Out of Office

I’ll be out of town for my brother-in-law’s wedding this weekend, so if you need to reach me, try the cell (even though they have little service in their area) or the email (even though I will likely not have time to check it). I will be back by Sunday, so you might want to send up a prayer while you’re at it.

Presentation Skills

There are a lot of people out in the corporate world making big money by either delivering presentations or teaching others to deliver presentations. You might be looking at your textbook for these guidelines, but what if we took a look at the “real world” instead for a moment? What do professional presenters think about before they deliver?

When we help our executive clients prepare presentations, we always start by thinking about the end “user.” That is, who is listening to your presentation? What would persuade them? What are their concerns? Forget about the beautiful slides, graphs and charts. Put it all aside and write down the top five questions on the minds of your audience. Then be sure you have great answers.

For example, when you walk in the door to make your presentation, they might be thinking:

• What do you want to do and why?
• Can we get by without it?
• How does it help us right now?
• What’s it going to cost?
• How can we do it cheaper, better, faster?

If you don’t answer those questions right up front, you will lose them. Get right to it.

So my advice is, before you blow up your presentation, see what you have that works. Then, write down the top of mind questions. Answer them with compelling facts.

If you don’t do this, you’re doomed to fail. If you do, you may walk out with exactly the budget you hoped for, or something close. As the song goes, you don’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need.