Page 100 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

WhY MUST I gIvE A MEMORABLE PRESENTATION? 89

at popular culture, do ANYTHING to demonstrate imagination in order
to capture and hold your audience’s attention. If audience members don’t
listen or care, they surely won’t remember.
We like to teach people about these four causes of presentation fail-
ure because they have one thing in common—you have the power to fix
them. Too frequently, we blame poor performance on matters beyond
our own control. When we blame poor performance on circumstances,
then we excuse ourselves of personal responsibility for the failure. Don’t
fall into that trap. We will all have presentation failures in our careers.
The best speakers learn from those experiences and take action to fix the
problem in the future.

Getting Started the Right Way

Before you begin preparing your presentation ask yourself this simple
question, what is my presentation about? If you answer that question with
one or two words, then you skipped Chapter 3, where we talked about
purpose statements. We won’t force you to go back and read it now, but
we do want you to understand one important point. World-class consul-
tant and author Nancy Duarte reminds her followers that presentations
are your opportunity to change your part of the world, even in business.
Before you start putting together your presentation, you need to identify
your “big idea”: What idea are you selling to your audience and what
are the stakes involved? You need to get out of the routine of saying,
“my presentation is about increasing sales.” Instead, get into the habit of
expressing your big idea with the stakes involved. Try the following: “We
need to adopt new sales strategies or we will be driven out of business.”
2
Instead of thinking about topics you will discuss, think about how your
big ideas will change your world.
Figure 7.2 summarizes a number of techniques you might use to ener-
gize the introduction to a presentation.

Supercharging Your Introduction

How many times have you witnessed someone who gets up before a
group, gives his or her name, states the topic, and launches immediately