Presentations that sell
July 17, 2006 | 12:00am
A communications expert once said, "There is not another accomplishment that any person can have that will so quickly make a career and secure recognition than the ability to speak." As a marketing communications practitioner and teacher, I subscribe to this tenet knowing full well that if one is able to articulate one’s thoughts, the power to connect will be stronger and carrying out plans will bear more substantial results. I do a lot of written and verbal presentations. Both are equally challenging and important in leveraging personal and professional opportunities, but the oral variety, in my own experience, is more demanding.
A presentation is speaking before 1,000 people using PowerPoint in a formal setting, or coming face to face with 10 people in a more informal atmosphere. It can also be a one-on-one with just a document or a laptop on hand over a desk, or a relaxed chat over Bo’s coffee. Eighty percent of the skills we use expertly and routinely over coffee are still relevant to a 1,000-person presentation. So what happens? We become presenters. We cease to be ourselves. We loosen up, and become more personal and animated. Structurally, a successful presentation makes us "tell them what we’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what we’ve just told them."
Jim Endicott, president of Distinction Communication in Oregon, USA, in his dissertation in the recently concluded International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) world conference in Vancouver, said that nearly every communications opportunity is simply a well-told story. "Think about it," he said. "Our presentation opportunities must tell a compelling story of change, personal development or future potential. It must open with fire that quickly engages our audience and moves at a pace that keeps the message flowing in a meaningful way. And it must end in a way that underscores key points that can win the hearts, minds (and wallets, if we are selling) of a busy and distracted audience. There should be a story behind every presentation."
We can adapt the illustrated-storyline method, where visuals are used to accelerate and clarify our ideas. Out with too many bullets. Just like images in a child’s storybook, creative approaches must be clear and easy to understand. Or we can be business storytellers who can lend credibility and believability to the story being told. Our tactical use of pacing, pauses, and purposeful movement should transfer our passion and excitement to our listeners, moving them to consider new ways of thinking.
Nowadays, presentations are made easier. Software, powerful technologies, plug-ins and utilities, seminars and books have helped make the job less of a worry. Anybody can now present. Our biggest challenge today is in key messaging and delivery so audiences actually "get it" and are moved to action. Of course, there is a world of difference between those two perspectives. Technology-focused, presenter-centric presentations have become commonplace. The competition has shifted from simply "giving presentations" to effectively "getting the message" across; from mere "pizzazz" or "dazzle" to lucid storytelling.
Effective communicators use three essential channels to convey important messages: facts that are crisply articulated and pre-distilled; emotional restraint propped by right-brain (creative) stories and visually rich images; and symbolic connectivity between the emotional and rational aspects of the presentation. People are more persuaded by what they’ll lose than what they might gain. We remember unsolved problems, frustrations, failures and rejections much better than we remember our successes and completions. Truly, this is a solid manifestation that emotions sell better than reasons.
Endicott indicated several mistakes in presentation. First is our tendency to choose our own self-interest over our audience’s desire to know. It’s an issue of relevance. Good presentations are not about us. Failure to establish early relevance of our idea or information is often a byproduct of traditional presenter-anchored messaging. This approach places a higher value on what the presenter feels compelled to tell than any meaningful dialogue around the process of identifying and articulating issues and the solutions that are being proposed. In terms of communications style, the critical need is to be adaptive. "It’s not enough that we have an understanding of our own communications style tendencies, but we must be willing to adapt our styles to be better heard and understood," Endicott admonished.
Our individual style should move from ourselves to the audience, and from our own world to their world; from ignoring what’s going on in the presentation room to acknowledging room dynamics; from getting glued to our notes and PowerPoints to establishing more eye contact; and from too much use of words and charts to leveraging stories and vivid images.
The second mistake, Endicott averred, is that "we choose intellect over interpersonal connections to influence an audience. Who we think we, and our company, may be is not as important as how we are perceived. We can try to manage those perceptions, but presentations (and presenters) often inadvertently send all the wrong signals. It’s not typically what we have said and done that creates those impressions, it is what we have NOT said and done." We are rarely persuasive when our presentations are clearly centered on us, or the party we represent. A persuasive presentation flows this way – define the problem, quantify the impact, specify the need, propose the solution, quantify the benefits, sell the advantage or differentiation, and substantiate the claim.
In a recent Columbia University study, presentations influenced by the left brain make use of bullets, heavy text, and cold, hard data points. They are logical, sequential, analytic and data-driven, where the audiences "check out" fast, rarely remembered, providing little emotional and persuasion value.
Right-brain presentations, on the other hand, make use of images from personal stories, audience interaction or testimonials. They are sensory-based, emotion-filled, imagistic and talk of the here and now. The impact is usually stronger, engaging the audience’s senses. The points are made more quickly, messages are remembered much longer and action points are heeded immediately. The appeal is directed to the heart, eliciting such reactions as, "The presenter understood the problems, and has some good ideas for solving them. I really think I can work with him."
Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland wrote in their book, The Leader’s Voice, that 86 percent of business professionals rate themselves as effective communicators, but only 17 percent of their audience agreed. Given this percentage ratio, our challenge as business communicators has more to do with our perceptions than our perfections.
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