I’ve got a quick question for you…

Have you ever felt stuck with sloppy business presentations that fail to clearly convey your message?

I know I have.

Look:

When it comes to building professional business deck, most people get stuck with unclear, blurred messages that put their audiences to sleep. And here’s the brutal truth:

First, the vast majority of people involved in building presentations believe strongly they should put EVERYTHING in their presentations. Second, many of the best practices from so-called Presentation experts are misguided and not actionable.

I don’t know about you, but hearing all these gurus urging me to “use images, not words”, “make simple slides”, or “speak naturally” makes me wanna throw them all in a shark tank.

“Make simple slides”…. Duhhhh, tell me HOW or get out of my way.

If you’re looking for some practical, actionable strategies that you can apply to your Business presentations today, then you’ll love this infographic. It’s a simple checklist that shows you step-by-step how to craft and convey a message effectively, bring in more consistency and less crap in every piece of presentation that you build.


Business Presentations: The 4-Step Formula That Works

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Here’s my take on the business presentations insights from the infographic.

1. Reverse Engineer Your Business Presentation Purpose To Become 2x More Compelling

Bold promise?

Definitely.

But stay with me, I’ll explain:

If you want to build crystal-clear presentations, you should start by 1) defining the goals you want to achieve and 2) working your way backward to arrive at the steps necessary for success. According to FORBES’ contributor Michel Theriault, you need to include a Goal Early in the Presentation

The 3W Technique

Reverse engineering your presentation goals will help you identify and break down the specific steps you need to take to reach these goals.

For each W , write down what comes to your mind.

2. Condense Your Message Into a Crystal-Clear Elevator Pitch Even Your Dumbest Friend Would Understand

Now we’re going to squeeze your presentation purpose into ONE sentence and call this sentence your elevator speech.Your goal is to answer this question:“What’s it about?”

In the Guide to Persuasive Presentations, writer Nancy Duarte emphasizes that this sentence should clearly contain the benefit that the listener will derive from the speech.

Here’s an Elevator Pitch from author Jason Teteak:

Who: busy professionals
What: how to gain an advantage delivering irresistible presentations
Why: because you can get your audience do what you want

Other examples:

Convince company’s executives that we have to optimize our supply chain process.
Persuade prospects that our services are the best fit for them
Help my boss understand and digest the key insights from our Q2 resultsDo you get how it works?

3. Here’s How to Break Down Your Message…WITHOUT spending hours

Now you have to break down this message into smaller bits to make it easy for people to GET IT.

Just think of the digestion process:

When you chew your food thoroughly, you begin to mechanically break it down into smaller and smaller particles. It’s the same for your message: the better it’s broken down into small particles, the easier it will be for your audience to digest it.To do that, you take your core message and ask yourself this question:

4. How To Optimize Your Business Presentation Slides and Get to The Point

You’ve broken down your message into smaller bits to make it easy for people to GET IT.

Just like passengers in a car, your audience will feel more comfortable if you let them know where you’re headed.There are literally thousands of ways to craft your business presentation slides.

Whether you’re building a business strategy, a report deck or a business pitch presentation, don’t over-complicate it. Your # 1 target IS NOT to make a fancy slide deck that looks beautiful, it’s to get your message across. Period.

To do that, you want to breakdown each body slide into supporting points that are clearly tied with your sub-message. Think of these points as small bits of evidences that have one single objective: support your sub-message (which itself supports your core message).

You can use copywriter Neville Medhora‘s quick cheat-sheet to see if you did it right:

Conclusion

Having clear messages that get understood is the back-bone concept of effective business presentations. Optimizing your business presentations isn’t rocket science. By building a core purpose and then breaking it down in supporting points, you can effectively convey a clear message to your audience and make sure you get understood.

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Business Presentations: The 4-Step Formula That Works appeared first on PPTPOP – Actionable Persuasion Advice.