I often hear my clients say, “My presentation content is very boring.” Do you have the same thought?
In any presentation, there’s no boring content. It doesn’t matter what you present, scientific findings, technical report or industry-specific product. You can all present in a way that makes your listeners listen with great interest and creates buy-in from them.
How do you do that? Listen to my client’s case.
Last week, I was coaching an HR manager on her voice & presentation. In her presentation to the managers from other departments, one of the topics was the re-structured HR framework. She said, “Sigh, this is a boring part. I guess I’ll just quickly run through.”
I asked her, “Why did you do this re-structuring?” It turned out the HR people have made the employment flow more structured with documentation supported, where in the past there was no clear flow and supporting documentation.
If you present this info to the managers from other departments, saying “Ladies & gentlemen, this is our new HR framework”, how likely do you think they’ll be highly interested? The truth is they don’t care! They have so many problems in their own department that frustrate them!
So you have to ask yourself this question,
- What problem does your info solve?
If your info can present a solution to their problem, and you address that in the very beginning, sure your listeners will be interested.
After discussion, here’s what my client said in her presentation,
“I know in the past you were all dreaded for the complicated employment documentation process and tried to avoid it as much as you could. So we have re-structured the process and made it very simple and easy for you to track. You’ll never have to experience headache on this. And when you need to do documentation, it’ll take you as few as X number of hours to complete. Here’s how it works.”
If you were the manager from other department, will you be happy to hear that? I bet so.
Whatever topic you talk about, regardless of the number of your listeners, be it one person or a group, address this question in your beginning:
- What problem does your info solve?
And you’ll be sure to get your listeners lean in to hear what you’ll say.
