Page 92 - Kindness - No Forward

Break Your Presentation into Small Pieces

World-class presentations are actually a number of small presentations
pieced together. I call this “file formatting.” I have my clients create
small files together to form their talk. They put these on 3x5 cards to
build their presentation.

This accomplishes a lot of things.

First of all, it gives our listeners an opportunity to turn us back in after
they have tuned us out. And believe me, they will tune us out.

I don’t care if it’s Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, or Paul Harvey.
Listeners do not concentrate on every word that is said...they can’t!
Their minds are capable of processing much more data than that!

Accepting that premise, why not make it easy to rejoin the presentation
as it proceeds? We do that be creating short message segments of one
to three minute and then transitioning them with a statement or
statements to support our main theme.

For example, my presentation may consist of six or seven or these files,
each containing a story, or point, or information which supports my
main theme. By mentioning the main theme following each of these
files, my listeners can leave remembering only three or four files, but
still get the big picture.

Compare that to a long speech which hits at the theme at the beginning
and end alone, by which time a number of listeners have drifted of to la-
la land.

Think of a speech as a CD of your favorite music. These usually contain
a dozen or so songs, each of which is different. When a song comes on
that sounds particularly good to you, you tune in a little stronger. When
one comes on that doesn’t appeal to you as much, you tend to tune it
out a little.

And even when a CD has a very special, favorite song, you don’t want to
listen to just that song for an hour.

Effective presentations are the same way. They contain variety through
these “files”, some of which are more appealing to different people than
others. And, if we are aware of what our audience wants, we can make
sure that we give them something that appeals to all their different
styles.