly see the possibilities. Asking open ended questions helps the customer extend the vision and elicits the desire to take action. Here are some tips for organizing your presentation for greater impact:

1. Don’t start with the PowerPoint template! – Start with a story! Storytelling associated with examples of “what is” compared to “what can be” provides the tension necessary to motivate and achieve a transformational change. The person who wants the audience to make a change by using the solution she offers will be much more successful with a properly-told story, which is more compelling than a PowerPoint presentation with lots of charts and graphs. Gather your resources including the demographics of your audiences, results data, definitions of terms, and case studies or interviews. Craft a compelling story related to your topic to begin your presentation and capture their interest. Open your story with one true statement that captures the core of the story. Be very clear about where you are going.
2. Use emotional words – People react to emotion, so use active and emotional words in your story to bring it to life. Provide connection by sharing the bumps and bruises that you or the customer in the story experienced on the journey. Explain how the challenges were overcome.
3. Handle the objections before they occur – Make a list of anticipated objections. List the responses. Then weave the objections into the presentation or story. For example, “One of the myths about top athletes and box office superstars is that they make it look so easy they probably don’t have to practice. Nothing is further from the truth. They practice more than anyone else in their field. They hire great coaches and they practice longer and more diligently that everyone else. That is why it looks so simple and so effortless.”
4. Lead the audience with a transformation – Bring the audience with you on the journey. Relate the story or content of your presentation providing information on how the you or the customer (hero) was transformed and how the audience will be transformed with your product, service or idea. Bring the vision to life.
5. Don’t drift off or leave the audience hanging at the end. – End on a high note and provide a call to action. The audience wants you to tell them what you want them to do next. So be very clear in your call to action.

Rolf Jensen, a futurist and Director of the Copenhagen Institute for Future studies provided these quotes:

“The highest paid person in this century will be the storyteller.” “People don’t really buy a product, service or idea; they buy the story that’s attached to it.”

Choose to organize your next presentation using the tips in this post for an opportunity to make more impactful presentations and achieve greater success.