Reflection Shorts - "Win that Communication" - episode #5
Most Presentations suck, use this format to fix it!
“WIIFM - What’s in it for me??”
When you are inviting folks to your presentation or actually presenting slides to them - They are screaming this question in silence.
Most of the time, when we are presenting something, we want others to do something like buy a product, adopt a framework, write better code, or something else.
If your hook, invitation pitch, and format and content of your presentation aren’t strong enough, many of the folks won’t attend it or may get bored in the first few minutes and start scrolling through Slack or Instagram posts.
And your audience isn’t wrong. They are not sitting in an olive garden waiting to hear the whole human psychological theory from you and solve the mysteries of your content.
Key-Takeaway
Make sure that your main key content or action item comes out immediately and let the rest of your content be a validation of the main point.
Adopt this Presentation format that works
The Hook
State the problem in a clear and actionable manner - “Sales are going down compared to the last year and we need to solve this immediately to keep the business running”.
Use Statistics - Benjamin Disraeli once said: “There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics”. The point is to have at least one graph or just make one out.
Ask Rhetorical questions - “In this regard, what can we do?” - No one is gonna answer that other than you, but still ask it anyway.
The Recommendation
Because you stated the problem and grabbed their attention, now tell them the solution. - “We need to reimplement XYZ marketing campaign via CRM”
Don’t drag the interesting part till last. Just tell them what you want them to do.
The Benefits
Tell them what’s the benefit of doing what you are suggesting.
The benefit often boils down to three things: saving time, saving or making money, and feeling good - “Because we have preexisting deal with the CRM company, we will save money by not reinventing the wheel, while improving our revenue and have some good time off afterward”.
Prove the benefit
Use some rough calculations or anecdotes from the past. - “Last year, this same strategy saved us $3M per month”.
Tell them the Next Step
Clearly define action items, who will do what, and when - “Jon will help us re-instantiate the contract and trigger brand recommendations. Mike will measure growth and provide weekly updates”
With this, you would roughly end up with 8 slides presentable in a 10-minute timeframe.
That’s it for today. If you are wondering “What’s a Reflection Short?” Read here.
References
Interesting Reads
Strategizing Your Preparation for Machine Learning Interviews by
How Meta Achieves 99.99999999% Cache Consistency by
Are You Getting the Most Out of People by
Making of a Million Dollar Staff Engineer by
& :)
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