3 Ways to Make your Presentations more Interesting

Can I have 3 minutes of your time? Yes?
Ok here we go.

Today, I want to say something about business presentations. They are boring.

Why? Because most of them start with the most annoying ‘Today, I want to talk to you about’-syndrome. Just what I did with you two sentences ago. I am sure you also hated it while reading it. Most of the time when this happens, this is the moment when the first people in the meeting room start playing with their smartphone, answering some other mails or playing one more game of “Stressmannetje” while waiting for the climax to come. But what if there will never be a climax?

A lot of presentations are never finished as they are too long.

But a shorter presentation is not always a solution. What do you do when you are presenting your case when suddenly your boss, CEO or management team interrupts and asks you to go further to your conclusions? What I want to say is that giving a presentation is not about showing your effort. It’s making the point you want to make, and afterwards connecting with your audience in order to persuade the ones that are not convinced yet.

I want to show you 3 ways to prevent your audience from playing “Stressmannetje” on their smartphone ever again:

1. Hook up your presentation on a story.

   Not only influential presentations are suitable for putting a story behind. Do you need to present a business case about a company suffering from growing pains? Tell the story of the Big Friendly Giant, where the evil giants are your competition, the dreams your product and the little children your customer who you sell your dreams to.
   Oh damn, that’s something I already did..
   Is that too extreme? Start with telling a real customer story instead of talking about some formal evolutions in the market.

2. Talk half of the time you get.

   This is a great tip I got from presentation coach Sylvie Verleye during the 4P square café. Before presenting to a management team, ask them if it’s ok that kikkkjjkhjuyghtggyou explain your case in 5 minutes and take the other 10 minutes to discuss and put detail to the points they find important. Just as I asked 3 minutes of your time in the beginning and got 3 minutes of your time (as you are still reading this 😉 ), the management will also give you your 5 minutes of full attention.

3. Start with the answer

   Start with the answer when you only have a few minutes to communicate a recommendation. If the executive is interested in digging deeper, you can always present more details. This makes sure you made your punch line clear without the chance of getting interrupted before. Also, this allows the management to quickly process your recommendation, fitting in the executive’s mental “top-down” model of focusing on the big picture.

Today, I want to say something about business presentations. They don’t have to be boring.