Delivering a Great Business Presentation

Steven Paul Jobs, the late founder of Apple, was the master of the business presentation.  When he spoke, Apple stock surged.  When he gave an opinion, it moved the market.  Even though he was not a Toastmaster, he delivered like one.  That is because he used the same techniques we use in Toastmasters, except that he did it better. 

Nothing in a great presentation is spontaneous, even when it looks like it.  Every pause, every pause filler, everything in between, is for effect.  Every hand gesture, every look, every movement, is deliberate.  The best speakers make any presentation look natural because a lot of work is out into perfecting that delivery.  That means practice, practise, practise.  With constant practise, there is less chance for mistakes. 

Lawrence Edward Page, one of the co-founders of Google, is the originator of the “Gospel of 10 x”.  This is found in many business blogs and books.  Most companies would be happy to improve a product by 10%.  However, Page reasoned a 10% improvement is too incremental to be differentiate a company from its competitors.  He expects his people at Google to create products and services that are ten times better than the competition.  A thousand percent improvement requires rethinking problems, and reworking things from the fundamental processes. 

Committing to 10x improvement in presentation is not just about rehearsing the pitch, but relooking how it is received.  It is not about what we say, but what the audience hears.  It is about mastery of the correct rhetorical devices.  It is about practising it again, and again, and again, until we can do it in our sleep.  In the world of business, this means closing that deal, it means securing funding, it means an increase in share value, it means whatever we set out to achieve to move the audience and get the buy in we require, whether customer, or investor, or regulator, we put forth a convincing performance married to a compelling argument.  If those things do not motivate us, then we have no business doing that presentation for the business. 

The first 30 seconds of a presentation is the most important.  If we do not seize the attention of the audience, if we do not pique their curiosity, if we do not inflame their desire to be part of our process and success, we have lost them, and the presentation is a waste of time.  It is very important to start with a strong opening, a compelling opening statement.  This sets the stage for the entire presentation.  The last 30 seconds is the call to action.  After all that was said and done, often a lot was said, and nothing was done.  If this is the case, then the presentation is a failure.  There must be a call to action, and this call to action must come back to that opening statement as a form of reinforcement.  An opening statement presents the contention, the problem to be addressed.  The body of the presentation presents the solution, and explains it.  The closing is the call to action to adopt that solution.  That is the pitch. 

The presentation itself must sound credible, and concise.  Effective communication is about speaking less to mean more, not flooding the time with words.  If you can say it in three words, do not use five.  If you can say it in five words, do not use ten.  It is important to relook the sentences, and any words that can be eliminated without losing the flavour and the intent of the passage should be eliminated.  This means removing all filler words. 

It is important to embrace the pause, the uncomfortable silence between points and contentions, and own it.  The audience needs time for their emotions to catch up, and feel.  The audience needs time to understand the depth of what is being presented, so that they can recognise that need – a need that the presentation proposes to address. 

When practising a presentation, it is important that we stimulate the stress of a real presentation.  This means presenting before a crowd.  This means delivering the same presentation to different crowds.  And then nothing their reaction, and tweaking it until it is ready.  This also means presenting to a difficult audience with all the attendant interruptions and distractions, from people talking to handphones ringing to people moving in and out of the room. 

One of the things that presenters often fail to prepare for is the questioning.  Business presentations have a question and answer segment, and we must be prepared for those difficult questions.  A great presentation can be undone with a poor performance in the question and answer segment or panel discussion. 

It is important to record the rehearsals and pay attention to several things: body language, vocal variety, and how the stage is used.  Body language refers to economy of movement, and deliberateness of gestures.  It is important to look out for nervous tics, superfluous movements, and unnecessary pacing.  The presenter is meant to be the centre of the audience’s universe, the point of stability.  Any movement is solely for effect, whether it is narrative pacing, or for emphasis of specific points.  A speaker who moves too much loses credibility and looks less convincing.  The stage must be used deliberately. 

Vocal variety is about slowing down the number of words per minute.  Speak too fast, and we look nervous, uncertain, or simply undisciplined.  Speak too slow, and the audience gets bored.  Speak at the same pace throughout the presentation, and we lose them entirely.  There must be a change of pace at specific intervals to shock the audience into attention.  We raise our voice to demonstrate excitement and passion, and we lower it to bring the audience closer to demonstrate confidentiality, as if we are sharing with them some secret – our answer to the problem. 

We can only see all this when we record our presentation, and go through it with a select group of qualified evaluators.  We need to see where we did well, and where we went wrong.  We need to hear our presentation so we can understand if we managed to convey, at specific points, the appropriate appeal to emotion, and the explicit appeal to logic.  Most importantly, the argument must convincingly appeal to self-interest. 

Finally, something we all learn in Toastmasters, is to have good evaluators, and have them evaluate the speech after each rehearsal, and then take their feedback and consider whether we can incorporate that into the presentation.  This can be the strength of the argument, or the choice of words, or the preferred method of delivery.  This group of evaluators must be diverse, to stimulate the intended demographic. 

There is no mystery to delivering a great business presentation.  There is a process, and there is a lot of hard work involved in it.  A pitch done properly can be worth billions, and can move people.  It is worth the work we put in.