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• Classic-Fiction

Use Instead of

“Low price competition is gaining” “Trends”

“Our edge is service” “Why Acme?”

“Insurance ratings are a problem” “Constraints on business”

“We have to improve service” “Conclusion”

Use headings to establish your main points. Guide the audience by numbering them on charts or slides, telling people how many you have.

Introductory Strategy

Small markets before large ones.

Three new markets every six months.

Concentrate construction in spring and summer.

Read every word on the screen or chart to the audience. Don’t paraphrase. Some presenters think it is unnecessary, even childish, to read verbatim. But no matter what you do, your audience will read what’s in front of their eyes. If what they are hearing is something other than what they are seeing, they will be distracted and confused. Read everything up there, then comment or expand on it. You will no longer be competing with your slides or charts for your audience’s attention.

If your style is to ad-lib, put only key words or phrases on your charts or slides.

Problems

Price Japan

Quality control Sweden

Face the audience when you present. Many people turn their backs and read from the screen, especially when using overhead slides. Work from the slide itself or from a script. It pays to avoid dark rooms with slides (particularly after lunch). Computer projection or charts keep the lights on and the audience alert.

5. Involve the audience

Look for interesting visual devices to present dry, routine materials. A little creativity goes a long way. New computer programs make it easy to do colorful things with pie charts and bar charts. Newsmagazines hire top artists to make their charts interesting and clear. USA Today is particularly adept at charts, and runs at least one every day in the lower left-hand corner of the front page. Study the techniques of these publications — and borrow from them.

Think of ways to involve your audience. Play games with them. Invite people to guess the answers to questions, or to predict the results of research — before you reveal them.

Try to add something extra, something unexpected. It demonstrates more than routine interest. You might play tape recordings of customers describing your audience’s product, or quote a relevant passage from a speech your audience’s chief executive made years ago, or show an excerpt from yesterday’s TV news that illuminates or reinforces an important point.

David Ogilvy was famous for adding drama to his presentations. To make his point about the importance of hiring the best people, he presented his directors sets of Russian dolls — those nesting dolls that come apart to reveal successively smaller dolls inside. Around the smallest doll was a slip of paper with this message:

If we hire people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If we hire people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

“Hire people who are better than you are,” Ogilvy commanded, “and pay them more if necessary. That’s how we’ll become a great agency.” Nobody forgot the Russian dolls — they dramatized the message.

Your dramatic flourishes must be relevant to your point. Almost everyone has been to big show-biz presentations where the entertainment overwhelms the message. Go easy on technology, which can take on a life of its own. Software programs create slides that “build,” “dissolve,” or “wipe,” techniques that can add interest — or distract. Remember you’re in business, not show business, and must communicate in order to persuade.

6. Finish strong

“Oh, give me something to remember you by” goes the song. As soon as you’ve gone, your audience is likely to turn its attention to other things — perhaps to presentations competitive to yours. Leave something to remember you by.

Don’t let a meeting drift off into trivia. Close with a summary and a strong restatement of your proposition or recommendation. For major presentations, look for a memorable, dramatic close — something visual, perhaps a small gift