The internal presentation; the one that’s going to inspire your team, motivate the sales guys or maybe deliver the news everyone has been hoping for.
Whatever the reason for your internal presentation we want to help you make it great, make sure it’s understood and that your team leave clear on their next steps…
To point you in the right direction, outlined below is our 10-step strategy for creating an effective internal presentation (it’s way more useful than a generic advanced PowerPoint training course!)…
STEP 1 – SET YOUR OBJECTIVES
Every presentation should have a purpose to it. What is it that you actually want your audience to do? Inspire them into doing something differently? Buy into a new set of procedures? Maybe it’s a quarterly update and you want them to take on board information and act on it?
Whatever you want to achieve, keep it in mind throughout the creation of your presentation and make your call to action clear. If your audience leave unsure what you want them to do, chances are they won’t do it…
TIP: Learn Eyeful’s Must Intend Like objective setting module on page 82 of The Presentation Lab…
STEP 2 – CONSIDER WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR AUDIENCE
Audiences are funny things. Especially internal ones, as the chances are you’re going to know each other pretty well. That might be a good thing if you’re on good terms, it could also be negative if there is a pre-existing level of distrust or negativity. Either way, you can’t ignore this. You need to spend some time considering how you’re going to get your audience to engage and buy in to your topic…
TIP: Generate your Audience Heatmap here (it’s free!)…
STEP 3 – CRAFT A PRESENTATION STRUCTURE USING THE AUDIENCE PATHWAY
Eyeful’s Audience Pathway structure has provided a large number of companies with presentations that focus on their audiences. It’s a simple structure that helps to highlight the audience’s issues and shows the solution you can provide. This means whether your audience is a prospect or a colleague, if you’re offering them a real solution to a problem affecting their world, they are going to listen.
TIP: Find more information on The Audience Pathway on page 74 of The Presentation Lab…
STEP 4 – TURN YOUR PRESENTATION INTO A STORY
It’s a well-known fact that people remember stories not slides. You can include stories in your presentation in a number of ways; case studies, previous experiences, analogies about sheds (true story) – using a story to support your message will make it easier to understand and easier to remember. After all, presentations aren’t meant to be hard work (for the audience!)…
TIP: Check out our collection of storytelling blogs…
STEP 5 – START DESIGN ON PAPER
Most presenters don’t follow the kind of advice we offering, they dive straight into PowerPoint and start typing bullet points and endless amounts of text onto slides. Alas this is why many (bad) presentations resemble word documents. When it comes to slide content, less is more. Consider highlighting your key messages in a visual way.
STEP 6 – CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON OF CHOICE WISELY
The Presentation Landscape is Eyeful’s way of helping you to pair the environment you will be presenting in with the technology that’s suits this type of engagement best.
If it’s a large auditorium with a huge audience then you’re going to want a projector, if it’s a small 1-2-1 sales meeting then presenting with a tablet is going to be more informal… it’s not complicated, but you’d be surprised by how many presentations get this wrong… It’s simply about using the best tool to get your message across to your audience.
TIP: Find more information on page 170 of The Presentation Lab…
STEP 7 – CONSIDER A BLENDED PRESENTING APPROACH
Blending Presenting is an Eyeful concept that is essentially about not being afraid to use multiple presentation tools during one presentation. For example, if your internal presentation is to demo a new product to your team, make sure you don’t just deliver a PowerPoint – demo the product too… and don’t be afraid to use a whiteboard to sketch out complicated information.
STEP 8 – PRACTICE DELIVERING
Nothing will contribute to the success of your presentation more that you knowing it inside out. The only way to achieve this is through practice… Read it out loud…
Practice presenting to colleagues or friends. You may worry about making mistakes, but it’s better to make those mistakes before your main presentation – after all, nobody wants to look daft in front of their colleagues!
STEP 9 – BE ENTHUSIASTIC (AND HONEST)
It’s very difficult to come across professionally if you haven’t practised your presentation. By practising your presentation again and again you will be able to deliver it in a more authentic and genuine way, which is going to get you a lot more respect and buy in from your audience. Nobody enjoys a presentation when the presenter spouts a speech he’s given a thousand times before with no care in how he sounds…
STEP 10 – CONSIDER A PRESENTATION LEAVE BEHIND
Avoid that sinking feeling you get when after months of hard work leading up to your presentation, you find the key decision maker isn’t in your audience. Don’t let their absence detract from you still delivering an excellent presentation – but, at the end, provide your audience with a professional presentation leave behind.
This document should contain the same key messages as your presentation along with the copy and context to support these as if you were there presenting alongside it.
Printing out your slides and binding them together nicely won’t do you justice if read later without the presenter’s context.
We hope these 10-steps help you to create internal presentations that deliver your desired impact.
If you follow them, we guarantee your internal presentations will be more advanced than many of the thousands of home spun decks, that are being knocked up on a daily basis by unsuspecting presenters, who are blissfully ignorant to the fact that an internal presentation can actually be the most powerful and influential of all – internal presentations are your opportunity to shine.
The solution is a simple one…
Give your internal communications presentation the same care and attention as any other, spend time analysing
your audience, building story structures and delivering it in the best way to advocate action in your audience…
If you need any help getting there, just get in touch…
