Is your presentation content letting your team, company and clients down?

Poor presentation content can severely hinder the most passionate and competent presenter.

Imagine the following scenario.

You are in a job that you love and are very knowledgeable and passionate about your product or service. A key part of your role is to present regularly to potential or existing clients. Perhaps you’re presenting internally as well.

With a desire to develop and maximise your presentation skills you book yourself onto the best presentation training course you can find.

Maybe you didn’t realise that you need a little help so your boss recommends some training.

You invest a whole day or two of your life learning:

– How to approach, craft and deliver a presentation that is persuasive, impactful and memorable.

– Highly effective physical and vocal ways to increase your personal impact and gravitas to make you a dynamic presenter.

– Strategies to significantly enhance your confidence, authority and credibility.

– The power and use of storytelling in business.

– How to use visuals effectively.

– Everything it takes to connect emotionally as well as intellectually with your audience.

You’ve immersed yourself in a powerfully effective learning space which you totally subscribe to. You can’t wait to get back to work to use many of the principles learned.

Your excitement comes crashing down on you

You remember that you have no influence or control over your presentation content.

It’s imposed on you by your marketing department or another team of experts in your organisation.

With your new found skills and heighted passion for what you do it suddenly dawns on you. As brilliant as they are, you realise that the people who have given you your content:

– Have never presented it themselves to your audience

– Are oblivious as to how hard it is to present such content

– Aren’t sincerely interested in how you feel about the material

– Have never participated in a high impact public speaking and presentation training course

– Are not directly impacted by the presentation content they impose on you

Have you ever tried to make something that is clearly unpleasant seem more appealing?

It’s hard, unnecessary and unfair

The moment we insist that our team use presentation content that they neither like or agree with, we are telling them three things.

– We are not interested in them and only want them to do what we tell them to

– You can be certain we know better than you

– If we don’t care about your views we also don’t care about your audience’s

The truth about presentation content

You can have all the presentation skills, style and flair you need but that doesn’t compensate for poor presentation content.

Every audience wants presentation content which is:

– Rich

– Relevant

– Rewarding

They don’t want to:

– Read your slides while you speak

– Watch you read your script

– Frantically search a slide to try to keep up with you

A plea

Before you send your team on a presentation skills training course, please be absolutely certain that if you are imposing content on them, it is.

– Content rich

– Compelling

– Congruent with their personalities and passion

Please don’t hide behind:

– Company policy

– The marketing department

– Legalities

The solution

Never build content in isolation

– Always involve those who will be presenting the content and listen to them very carefully

– Focus on the audience not the organisation

– If the presentation content is outside or your remit have the courage to take to those who own it

– If your slides are too busy, stop saying ‘I know but’ or ‘I agree but’, just fix it

– Put yourself in the shoes of your presenter and the people they are presenting to

– Don’t make them present something that isn’t content rich

– Send the content designers on a course long before you give them license to create content for others

– Be mindful of the visual fatigue your audience face before they even join your presentation

A few basic principles

If you insist on your team using company visuals that they have not crafted themselves or have any say in, at the very least:

– Don’t give them a bunch of slides which look like a document or your marketing brochure

– Give them one idea per slide

– Don’t give them bullet points

– Use large text and do not overcrowd slides

– Use captivating visuals

– Reduce text to key words and short phrases

– Use data simply and wisely

– Ensure that the slides are designed for your audience visually

– If it looks like a document, it is a document. Don’t put them on a screen

If you need help making your presentation content work:

– Book yourself onto a powerful public speaking course.

– Invest in some really good one to one public speaking coaching.

– Get yourself some excellent presentation training

If this article has inspired you to learn a little more about how effective your presentation skills are you may want to take a look at our presentation training and public speaking coaching pages to see how we may be able to help you.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash