John Lowe is an Executive Faculty, Coach and Business Presentations Expert at Ty Boyd, Inc.
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By now you would think death by PowerPoint was a forgotten phenomenon, but you would be wrong. Remarkably, business people continue to waste their audience’s time with boring, redundant and uninteresting presentations, filled with bullet points, charts and graphs, and information that is not important to the listener. In my work with business teams, especially sales teams, it amazes me that so many are so dysfunctional in the way they tell their story.
I believe we (the business community at large) are still less-than-compelling presenters for four primary reasons. I will share them with you here.
1. Laziness
Rather than take the time to be prepared to carry the conversation and know the subject matter adequately, it is much easier to simply put it on the slides. Have several bullet points per slide, and now you can simply look at the information and talk from there. This places the emphasis on the slides and not on you, with the result being your audience is reading the slides and not listening to you. It also hinders any conversational approach, which is what people tend to prefer.
Almost all charts and graphs are confusing, and the sight of a spreadsheet on screen makes people crazy. I know you are busy, but when you are asked to present, it is your responsibility to ensure the attendees find it a compelling experience. If the power goes out and you can’t carry on without slides then you are not prepared.
2. Telling people what they already know or don’t care to know.
In sales presentations, reps consistently start with information such as company history, org charts, company philosophy, bios of key team members, etc. Here’s a news flash: Your audience doesn’t care! You’ve probably already covered that in previous conversations, and if they are interested, they can find all that on your website.
In internal company meetings, managers love to review past information and go over prior quarterly results or previous strategies and plans. Everyone is well aware of all that. Get on with the current and future priorities. Conference breakout session presenters love to start with their bios. Again, nobody cares. They came to hear about how you can help them solve a problem. Give your audience information that is important and that helps them in some way.
3. Not focusing on the three key goals of a presentation: informing, engaging and entertaining.
The informing part is easy; we all do that. If you have no information to share, why are you presenting? The goal of engagement is attempted in about 75% of presentations. Presenters generally try to engage their attendees, at least mentally. Few, however, try to engage them emotionally, and they miss this key component. People tend to make decisions based on the emotional side of their brain, so finding an emotional connection between your information and your audience makes a huge difference.
But almost no one attempts to entertain their audience. By entertaining, I do not mean a song and dance number or stand-up comedy. I simply mean making sure everyone enjoys the experience and leaves feeling it was worth their time. Throwing in some stories or some light-hearted anecdotes, or maybe even some humor, can help. Find a way to make people-to-people connections.
4. Not subscribing to the theory of 'it’s not about me.'
A presentation or speech is 100% about the audience. A good presenter places themselves in the audience and considers the content from their point of view. What do they need to hear and how do they need to hear it to ensure it is compelling and valuable? Too often a presenter simply prepares the content based on what they feel is important. When the focus is not on the audience, numbers one, two and three above tend to happen. If you attended your own presentation, would you find the time worthwhile?
When making a presentation or giving a speech, you have the responsibility to the audience of making sure every person in attendance feels the experience was valuable and worthy of the time they spent with you. Simply sharing information is not sufficient. In these days of internet access, information is a commodity. In this age of Zoom meetings and click-bait digital content, people’s attention spans are shorter and their patience for boredom is lower. It is human connection that they crave and respond to, not your data on slides.
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