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market competitors cost sales profits business managers controls

Within that pyramidal structure, the ideas will relate vertically — in that a point at any level will always be a summary of the ideas grouped below; and horizontally — in that the ideas will have been grouped together because they present a logical argument.

While not every presentation fits neatly into a pyramid structure — each must reflect the business issue under consideration — the principle can be helpful in organizing the logic and thinking. Minto notes that most people only have a hazy notion of their ideas when they sit down to write, and cannot know precisely what they think until forced to work it out. “How do I know what I think,” asked novelist E. M. Forster, “until I see what I write?”

How to Organize a Presentation

Organizing a presentation is a combination of clear thinking (the pyramid principle, for example) and clear communications (points that follow here).

The setting is most likely a conference room. It’s a business environment. Everything you say, everything you show, every device you use, must move you toward your objectives in a businesslike fashion.

1. Keep things simple — keep them on target

Start with specific, written objectives — and a strategy. You need a theme to give your presentation unity and direction, and to fix your purpose in your audience’s mind. Make it a simple theme, easy to remember, and open with it, using a headline to state it:

DOUBLE YOUR SALES

CUT YOUR COSTS

NEEDED: A NEW BALLPARK

MORE FUN FOR BOSTONIANS

Tie every element in your presentation to the theme. If you’re using charts, put your theme all by itself on one chart and place it where it will be visible throughout the presentation. This keeps the people in your audience — sometimes sleepy, often distracted, always with lots on their minds — focused on your theme (and message).

2. Tell your audience where you’re going

Show an agenda that lists the points you are going to cover. Describe the structure of your presentation, and say how long it will take. Estimate time conservatively — err on the long side rather than the short side. A presentation that is promised for twenty minutes and goes twenty-five seems like an eternity. The same thing promised for thirty minutes seems short in twenty-five, crisp and businesslike.

Throughout the meeting, refer to the agenda to keep your audience on track. Prepare a presentation book the audience can keep, and tell them at the start that you’ll give them copies after the meeting. This will relieve them from taking voluminous notes (instead of listening), so you’ll get their full attention.

Do everything that’s been asked — and a little more. Be precise and complete in covering what was requested. If you cannot cover some point or other, say so and say why.

3. Talk about them, not about us

While you are talking about your credentials and your achievements, the people in the audience are thinking about their organization, their business, their problems. The biggest single mistake in presentations is to start by cataloging your credentials, telling people how terrific you are.

The authors learned in the advertising business that the best presentations soliciting new business started with research in the prospect’s market. Even small-scale studies riveted the audience from the start. These insights into the prospect’s problems set up the agency’s recommendations. Our credentials came at the end, and were often not needed. By then, we had made the sale or not.

Relate what you offer to your audience’s needs. Present everything possible in terms of benefits to the audience.

4. Think headlines, not labels

Presenters often have impressive data on their charts, but fail to extract what the data shows, so the audience doesn’t understand what the numbers prove. What does your data say? Headings on charts should tell the audience how to