Top 8 ways to build engaging and powerful business presentations

Benjamin Franklin once said, “There are only two things certain in life. Death and Taxes.” But for any person in the 21st-century workforce, Microsoft office or the more generic term ” Office Productivity Suites” are the third certain thing in life.

Recently, I was roped in to help my Pre-sales team build a proposal defense PPT for day-long demo and discussion sessions with the client. Being a ~$10M deal, the entire senior leadership was in on the presentation. While going through the beautifully crafted presentation on which the design team had worked for over a week, the content team made sure to follow the principles of less is more, not more than 3 bullet points in a slide, etc. But then my Pre-sales head and Sr. VP asked the query, ” Where’s the story?” along with many other queries, which meant we had to redo the entire presentation.

This got me thinking. Whilst there is much content on the web on making your presentation more readable, legible to your audience, the crux of why the presentation is needed is forgotten in many cases. The Presentation, or rather the PPT, is just the tool in the overall scheme of things. Whilst we put too much focus on the presentation, we forget the presenter.

That’s going to be the crux of this listicle. In this listicle, I would like to share some of the points we need to look at to create powerful presentations that will engage your audience and persuade them to act on your ideas. The list is as follows:

1. Why do you and your ideas matter? First, the audience is there to listen to you. In this scenario, it is important in the first few minutes to establish your credentials and provide the hook, i.e., why the various stakeholders in the presentation must listen to you with rapt attention. This can only occur if you understand what is that your audience wants or, in corporate-speak, ” How will the idea you are presenting help your audience achieve their KPIs?”
2. Balance Facts and Emotions: It’s easy to create a tomb of charts and figures. It’s also easy to create a heavy emotional story about your idea and make it engaging to your audience. Remember whilst the emotions and the storyline will get the audience engaged with the idea, you need to give the facts to get them to act on your idea. Strike a balance between emotion and facts, and you will do just fine.
3. The idea is the hero: The PPT is not the hero. You are not the hero. The idea is the hero. In the guise of establishing our credentials, we often make ourselves the hero instead of the idea. Also, this can be construed as blowing your own trumpet. So, focus on the idea. Please give it a shape. Build the story with the idea of the hero.
4. Do not over-sell the idea: In the heat of the moment, under the glare of the floodlights, do not over-sell the idea. Sometimes, to hook the audience in, we tend to set high expectations. Be wary of that. In this scenario, whilst you might get good engagement from the audience initially, you will lose your credibility in the long run if your idea doesn’t give the results which you have led your audience to expect. Remember, the presentation may be for an hour, but the expectations you set there will last for way longer than that one hour.
5. Be edgy, don’t be controversial: In today’s world, you will probably be talking to audiences of different age groups, value systems, personalities, interests, and lifestyles. While it is all right to showcase your uniqueness, do not delve into controversial topics. For example, touching upon politics, religion, and gender is a complete no-no when doing business presentations.
6. Anticipate and prepare for Dissent: Not everyone will be supportive of your idea. So you need to look into what kind of dissent will come in and how to tackle it. I have noticed 4 kinds of dissent: Logical, Emotional, Opportunity Cost, and Operational Dissent. Logical Dissent is questioning the viability of the project. This can be countered with Data whilst emotional dissent is a more tricky subject and should be countered based on the audience’s demography and position. In Opportunity Cost dissent, you have to counter comparison with other ideas. Whilst logical dissent focuses on the viability of the idea; Opportunity cost dissent focuses on where your idea stands in comparison with other’s ideas. Finally, in Operational dissent, you will face queries on the “How” of the idea, i.e., How you will execute the idea. It always pays to anticipate these Dissent queries and be prepared for the same.
7. Have Sound Bites ( Punch Dialogues): Have a memorable slogan/sign-off which is easy to remember. This soundbite should also easily connect to your core idea.
8. Plan for the next steps: Ok, you have given the presentation. What to do next? How do you engage with the audience post the presentation? How will you make sure they do the actions you want them to do?

Now that I have spoken more about the qualitative aspects of a presentation. Given below are some tricks I follow to make sure that I do an engaging presentation.

• Use the Entire Office Productivity suite: Who says presentation means you should use PPT? Before starting my PPT, I sketch my ideas in Word, then create a slide outline in Excel stating the header for each slide and the content which must go into it is. Then, when I am satisfied with the storyline in the excel sheet, I start working on the PPT.
• Executive Summary slide: I always make sure that there is an Executive Summary slide which I will share with the audience at the beginning of the presentation and request confirmation if this is what they have come to learn/ this is what they will learn. This allows me to accomplish two things: One, Set expectations with the audience; Second, If there is an expectation mismatch, the audience can point it out in the beginning, and I can modify my presentation as per the audience request, if possible.
• One idea per slide: In the short presentation window, we need to break the audience’s preconceived notions, convince them that a gap exists and that only our idea can fulfill it. It would help if you had every aid at your disposal. The most important idea is that you do not over-crowd your audience’s thought process—limit idea sharing to one idea per slide.

On the whole, a presentation is all about selling the idea. So make sure your idea matters. In that way, we not only waste the audience’s time, but we also make sure they go away having learned something new.