The same elements that go into old-fashioned storytelling can result in a happy ending for your business presentations.

by Margaret Littman
March 2006

Jason Jennings, the New York Times best-selling author, was pacing back and forth in the ballroom of Dallas’ Westin Galleria hotel. Jennings, author of Less Is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity and other business books, is paid to give 83 speeches a year. Yet even as he took the stage for number 83, he admitted to a regular case of nerves, and joked about the oft-cited study suggesting that many people fear public speaking more than death.

If misery does indeed love company, then knowing a professional speaker like Jennings gets cold feet before stepping in front of an audience is comforting. But it is cold comfort, perhaps, because it doesn’t offer you any advice on how to improve your presentations. Even if you are one of the few who doesn’t suffer from stage fright before your dog-and-pony show, you likely are looking for ways to make your presentations more interesting, more informative and, in short, more effective.

Your sales presentation should be different from keynote remarks, which should be different from participation in an industry panel discussion, even if you cover the same subject matter.

With apologies to Steven Covey, then, here are the seven secrets of effective presentations:

1. Know your audience. Just as an experienced storyteller crafts his tale based on the age of his audience-e.g., more suspense and intrigue for an older audience-so, too, should you craft your presentation based on who’s listening. Jeff Thull, CEO and president of Prime Resource Group, a Minneapolis-based sales consulting firm, suggests you think of your relationship with your customers as analogous to the doctor-patient relationship.

“What you hear people say when they change doctors is not that their doctors did not understand the surgery, but that they did not think the doctor understood what they were going through,” Thull says. Asking questions of your audience before your presentation-what challenges they are facing, what problems they hope to hear you solve-is akin to a physician conducting a diagnostic exam.

Thull suggests asking event organizers for the names and numbers of 5 to 10 prospective audience members to interview before you outline your remarks. The more information you gather on what your audience needs, not just on what the organizers think they need, the more likely you’ll be on target.

2. Know your co-presenters. Marjorie Brody, author of Speaking Is an Audience-Centered Sport and a member of the National Speakers Bureau, calls other scheduled presenters to ask them what they plan to cover. If she is speaking before them, she provides a logical segue into their topic. If she is scheduled to follow them, she plans her remarks so that she won’t duplicate what they’ve just said.

3. Assess your technology needs. Too many speakers jump into creating a series of PowerPoint slides after they learn they are to give a presentation…whether they need them or not. Before you press “click” on AutoContent Wizard, step back, Brody says, and see if having PowerPoint or any other kind of audiovisual aid will help bring your point home. Slides that help put numbers in context, such as in a bar graph or a pie chart, may help clarify your conclusions. But a slide with three years’ worth of earnings reports will only distract your audience from your words. Better to forgo the technology altogether and save the slides for a follow-up handout.

Cherie Kerr, author of Death by PowerPoint: How to Avoid Killing Your Presentation and Sucking the Life Out of Your Audience, cautions against passing out copies of slides at the beginning of your presentation. “That’s like doing a play and handing out the script.”

The size of the room and even the time of your presentation should also play a role in your technology decisions. Flip charts may work well for a small audience, but folks in the cheap seats in a large venue won’t be able to read them. If you have the first presentation after lunch, think twice about using a technology that requires you to dim the lights. The urge to nap may trump the compelling nature of your material.

4. Create a beginning, middle and end. The old standby of opening with a joke doesn’t always work. And rattling off a long list of statistics is dull to even the most devoted number-cruncher. But crafting a story-with a hook to draw the audience in, a narrative that moves the action forward and a conclusion that relates to their business needs-keeps people listening to see what happens, even in the post-lunch lull.

At the Columbia Business School in New York, associate professor Rita Gunther McGrath brings in actors to help executives see how the way in which a story is told affects its impact. “Executives need to learn to make not just a factual, but an emotional and symbolic connection to their listeners,” she says.

Think of the difference in a simple example like “The Three Little Pigs.” Summarizing that the wolf blew down two houses but missed the third just doesn’t have the impact of the whole huffing and puffing tale.

5. Know your tools. If you’ve determined that your presentations will be strengthened by visual aids, learn how to use them. Brody always travels with her own computer and uses it, so that she doesn’t waste any time getting up to speed on someone else’s machine. If you plan to access the Internet during your presentation, check with the conference hotel to assure that there is enough bandwidth reserved to do so. Watching a presenter wait for a Web page to load is worse than watching paint dry. If you are using a traditional slide projector, know how to fast forward to cut out a few slides. If the presenter before you runs long, you may be asked to trim your remarks to keep the day on schedule.

6. Practice makes perfect. This is a cliché, but it became one because it’s true. “Do not mistake knowledge of the topic for the ability to present material,” cautions Brody. Professionals from Broadway actors to college professors know their material cold, but still continually practice their delivery aloud. It is the only way to judge if your dramatic pauses are dramatic enough, or if you need to edit out the dull parts.

Whenever possible, do a run-through in the room where you’ll be presenting. Your voice may boom in your own office, but in an auditorium with a case of jet lag, you may sound different. During a rehearsal, the A/V folks aren’t merely making sure your slides work. They want to hear the cadence of your voice, adjust your microphone accordingly and know what to expect from your talk, so that if anything goes wrong, they can recover and keep you looking and sounding good.

McGrath adds that rote memorization is not your objective. You want to leave room for spontaneity to respond to questions or comments. If you feel you aren’t clicking with the audience, she says, feel free to take a break and come at it from another direction. Being prepared gives you that flexibility.

7. Craft a happy ending. Whether you give a sales presentation and are hoping for a big order, or give a speech where you offer new ideas, you know what outcome you want from your remarks. Too many people, Brody says, make the mistake of just stating the facts, but leaving out the call to action. If you’ve done your research on who the audience is, then you know who the decision-makers are, she says. Ask them directly for the sale, the follow-up feedback on your analysis, implementation of your strategy or whatever else it is you were hoping for when you agreed to make the presentation. Even if it requires follow-up calls and materials on your part, you’ve planted the seeds for a successful conclusion.

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margaret littman is a Chicago journalist who much prefers writing to public speaking. Email Margaret at editor@executivetravelmag.com.