Last week I spent three awesome days at the Presentation Summit. In this post, I want to explore what audience members remember from a presentation, using the first three keynotes of the conference as my examples.

I asked as many people as I could what they remembered from each of these keynotes. This was an informal, non-random, non-scientific survey.

Nigel Holmes

Photo Credit: Rikk Flohr – www.rikkflohr.com

Nigel Holmes is a phenomenal graphic artist who used to be Art Director for Time magazine. His presentation didn’t start well – there were a few technical hitches and it took him some time to hit his stride, and even then he wasn’t a hugely energetic speaker. When I asked people about Nigel’s presentation, they often mentioned the slow start, but then they went onto say that they loved what he showed us, and enjoyed his quirky brilliant mind. Every person I talked to had a different take on what was the point of Nigel’s presentation, depending on what had most relevance to them.

Carmen Taran

Photo Credit: Rikk Flohr – www.rikkflohr.com

Words such as sparkling and scintillating were created to describe speakers like Carmen. Everybody I spoke to loved her as a speaker. One person said “I don’t care what she talks about, I’ll listen to her”. They often mentioned what she was wearing – a gorgeous cream and gold jacket over cream trousers. Then they mentioned her slides – how polished and beautiful they were. I had to prompt people as to what they remembered from her presentation. As with Nigel’s speech, everybody gave me a slightly different answer.

Garr Reynolds

Photo Credit: Rikk Flohr – www.rikkflohr.com

Garr presented to us via Skype. Audience members were immediately able to say to me that Garr’s message was “Be like bamboo”. And they knew what the metaphor meant – be flexible and adaptable like bamboo. Garr made 10 points elaborating on this bamboo metaphor. When I prompted people to recall those 10 points, most people could recall only one or two.

Garr’s bamboo metaphor also elicited some strong reactions. I was talking to two women and one said to me “We’re adding a room to our house and the floor is bamboo. I felt so pleased that we’d chosen bamboo – it’s strong but flexible.” Then the other woman erupted: ‘I hate bamboo. Our neighbor has a forest of bamboo and it keeps sprouting up on our lawn. We just can’t get rid of it. I hate bamboo!” Neither of these two women could remember any of Garr’s points.

My take-aways

1. You don’t have a second chance to make a good first impression, but the cleverness of that saying has eclipsed the broader truth – that you have many chances to correct that first impression. Your presentation is not ruined if you make a bad start.

2. Your message, your slides and your delivery need to be balanced. You don’t want your presentation to be like a movie where people only remember the awesome special effects. Your slides and delivery are there to serve the message.

3.If you don’t present a clear overarching message, your audience will choose (sometimes randomly and unconsciously) the message they take out from the presentation or they may not get any message at all. For most types of presentations, I believe it should be you, the speaker, who decides what the overarching message is. I’ve said “most types of presentation” because I can see that it could be a valid approach to give a speech from which each person takes a different message – depending on what is most important to them.

4. When you choose a metaphor as your overarching theme, beware of the baggage your metaphor may carry. It might be necessary to acknowledge possible preconceptions at the beginning of your presentation so that your audience can put their reactions to one side and focus on your message.

5. If you cover many points of equal importance and at the same hierarchical level, your audience will have difficulty remembering them all.

I loved my time at the Presentation Summit. To be able to hang out for 3 days with people as interested (obsessed?) with all things presenting was awesome. The dates for next year’s conference are October 17th- 20th.

Related posts:

1. 10 tips for overcoming the fear of being bold
2. The Fastest Way to Create an Ignite Presentation

I’m working on being bold – whether it’s in a one on one conversation or in a presentation. In the past, I’ve often watered down what I say to avoid upsetting anyone. And I’m not alone. Many of the people that I coach are concerned about being bold. As a result, they dilute their message so much that they have zero impact on their audience.

Cultivate an attitude of boldness

Being bold is not something that you can “pull out of a hat” when you’re giving a presentation or speech. You need to develop an attitude of speaking out in your day to day life. Otherwise you won’t develop the courage to be bold in your presentations. Practice saying what’s on your mind when you’re with just one other person or a small group.

I’ve found blogging to be extremely useful in helping me be bold. Some posts I’ve written have taken me some time to publish because of my fear, but having done so I’m bolder. Here are some thoughts to help you develop an attitude of boldness in everyday life.

1. Stop being nice

What stops me being bold is that I want to be liked, I want to be nice. I don’t want to have to deal with anyone being upset or offended by what I’ve said. It’s worked for me in many ways, but it holds me back too. I keep this quote on a post-it above my desk:

2. Saying what you think enhances your career

Do you hold back saying what you think because you want to make sure that everything you say makes perfect sense and is supported by evidence? Me too. But research shows that people who speak up more are seen as leaders. Now that makes sense, but here’s the topsy-turvy kicker – what they said didn’t have to be particularly brilliant or clever or original. So don’t worry about being perfect, just speak up.

3. Not saying what you think annoys people

I’ve sometimes held back on saying what I think fearing that it will upset people. Then the situation deteriorates and I end of saying what I think, only to be told “Why you didn’t tell me that earlier?”

4. Your ideas can help other people

Do you think your ideas are not worth sharing, that they’re obvious. Then watch this gorgeous, short video (H/T Rich Hopkins):

5. What’s the worst that can happen

Sometimes when I want to say something bold, I stay silent because I just imagine a nameless disaster. But if I think it through  and ask myself “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” then I realise that the worst that will happen is that the person I’m speaking to might be upset for a day. Can I handle that? Yes, I can! And then often they don’t even get upset for five minutes. They just thank me for being straight! Often the consequences that we fear from being bold don’t materialise.

How to be bold in your presentations

Here are some tips for developing boldness in your presentations:

1. Ask your audience to take action

Just giving your audience information is the safe option. But what does it accomplish? Instead, answer this question:

“What do you want your audience to do with the information you’re giving them.”

Then use your presentation to persuade people to take that action.

For example, in my presentation on Kiva (see my Guide”How to make an Effective PowerPoint Presentation”) I could say to the audience:

“Lending money to poor people is an effective way of helping them.”

It would be interesting information, but I haven’t accomplished anything. Instead I say:

“Lend $25 to a poor person so they can start a business.”

2. Be provocative

In my research on learning styles I came across Frank Coffield, an academic challenging the prevailing mythology of learning styles in education. He said he was inspired by Karl Popper, who wrote in his autobiography:

‘My custom, whenever I am invited to speak in some place, of trying to develop some consequences of my views which I expect to be unacceptable to the particular audience. For I believe that there is only one excuse for a lecture: to challenge. It is the only way in which speech can be better than print’. (Unended Quest Open Court Publishing Company, 1976, p 124)

A friend said to me yesterday “If you don’t miss at least one plane a year, you’re arriving at the airport too early!” Now, I’m not going to change my habit of arriving at the airport in plenty of time, but I can see his point. Similarly, “If you’re not provoking at least one person in your audience, you’re being too nice.”

3. Imagine the friendliest audience

Imagine what you would dare to say if you knew that the audience were the friendliest most supportive bunch of people. That they’re already on your side. Now say that.

4. Express the main point of your presentation in one succinct sentence

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I call this your Key Message. The work of crafting your point into a Key Message has you think through what you really want to say. If you allow yourself several sentences to express your point, you’re likely to have woven all sorts of qualifications and caveats. So don’t. Say it in one clear and succinct sentence.

5. Get rid of weasel words

Do you pepper your phrases with weasel words and phrases? Like “I’d just like to” or “sort of” or “kind of”. They reduce the power and boldness of your ideas. You may not know you’re doing this. So either record yourself and listen back, or ask a friend to give you feedback.

Stop holding back – be bold. You’ll get your message across, spread your ideas and enhance your career.

Related posts:

1. The Fastest Way to Create an Ignite Presentation

I set myself the challenge of preparing my first Ignite presentation as fast as possible.

The Ignite presentation format is a 5 minutes long presentation with 20 slides and with the slides advancing automatically every 15 seconds. It’s the presentation equivalent of a haiku or sonnet. It’s a very challenging format which can take forever to prepare.

Here’s the way that I did it:

1. Sketched the outline using my Presentation Planner

I used my normal presentation planner which I teach to all my clients. Here’s a picture of my planner – as you can see neatness was not important. I just wanted to get my key message and sequence of ideas down on paper.

Click on the image to see a larger view.

Time: 10 minutes

2. Converted planner to 20 slides

I typed what I wanted to say into the format of 20 slides:

Time: 1 hour

3. Packaged into 15 second blocks

I then used the “rehearse timings” button and delivered the presentation:

The Slide Sorter view (above) showed me how long I spent talking on each slide.

My aim was for each slide to take 13 to 15 seconds. The reason for this is that I think it’s better to have to wait a beat for a slide, than to be running out of time and constantly playing catch up.

When I first tried this out I was all over the place, some slides taking 7 seconds and some 34 seconds. I spent time rearranging, deleting and massaging. In the screen shot above you can see that I had got most of the slides close to 15 seconds, but I still had some work to do to shorten some.

Time: 2 hours

4. Created visual slides

I only started creating visual slides once I had my storyline packaged into 20 neat slices of 15 seconds each. Here’s what my visual slides looked like:

Time: 2 hours

5. Printed out my notes

Ignite is one type of presentation format when preparing a script is virtually essential during the preparation phase. Working from a script allows you to massage your sentences to  fit the 15 second time blocks. A slight change in sentence structure can make a significant change in the time it takes to say something. So this is one occasion where you should plan to say it the same way every time (not normally something I recommend).

I printed out my verbal slides (shown in point 2. above) as handouts – 2 to a page:

Time: 5 minutes

5. Rehearsed

I set my visual slides to advance automatically at 15 seconds and started rehearsing. Using my two-screen set-up and Presenter View I was able to see how long I had to go before the slide changed. My major frustration at this stage was that I couldn’t find a way in PowerPoint to record my narration at the same time as having my slides automatically advance every 15 seconds. This meant that I couldn’t playback my slides and audio to check my timing. If you know how to do this I would love you to add a comment.

This step took the longest as I fine-tuned my pace to get my timing just right. For example, I wanted my dead parrot slide to appear just as I said “dead parrot”!

Time: 3 hours

6. Delivered

I used notes for the actual presentation as well. I could have spent extra time memorizing it, but I didn’t see a sufficient pay-off for that extra time. I had rehearsed enough that I did spend most of the time connecting with the audience.

Time: 5 minutes!

My presentation was videoed but unfortunately the audio didn’t work, so instead I’ve produced a Slidecast using Slideshare:

How can you increase the likelihood that people will take action after your presentation? Chip and Dan Heath reveal many of the secrets in their latest book Switch. I’ve added a few more tips that I’ve learnt over my years presenting and training.

1. Script the critical move

Tell people exactly what you want them do. Chip and Dan Heath tell how school students in Miner County, South Dakota wanted to revive the local economy. The students worked out that if residents spent more of their money locally it would make a big difference. But they didn’t just say “Buy Local”, they scripted the critical move. They asked residents to spend 10% more of their disposable income in Miner County. They calculated that this would boost the local economy by $7 million. A year later, the amount of money spent in Miner County had increased by $15.6 million.

So in your presentation don’t just use a clever slogan. Be clear and specific about what you want members of your audience to do.

2. Give explicit instructions

An experiment on encouraging university students to take part in a food drive for charity showed that giving explicit instructions can give a tremendous boost to the response rate. One group of students received a letter asking them to give a can of food to a booth on Tresidder Plaza (a well-known spot on the campus). A second group of students received a more detailed letter including a map and a specific request for a can of beans. 4% responded to the general letter whilst just over 33% gave food after receiving the detailed letter.

In your presentations, take people through the detailed steps they’ll need to take and give them all the information they need to carry through in a handout.

3. Get them to imagine what they will do

If you’re asking people to take some action which only they know the details of, it won’t be practical for you to give explicit instructions. Instead get them to work out the details. Gary Rodriguez describes such a situation in his book Purpose Driven Public Speaking. Gary was recently back from the Vietnam War and his peace activist brother had welcomed him home with the words “How many babies did you kill?” Gary was deeply hurt and found it impossible to forgive his brother. That was until Gary heard a speaker talking about forgiveness:

Believe me, I have heard plenty of talks on forgiveness, but not one like this…The speaker challenged us to pick a specific person and put into practice what we had learned.

Gary chose his brother. And the next time he saw his brother he was able to forgive him.

4. Develop action triggers

People who create action triggers for themselves are far more likely to take action. An action trigger is a mental plan you make about when and where you will do something or what you will do in a certain situation. For example, patients recovering from a hip operation who wrote down when and where they would go for a walk were much more likely to carry through on that decision then patients who just decided they would go for a walk.

Don’t just ask people to do something, get them to make a mental plan of when and where they will do it.

5. Appeal to their identity

People don’t do things simply because it’s in their self-interest, but because the action conforms to their view of themselves. Talk to your audience as if they are the type of people who do what you want them to do. For example “As people who love this community and want to see young families flourishing here, you’ll want to donate to refurbishment of this playground.”

6. Set up an accountability mechanism

Sharing a commitment to take action is powerful. There are a number of ways you can set this up for a presentation. You could ask people to pair up with another person and commit to keeping each other accountable. Or you could ask audience members to email you by a certain date with the action they’ve taken.

What tips do you have for motivating people to take action after your presentation?

In the past month I’ve sat through three presentations by professional speakers. They were all planned by mindmapping.

None of these presentations reached their potential. Here are the flaws the presentations suffered from:

1. They had no unifying theme. They jumped around from one subtopic to another.
2. They covered a lot of issues. So many different issues, that I can’t remember any of them!
3. They covered no single issue in depth. They never got to anything interesting.

They were typical overview presentations. They went wide rather than deep and didn’t offer any value.

The mistake these speakers made was to use mindmapping alone as their presentation planning tool.

So when should you use mindmapping to plan a presentation?

1. Everyday to mid-level presentations on a topic that you know well

In this situation, mindmapping is a time-consuming and unecessary step. It’s an inherently inefficient process because you’re spending time generating points that you’re not going to use. Instead of mindmapping, use these questions to plan your presentation:

1. What’s the one thing I want my audience to remember or do?
2. Once I’ve told them that, what are the three top questions they will have for me?
3. How can I back up each of my answers to those questions.

This is the essence of the process that I outline in my free Guide “How to Make an Effective PowerPoint Presentation.”

2. High-stakes pitch or high-profile conference presentation on a topic you’re not so familiar with

This is where mindmapping has its place.  Mindmapping can be a useful first step to gather your ideas and ensure that you don’t miss a critical point. However, do not stop planning once you’ve completed your mindmap. If you do, you’ll end up with a lightweight overview presentation that doesn’t add any value to your audience. Take these additional steps:

1. Craft a key message for your presentation that expresses the main point you want to get across. Then ensure that every point you make supports that key message. Any point that doesn’t should be thrown out.
2. Edit your points further. If you’ve mindmapped six benefits for your solution, choose the  three strongest benefits and delete the rest (or put them in a handout). Those three remaining benefits will have more impact than if you skimmed lightly over six benefits.
3. Ensure each point you make is supported by evidence: examples, statistics, endorsements or metaphors.
4. Arrange your points to create a logical path for your audience to follow.

There’s a lot more to planning a presentation than mindmapping.

Garr Reynolds said you can’t go both deep and wide in a presentation. A deep presentation explores one aspect of a topic in depth, whereas a wide presentation gives an overview of the entire topic.

I agree with Garr, but would go one step further – deep is better than wide (see also Jon Thomas’s post on deep vs wide). Here are six reasons why I recommend against giving an overview presentation:

1. It’s not memorable

In an overview presentation you can only cover each issue at a superficial level. The belief that mentioning an issue means that people will get it and remember it, is an illusion. People remember things when you have time to develop the issue, give them examples and explore the pros and cons. Making something sticky requires depth.

2. Nothing will stand out

When you give an overview presentation not only do you cover each issue lightly, you cover a lot of issues. That means that no one issue will stand out and your audience is likely to remember less, not more. Presentations are not a good vehicle for transferring a lot of information from one person to another. Check out this post for more reasons why you should avoid information overload: How to stop information overload in your presentation.

Both these points are supported by educational research that shows that students learn better when material is covered in depth. A study of over 8,000 college science students found that those who had studied at least one major topic in depth at high school, got better grades in college science. When Robert Frank, a professor of economics, reduced his coverage and concentrated on teaching core economic principles in depth, his students did better. Teacher websites encourage teachers to teach depth even at the expense of covering the curriculum.

3. Positions you as a generalist

Anyone can give an overview of a topic. Only an expert can deliver an in-depth exploration.

4. It’s uninspiring

An overview is rarely inspiring or motivating. An in-depth exploration of a particular aspect of a topic is more likely to inspire people to find out more about the topic.

5. It’s boring

If there’s a mix of knowledge levels in your audience, you’ll bore anyone who’s beyond beginner status and possibly beginners too. Covering material at a surface level is rarely engaging. You want your audience to be in a state of “flow”. That happens when your  material is not too easy and not too hard. For more on flow, and how to achieve it see: 7 ways to keep audience attention during your presentation.

6. It’s not efficient

Why bother with the expense and effort of a presentation to give people an overview of a topic? They can get the information much more efficiently in other ways, via a report, your organization’s intranet, a short elearning module, or surfing the internet.

There may be situations where an overview presentation is required. But before you give such a presentation make sure there’s no alternative way of delivering the information. Presentations are much more suited to covering one issue in-depth. A deep presentation is more engaging, inspiring and memorable.

In my last post, I argued that you already have attention at the start of your presentation. The task is not to grab attention, but to actively nurture the attention that you have and transform it into engagement.

Here’s the difference between attention and engagement:

• If your audience is attentive you can pour information into them.
• If your audience is engaged they are sucking that information from you.

Engagement is more valuable than attention.

Thinking in terms of engagement, rather than attention, has a number of benefits:

1. Many of the “attention-grabbing” techniques are not particularly appropriate for everyday business presentations. For example, if you’re delivering a project team update or a presentation to a decision-making committee, you don’t really need to give a shocking statistic or a story of how the issue has affected you personally. There are other more appropriate  ways of getting your audience engaged.

2. You may be at your most nervous at the beginning of your presentation. Putting pressure on yourself to have an attention-grabbing opening is not helpful. Instead think of building on the attention you already have to create engagement.

3. If you’re more of an introvert type, you might not be that comfortable making a big splash at the beginning of a presentation.

4. In an effort to have an “attention-grabbing opening” some presenters end up with an opening that has only tangential relevance to their topic. I heard about a speaker who started a business presentation by showing a photo of himself in an apron with a woman’s body in a bikini painted on. That may be an extreme, but sometimes the attention-getter is cheesy and has little relevance to the content of the talk.

5. An overly dramatic opening can be too jarring for the audience, as Rich Hopkins says it can put your audience “on guard”. If you think in terms of engagement, rather than attention, you’re unlikely to make this mistake.

So here are four ways to move your audience from attention to engagement.

1. Sell your presentation

To move from attention to engagement you need to sell your presentation. Let your audience know what benefits they will get from listening to your presentation.

You’re answering the question “What’s in it for me?’ The answers to this question are known as WII-FMs. “WII-FM is the radio station everyone’s listening to”. Here are four groups of WII-FM’s to help you identify the WII-FMs for your audience:

Quality

How will your presentation improve the quality of their life or that of their organization? Or how will you help solve their problems? For example let’s say you’re presenting to your senior management team. They need to make a decision on whether to go ahead with a project. You might say:

“The information I’m going to present to you will help you make the most appropriate decision for this project.”

Time

Does your presentation help people save time or become more efficient? Let’s say your organization is rolling out new software that all staff have to use. You’ve got the job of presenting the new software to groups of staff. You can say:

“This presentation will help you use the new software system so that you can save time.”

Money

If your presentation can save people money, or help them earn more money you’ve got a built-in reason to listen.

Human

This includes many facets – more fun, less stress, better relationships, feeling good. For example, in the presentation that I do promoting Kiva, a not-for-profit organization, I say:

“By lending money through Kiva, you can make a real and direct difference in someone else’s life.”

2. Evoke curiosity

Engage people by using “fascinations”, a copywriting technique. Fascinations are short bullet-points that tease the reader and compel them to keep on reading. Check out the covers of magazines such as Cosmo for great examples. You can use the same technique to compel your audience to listen. For example, in a presentation on overcoming the fear of public speaking, I could say:

“You’ll learn:

• How to make your fear work for you, not against you
• The three-step process to tame the voices in your head, and
• The secret strategy for managing a mind blank so that your audience never knows.”

The easiest way to write fascinations is to adapt another writer’s fascinations to your topic. Check out women’s magazines and copywriting articles.

3. Be bold

If you’re frightened of making a statement that some people might disagree with, you’ll give a feeble presentation.

A sure-fire way of getting engagement is to make the main point of your presentation (what I call the key message) into a bold, potentially controversial, statement. Be brave, don’t hold back on what you really want to say.

This will galvanize the audience. The people who don’t agree with you will get worked up as they think of counter-arguments. The people who are on the fence will listen intently to find out if you can back up what you’ve said. The people who agree with you will be silently egging you on. And even the people who don’t care that much about the issue will stay engaged to see if your presentation will be a trainwreck!

4. Build rapport

Building rapport means being in sync with your audience. When you have rapport, people will want to listen to you. Here are three ways to build rapport:

Match the audience’s energy levels

In one and one conversation, you can consciously match your conversation partner’s body language to build rapport. In speaking to a group, adapt this idea. Start close to the audience’s energy levels and then build your energy and intensity taking the audience with you.

Empathize with the emotional state of the audience

This can range from light-hearted banter about the early start and lack of coffee, to acknowledging deeply held concerns.

Share what you have in common

Share a characteristic about yourself that you have in common with the audience.

When I open our introductory presentation skills course, I’m speaking to people who are feeling pretty apprehensive. Some are so nervous and shy they won’t make any eye contact with me. I start off gently telling my story of one of my early (and nerve-wracking) public speaking experiences. It ticks all the boxes for building rapport.

For other ideas about how to open your presentation, check out my post: Three levels of presentation opening: Which should you use?

Is attention-grabbing ever appropriate?

Yes. Having an attention-grabbing opening can work in some situations. For a great summary of these techniques see Garr Reynold’s post: Start your Presentation with PUNCH.

Last week I delivered a webinar “How to plan an Audience-friendly Presentation” as part of Ellen Finkelstein’s Outstanding Presentations Workshop. The message of my presentation was “To create an audience-friendly presentation, use a planner” (pictured right).

Heaps of questions were asked and despite three breaks for questions, I didn’t get to answer all of them. So here are the answers.

If you haven’t seen the webinar yet, click on over to view if first. It will be available for viewing for free for the next few days. The handout for the webinar is my Presentation Guide: How to Make an Effective PowerPoint Presentation. If you have a question that’s not answered here or in the Presentation Guide, do ask me by writing a comment and I’ll answer it.

Set the Scene

In response to a question during the webinar I briefly outlined a three-step formula for Setting the Scene. There’s more detail in the Presentation Guide and in this post: Three Levels of Presentation Openings: Which Should You Use?

Key Message

Will I not lose the surprise factor when revealing the key message in the beginning?

I briefly answered this during the webinar. I explore this issue fully here: Presentation Structure: Why it’s Smarter to put your Conclusion in your Opening.

Is it important to only have one key message?

Your presentation will be more effective if it has one clear key message. That’s why it’s called a key message. “Key messages” is a contradiction in terms. If you have two messages that you give equal importance to, the impact of each message will be diluted. You can, of course, have other messages (assertions) in your presentation, but they should be subordinate to the key message.

If you’re doing an all day training covering many areas, should you still have just one key message?

Design an “umbrella” key message for the whole day, and then a key message for each module of your training.

What’s the best place to start the plan

Start planning your presentation by crafting the key message. This is often the most difficult step and may require some thought. However, once you have it in place it will make the rest of your planning fall into place.

Can we use a hook phrase with our key message?

I’m assuming a hook phrase means a phrase that is easily remembered. In which case the answer is yes. The key message should be easy to grasp and easy to remember.

Here’s more information on crafting your key message: How to Craft your Key Message in 10 Minutes

The three boxes

Are “why “what” and “how” always the right questions to ask?

Why? What? and How? are just there as examples of the questions you think the audience might have. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think of their top three questions. They might start with Why? What? and How? But you might also find you have three What questions.

Would you change the order of the three questions depending on the circumstances?

Answer the questions in the order that will make most sense to the audience.

What are some examples of other presentation structures?

The three boxes could use the following structures:

• Problem, Solution, Benefits
• Past, Present, Future
• Situation, Analysis, Recommendation
• Problem, Options, Recommendation
• Vision, Goals, Action
• Proposal, Cons, Pros.

The Why, What, How structure is the most flexible and works for most presentations. It’s easy to get caught up in trying to find the “perfect” structure for your presentation. This can waste a lot of time. The structure is simple a series of containers, and it just needs to be logical and easy to follow.

Signposting

Can you talk more about signposting?

Signposting is the way that you make transitions from point to point. It gives your presentation “edges” and makes it easy to follow for your audience. In a written report, there are headings, paragraphs and punctuation which provide signposting. In a presentation, you provide the same cues orally. For more information on signposting see the Presentation Guide.

Evidence

How many metaphors (based on a percentage) are commonly applied to a presentation?

I haven’t done research specifically on this point. Your use of metaphors will depend on your audience’s familiarity with the topic. Using metaphors on familiar material can become laboured.

Isn’t their a possibility that we may not be able to find evidence for an assertion?

If you can’t find any evidence for an assertion, I would question the validity of the assertion. Do think in broad terms when you are trying to come up with evidence. For example, you can paint hypothetical situations or you can walk your audience through a process.

Audience analysis

Where does audience analysis fit into your planning process?

At every stage of the planning process, take the audience’s point of view:

• The key message should be designed so that it is relevant and adds value to the particular audience you’re speaking to. A presentation on the same topic to a different audience is likely to need a different key message.
• The structure of the presentation is based on the questions you think your audience will have.
• The evidence that you provide should be relevant to the audience.

You mentioned that we should give our audience the content they need. How would I know what content they need?

If you find don’t have enough information about the audience to tailor your presentation in the way I’ve suggested above, then find out more about your audience. Get in contact with a sample of people in your audience, or if you’re unable to do that talk to people who might be representative of the audience you’ll be speaking to. You can also do your audience analysis online – through survey software, email, Twitter or your blog if you have one.

Longer presentations

A number of people asked about using the planner for longer presentations and in particular training sessions. There are several methods for doing this:

1. Have a number of assertions in each box. You can have different numbers of assertions in each box:

This is how I planned the webinar presentation.

2. As one attendee suggested, use several cycles of why, what and how.

3. For training sessions, break up the session into several modules. Design each module using a separate planner.

Miscellaneous questions

Does the planner work for every type of presentation?

We designed the planner specifically for business presentations. A logical, structured approach works best in the business situation. Keynote presentations, motivational speeches and after-dinner speeches may not require such a structured approach.

What’s the maximum length you feel a presentation should be before it becomes “unfriendly”?

A lecture style presentation with no audience interaction should be no longer than 60 minutes. A more interactive session could go to 90 minutes. In our training courses (one day to two days long), we plan the course so that each “lecture” (ie: just one trainer talking) is no more than 15 minutes.

How do we plan for variations or options?

The planner is very well-suited to making variations because of its modular structure. Say you’re running over time, you can simply drop one box. Or you could cover the three boxes but in less depth.

It looks like you use pictures to represent everything. Some people are more visual than auditory. What is your thought on that?

My approach is to provide visual information via the slides and auditory information via my voice. More thoughts on this are here: Learning Styles: What Every Presenter Ought to Know. As this was a webinar as opposed to a face to face presentation, I used more slides than I normally do, so that there was always something visually interesting to keep you engaged. For more on the differences between face to face presentation and webinars see: 18 Tips on How to Conduct an Engaging Webinar.

How do you convince engineers that knowledge that does not equal content?

The most effective way to convince someone is to put them on the receiving end of the problem. For example, deliver a presentation to them on a topic which they’re not familiar with, and overload them with information. Facilitate a discussion on their experiences. Then they’ll be able to put themselves into their audience’s shoes.

Any recommendations for dealing with technical topics – for example training about a software program?

Have your trainees do things with the software program. It’s like learning to swim – you can’t do that by being lectured at the edge of the pool. You have to get in.

Where does audience response or active engagement fit into the planner?

Audience participation can fit anywhere, with the exception of Set the Scene.  The audience needs to get to know you and trust you just a little, before they’ll enthusiastically participate. Here are two posts on audience participation:

Six Secrets from a Professional Speaker on Audience Participation

Why most attempts at audience participation fail and what to do about it

What is wrong with mind mapping?

Mind mapping is a useful technique for many creative projects. And if it works for you – and your audiences –for planning presentations then go for it. However, I’ve found the following issues:

• Presentations that I’ve experienced which have been  planned with mind maps tend to cover too much information, too lightly and lack internal cohesiveness.
• Mind mapping has you think from your point of view, it doesn’t force you to think from your audience’s point of view.
• If you use a mind map, you’re likely to have to edit what you produce. That introduces an extra step and more time into the planning process.

How about planning the timing?

Here’s a useful post on timing: How to keep to time during your presentation.

How do we link the plan to handouts?

The handout doesn’t need every element of the planner (eg: Set the Scene). However, the structure you used for your presentation should be mirrored in the handout so that your audience can easily relate the two together.

Got another question? Go ahead, ask me in the comments section below.

Have you inflicted one of these types of presentation on your audience? These seven types are all a result of a lack of planning or the wrong sort of planning. I’ll be looking at how to avoid some of these presentation planning traps in a live webinar with Ellen Finkelstein next week. The webinar is on Wednesday 29th September at 4pm ET. Sign up here.

1. The “I want to tell you everything” presentation

This presenter is in love with their topic and wants to share it all with you – every nuance, every subtlety, every story. Their passion and enthusiasm is great. But it’s not tempered with any discipline. And that results in information overload for the audience.

If you’re guilty of this type of presentation, checkout this post How to avoid information overload in your presentation.

2. The “grab bag” presentation

The “grab bag” presentation is one where the presenter has a miscellany of points which are only loosely related to each other and appear in no structured order. I’ve seen highly experienced, professional speakers fall into the trap of the “grab bag” presentation.

The solution to the grab bag presentation is to plan your presentation around a key message. That provides you with focus. For tips see this post How to Craft a Memorable Key Message in 10 Minutes.

3. The “shopping list” presentation

This presentation contains point, after point, after point. Often presented as bullet-point slide after bullet-point slide after bullet-point slide. It’s deadly dull. There’s no variety, no light and shade. It may be organized but it lacks any evidence: stories, case studies, endorsements, metaphors or analogies.

The antidote to the shopping list presentation is to include evidence to back up each of your points. I analyzed speeches from Al Gore, Seth Godin, and Malcolm Gladwell. 60-70% of their speeches were composed of evidence.

4. The “meringue” presentation

This is the opposite of the shopping list presentation. The presentation is chocka full of stories, anecdotes, jokes, shocking statistics, and metaphors. It’s highly entertaining and engaging – but an hour later when you try and work out what you learned – there’s a void.

To avoid this, plan your presentation using a solid three-part structure. Clothe your structure with your stories and anecdotes.

5. The “race against the clock” presentation

This presentation might be well-planned and have a good balance of points and evidence, but the presenter hasn’t rehearsed and timed it. Pretty soon, she becomes aware she’s not going to have enough time to cover everything she planned, and the race is on! Every two minutes she says things like:

“I’ll just cover this quickly”

“If I have enough time, I’ll let you know about X”

“I wish I had more time to tell you about this.” etc. etc.

Simple solution: rehearse and time your presentation. More tips are here: How to Keep to Time during your Presentation.

6. The “mystery novel” presentation

This is the presentation where the presenter holds back the most important point till the end – like a whodunnit. Sometimes this can work but it needs to be carefully planned. More often, the “mystery novel” presentation happens because the presenter didn’t think about the needs of the audience and simply followed their own train of thought which resulted in a conclusion at the end.

In this post Why its Smarter to put your Conclusion in the Opening I recommend that you should start with your conclusion, but I also list the exceptions to that rule.

7. The “perpetually taxi-ing” presentation

Consider a presentation to be like an aeroplane journey. The ideal presentation gets you in the air quickly. But some presentations spend so long on “background”, “methodolody”, “who we are” that they never get into the air. The audience never gets taken anywhere.

Do you recognise yourself here? If you do, don’t beat yourself up over it, but resolve not to do it again! And if you want some more specific tips sign up for next week’s webinar.

A long time ago I attended a presentation on ostrich farming. It was pleasantly interesting because I love animals but I didn’t really get the point – after all I wasn’t planning on being an ostrich farmer. At the end of the presentation the presenter said “And that’s why you should invest in ostrich farming.” If I had known that up front I would have listened to the presentation in an entirely different way. The presentation structure didn’t work for me.

It seems natural to structure your presentation with the conclusion at the end of your presentation and some articles on presentation structure advise this. But most of the time (exceptions below), it’s more effective to tell your audience your conclusion near the beginning of your presentation. Here’s why:

1. It gives your audience the big picture

In Brain Rules, John Medina argues that we learn and remember best when we:

Start with the key ideas and, in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions.

This is because we remember things best by forming mental models or schema. So if you provide your audience with a hierarchical framework starting with your conclusion they will understand and remember better.

2. It enables people to make decisions

Decision-makers want to hear your recommendation upfront. They don’t have the time to be taken on a mystery tour. Managers who engage Effective Speaking to run courses for their staff often tell us ‘I want to know immediately what they’re telling me.” Once they have your recommendation they are then ready to assess your arguments.

3. It allows for repetition

When you establish your conclusion at the beginning of your presentation, you can then weave it throughout the presentation, showing how each point that you cover relates and supports it.

4. It holds people’s attention

This may seem counterintuitive. After all why should they listen if they already know the conclusion? However, as presentation design agency m62 argue:

By presenting the main arguments analytically [conclusion first] you create intrigue in the audience, increasing your audience’s attention.

Showing facts and figures to support an eventual conclusion often lowers the concentration levels of the audience prompting a ‘What’s the point of this?’ mind set.

Good reasons to put your conclusion in your closing

There are some situations where it’s effective to leave your conclusion till the end of your presentation.

1. Create mystery

If you can structure your presentation by posing, and then unravelling a puzzle you can have the audience eating out of your hands. Malcolm Gladwell is a master at this both in his books and in his presentations. You could use it effectively in a keynote presentation (as Gladwell does) or in a teaching/training environment as an introduction to a larger topic. This does require some skill to avoid people tuning out if they can’t follow you. For most presenters it will work best to use this strategy for a segment of your talk – rather than the whole talk.

2. Create ownership

In a training environment, you can set up an exercise which enables people to come to their own conclusions. Debrief the exercise by asking participants what they learnt from it. This does require skillful design of the exercise (so that participants learn from it what you want them to learn) and skillful facilitation to draw out their learnings. Done well it’s a powerful method of creating ownership of the learning.

Bad reasons to leave your conclusion till the end

You may be tempted to leave your conclusion till the end for not so good reasons:

1. You’re concerned that people will stop paying attention once they know your conclusion

As I argued above, this is rarely the case. People are more likely to tune out when they don’t have the big picture.

2.You’re concerned that your audience might disagree with your conclusion

If you have to deliver bad news you may feel tempted to leave the bad news till the end. This is rarely a good idea. A classic example: a representative of a New Zealand government agency made a presentation to a group of commercial retailers about changes which were going to take place to their commercial area. He described how it was going to be revamped and made beautiful and attract a lot more foot traffic. He closed with this statement ‘” And that’s why your businesses will have to be shut down for six months.” You can bet they were furious.

What do you think? When do you put your conclusion in the opening? When do you leave your conclusion to the closing?