Tell em What You re Gonna Tell em


Tell 'em What You're Gonna Tell 'em

The dynamic inflection points above will prime your audience, but do you want to now dive directly into the body of your presentation? Do you want to start drilling deeply into the first of the clusters you selected? Not quite yet. I suggest that first you take a moment to give your audience a preview of the outline of your major ideas.

The technique for helping your audience become oriented and track the flow of your ideas is the classic Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em . You can also think of it as the forest view .

In most business presentations, this preview is expressed in the Overview or Agenda slide. In an IPO road show, it's in the Investment Highlights slide. In either case, it summarizes the chief attractions of a company's offering. Why not map it to the sequence of the clusters? Why not make it track the entire presentation? In that way you and your audience can see all the major clusters and the Flow Structure that unifies them. This is a view of both the trees and the forest. Think of it as a final quality check.

But telling your audience what you're gonna tell 'em has much more to offer than an agenda. You can also extend your narrative string with two more dynamic inflection points: Linking forward from Point B and Forecasting the running time of your presentation .

  • Link forward from Point B. In the Argus Insurance sales pitch, after Carol Case asked for the order with, "I know that you'll want to take advantage of the opportunity and sign up for this important coverage today," she continued on to her Overview slide with, " so that you can consider signing with Argus ," and then she ran through the bullets of her Overview slide.

Contrast Carol's forward link with the far more common approach of no link at all: "Now I'd like to talk about my agenda "

In the opening of the Intuit IPO road show presentation, after Scott Cook's call to action with, "Why should you invest in Intuit?", he made a forward link to his Investment Opportunity slide (Figure 5.1) with, "These are the reasons to consider Intuit for your portfolio." Then he ran through the bullets, briefly , adding value to each point.

Figure 5.1. The Intuit IPO road show Investment Opportunity slide.

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In doing so, Scott avoided the all-too-common practice of reading the bullets verbatim; a practice that invariably annoys any audience because they think to themselves : "I'm not a child! I can read it myself !"

When Scott was done with the bullets, he added, "Please consider this the outline for the next 20 minutes of our presentation. Let's start at the top with the market opportunity," adding yet another forward link, this time into the heart of his presentation.

  • Forecast the time. When you establish the endpoint at the beginning of your presentation, instead of plunging your audience headlong into a dark tunnel, they get to see the light at the end while they are still at the entrance . By stating the amount of time your presentation will take, you demonstrate that you are aware of the value of your audience's time and intend to use it productively. Another aspect of Audience Advocacy.

By providing your audience with a roadmap and a forecast of the time, you are giving them a plan and a schedule . Those four italicized nouns have a least-common denominator noun: management . Once again, you're sending the subliminal message of Effective Management .

Of course, just because you've told 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, no one is going to think of you as an excellent manager. That's a stretch. But the converse proves the point: If you plunge your audience headlong into that dark tunnel without providing a roadmap or an endpoint, they'll feel out of control. If instead you show them the light, they'll sit back, lock into your message, and subconsciously say to themselves, "These people know what they're doing. They have a plan. They're well prepared. Let's listen to what they have to say."

Telling 'em what you're gonna tell 'em also provides additional benefits to you, the presenter. When you click on your Overview slide and run through it for your audience, you can mentally check the components of your presentation and remind yourself of the overall flow of ideas. This will make it easier for you to move confidently from point to point as you step through the body of your presentation. Remember how well that worked for Hugh Martin of ONI Systems and his "Top 10 Questions from Institutional Investors"?

Furthermore, it's quite likely that someday, someone is going to come up to you five minutes before your presentation is due to begin and say, "Gee, I'm sorry, but we're running awfully late. We planned to give you half an hour , but we can only spare eight minutes."

Panic time? No; simply move to your Overview slide and walk your audience through your key points in the allotted time. After all, since the Overview slide is a miniature view of the entire presentation, you can use it to support an ultra -brief condensation of all your ideas.

That old chestnut Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em has a host of benefits: roadmap, linkage, forecast, prompt, and short form.

You can now proceed to fulfill your forecast by telling 'em what you promised ; that is, move through each of your clusters in greater detail, putting flesh on the sturdy bones of your structure.

Of course, when you're done with all the clusters, you then tell 'em what you told 'em. In most presentations, this is in the Summary slide; in an IPO road show, it's in the Investment Highlights slide. In both cases, it's a mirror of its predecessor from the beginning of the presentation. This mirroring, this linking of the preview and the summary, serves to bookend the presentation. This also creates a thematic resolution that neatly ties together the entire presentation. Express that resolution with a final restatement of your Point B. The last words your audience should hear is your call to action.

An important footnote about your summary: Make it brief! In a book, when only a few pages are left and the reader knows that the end is in sight, it is the writer's obligation to quicken the pace of the narrative. So it is with a presentation. When you get to your Summary slide, be succinct.

You have now effectively grabbed your audience at the beginning, navigated them through all the parts , and deposited them at Point B. Moreover, your whole story has now fulfilled Aristotle's classical requirements for any story: a strong beginning, a solid middle, and a decisive end.

In my programs, I provide a Story Form (Figure 5.2) that captures all of the above. It's a useful tool for tracking a basic format that will work for any persuasive presentation.

Figure 5.2. The Power Presentations Story Form.

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Presenting to Win. The Art of Telling Your Story
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition
ISBN: 0137144172
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 94

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