Bring your Busines Presentations to the next level

Over the past years, I have had the privilege to train and work with a lot of different professionals on their (business) presentation skills. From scientists to CEO’s and from fashion designers to software developers.

The interesting part is that regardless of their expertise or job titles, they all seem to make this one crucial mistake when it comes to presenting. And it is preventing them from being truly memorable and influential in their presentations.

Wondering what it is? It has to do with their focus. What do you focus on when preparing for a business presentation? Do you start with opening your powerpoint or keynote software? Do you start listing what you want to say?

This is where it goes wrong. Putting the focus on the content instead of the purpose. In other words, we pay a lot of attention to what we are going to say and almost no attention to why it matters. The crucial question to ask here is:

Whats is in it for them?

Too often people hold presentations for the purpose of sharing information. Just because that’s how it has always been done. But think about it, if you prepare a presentation with all the time and money this costs,  and all you wish to do is share information, why not just write an email and send it around. That takes a lot less effort from both you and your audience.

The goal of your presentation needs to always be: to inspire. To inspire new thinking, new behaviour or often, both.

Only when you know your goal, you can create the road to get there. And only when you know where you are going, people will dare to follow you. Once you know what you wish to achieve, it’s time to find the right tools. The story, the facts that support your story, and potentially your visuals.

So how do we inspire action? Here’s the simple answer:  Emotion inspires action. Action is only taken when we either want to move away from something we don’t want or we want to move towards something that we do want.

Let’s take a look at what changes when we shift our focus from information to goal. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and that it will help you in your future presentations. If you find it helpful, feel free to share it with someone else who might benefit from reading this.