#10: Don’t Get in the Way of Your Message

OUCH! That had to be the reaction (or worse) of the rider who flew out of frame in this picture. And that has to be the feeling when an otherwise good presentation does an endo as well.

Great content is not enough when we’re trying to influence someone. How we deliver the information is just as important (some would say it’s even more important). That How could range from the look of your slides to the pace at which you speak to even the way you walk in the room.

Some of you may say, “But didn’t you tell us that technique doesn’t matter?” To a point, that’s true [see Basebolf: What Presentations Are Really About and Item #87: Breathe (repeat as needed)]. If you make a solid connection — right at the start — with your audience’s needs, interests, and goals, they won’t even notice minor mannerisms and such.

But if you make it harder for you audience to get the message — if your slides are unnecessarily complex or dense, or your delivery draws attention to itself — you risk losing them before you can win them over. And what can kill an audience’s involvement? What muddles their attention, distracts them, or just gets in the way of their focus? Here’s a sampling:

· overly complex designs or graphics

· gratuitous animations or transitions

· pictures or clip art that don’t add meaning, but
  only fill up space

· too much text on your slides

· reading the text of your slides

· using long, marketing-approved strings of words

There’s a very good (bad) example of this last point in a post on Jill Konrath’s Selling to Big Companies blog, courtesy of Charles Legalos at Critical Contacts. It’s a bit long, but you can see pretty quickly how bad the original is, and how much more effective the end product would be.

The key to all of this is SIMPLIFY. Simplify the look of your slides, simplify your language, and — most of all — simplify your message.

So here are your tasks for this, the final exercise in our 10-part series on how to be more effective and compelling in your presentations:

[1] Simplifying the Visuals
How simple can you make your slides, without having them look anemic? What can you take out and still be able to get your story across? Can you strip down the template? Can you eliminate all the bullet points? Can you even leave out your charts or complex graphics?
        I realize this might seem heretical (particularly the last point), but try going through your presentation without all the visuals you currently have — or, better, without any of your slides. As you do this, note where you really get stuck, but keep going to the end. You’ll find out what absolutely must be included.
        Once you’ve nailed down the essentials, try simplifying them. Fewer words? Simpler charts? Fewer variations in fonts, sizes, and colors? The more you can simplify things, the better.
        For good examples, check out the presentations profiled in Abandon All Hope?

[2] Simplifying the Language
The best writing comes across like a conversation. You can virtually hear the writer speaking the words in your head. And your presentations need to be the same way. They need to be honest extensions of how you think and express yourself. In doing so, your audience will accept you as more authentic and be much more engaged in your pitch.
        Where presenters (and writers) go wrong is when they talk like a bad press release or marketing pitch. You’ve probably heard and seen more than you’d care to count, but are you sure you’re not doing the same, even just a little?
        Here’s a little test. Look at your presentation or one of your company’s marketing pieces, or even an email you’ve sent to a prospect. Take one paragraph and count the number of words in each sentence. Now, try expressing the same idea in each sentence in half as many words. Can you do it? How about if you use half as many sentences?
        This is a great exercise, because it forces you to be concise. A lot of the words that might be baffling to your audience fall away, and you’ll get down to the core ideas that will get through to them.

[3] Simplifying the Message
What’s the point you want to get across? Can you say it in one sentence? Better, can you say it in 3-7 words? Being that concise is critical, if you really want to affect your audience.
        So try it. Boil everything down to 3-7 words. It’s not an easy task, but the payoff — for your audience and yourself — is huge. Your message will be much more memorable and compelling when you’re this concise.

Simpler is always better, whether you’re racing down a rutted trail on a mountain bike or standing in the spotlight to deliver your presentation — or writing press releases, or pitching your boss for more funding, or any other situation where you’re trying to persuade or influence someone. It’s all about getting out of the way of the message (or the big-ass bumps :-).

<photo credit>
The brilliant photo above is by Eric Simard. I found it on iStockPhoto.com, a wonderful source for good, but inexpensive stock photography and illustrations.

<note>
To see the other parts of this series, find the heading EXERCISES in right column of The YouBlog. It’s between “Recent Posts” and “Categories”. You can do them in any order you like.