Crafting a powerful and persuasive presentation

When it comes to meeting people and introducing yourself in person, you’re in a good position to ‘read the room’, to get a feel for how your information is doing. or is not being accepted. You’ll be able to see firsthand the nuances of body language, facial gestures, and disengagement signals from people looking at their mobile phones.

Since most of your meetings now take place virtually, it becomes more challenging to put your finger on the pulse of your customer or prospect response via the small screen. It can be even more complicated when your audience of one or many has the camera turned off, forcing you to rely only on verbal cues.

The good news is that you can still deliver an impressive presentation that converts. Before you sit down to craft your next presentation, consider these three things; the purpose of the presentation, the decision the client or prospect must make, and how much time they will spend on the presentation.

Once you know those first few things, you can sit back and reverse engineer your presentation design and content.

The purpose of the presentation

When you have just read the previous paragraph, you may have thought to yourself that the goal and the decision to make are one in the same and are not.

Before we can begin to write the content of the message, it is necessary to know what the purpose of the presentation is. Determine if the message is intended to educate about a product or service; to inform the audience, such as a company announcement or to gain acceptance. Lastly, it is to inspire or motivate the audience as many corporate leaders might be doing for their employees and stakeholders.

The business decision to be made

When preparing any presentation that you may give, you need to understand one key thing: that the presentation is taking place so that the person or team members listening can make a decision. Your role as a presenter is to give them the information they need to make a decision to say yes, say no, move on to the next meeting, raise your hand to an idea, or at least ask questions.

Delivery time

You’re getting your presentation off on the wrong foot if you haven’t determined how long you have to deliver your presentation. It’s a big mistake to make a presentation last longer than the audience expects, and you could waste an opportunity as a result.

First, find out how much time you are given to speak. Then remove immediately for 10-15 minutes. This will ensure that you finish earlier and allow time for questions and answers at the end.

So if they give you an hour, plan for 45-50 minutes and then reverse engineer the presentation. This means that you should build your presentation with this moment in mind. Perhaps allow 5 minutes for the introduction and perhaps another 10 minutes for the conclusion and closing. That means I need to divide the remaining 35 minutes for the body of the presentation.

The brain likes the number 3. That means your listeners will remember more of your presentation if you deliver the content in three topics. Those three topics, along with your talking points, will be spread out over the course of 35 minutes for approximately 10 to 12 minutes for each topic that is shared.

You can use this format for as long as you want for your presentation.

So now that you know your goal, what desired decision the audience should make, and how long to deliver, we can now move on to building a persuasive presentation.

Building a persuasive presentation

When it comes to delivering your presentation, it is important that you have a structure for your talk as it allows you to establish a foundation for your talk.

There are two formats to consider:

A. Past, present, future

Start by having a discussion about where your audience (customer, stakeholders, peers) was in the past.

Establish what is happening in the present (what they are achieving or not achieving).

Explain to them how you can improve their future, where you can take them.

B. Why you? Why your company? Why now?

Every time you give a presentation, there are three questions you need to answer for the prospect or customer, even if they don’t ask you directly.

You must answer the question of why they should work with you as an individual.

It should answer the question of why they should consider your company, product or service, especially if they currently have a supplier or company that they are satisfied with.

You need to answer the question why they should work with your company right now. This is where the opportunity cost shows.

Presentation format

The classic presentation structure has four main parts: an introduction, the body (the 3 main talking points), a conclusion, and a closing.

Building a persuasive presentation is never complete until you add a conclusion and finish with a clear and confident closing.

The conclusion provides a quick reference to your opening that grabs attention, gathers loose ends, and ends your argument. The presentation only completes when it closes, that is, it includes a specific call to action.

So there you have it. A process that will allow you to write a presentation by first asking key questions, using your time strategically, and then building the argument for your presentation.