Oral report in business communication

Business Communications Power Point Presentation On Oral Presentations

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C H A P T E R17 Making Oral Presentations

Learning Objectives After studying this chapter, you will know how to:

1 Plan effective presentations.

2 Select and organize information for effective presentations.

3 Deliver effective presentations.

4 Handle questions during presentations.

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IN THE NEWS

Toastmasters

D oes public speaking make you nervous? Since 1924, Toastmasters International has been helping its members improve their

public speaking abilities and deal with the chal- lenges of oral communication. Toastmasters clubs, which exist in communities and organizations worldwide, provide forums where members can work on their speaking, net- working, and leadership skills and get valuable feedback from veteran presenters.

A Toastmasters club pro- vides a setting where you can practice speaking before a group without being under the pressure of a formal presenta- tion setting. Most clubs have between 20 and 40 members, but no “teachers.” Instead, members of the club provide feedback, support, and critiques of each others’ presentations. Toastmasters doesn’t focus only on public speaking, however: the clubs have resources to help you practice extemporaneous speaking, parliamentary procedure (the official rules of speaking used in formal meetings, such as

government proceedings), debate, and group facili- tation. You can locate a Toastmasters club near you through the Toastmasters International website: www.toastmasters.org.

Why is it important to develop public speaking skills? Because formal speaking opportunities are an important and challenging part of your profes-

sional life. When you speak before a group, you showcase not only your communication skills, but also your ability to organize information, act as a leader, and facilitate a discus- sion. In that regard, the same skills you develop for public speaking can also help you in

difficult, one-on-one conversations such as job in- terviews, performance assessments, and sales pitches, where you’re not only presenting your material: you’re presenting yourself. It can be un- comfortable to have everyone’s attention centered on you, but with practice, preparation, and atten- tion to detail, you’ll have nothing to be nervous about.

587

“When you speak before a group, you

showcase not only your

communication skills, but also your

ability to organize information, act as

a leader, and facilitate a discussion.”

Source: Toastmasters International, “Public Speaking Skills Aren’t Debatable,” in Information for Members: Press Releases, http://www.toastmasters.org/ artisan/member.asp?CategoryID�1&SubCategoryID�21&ArticleID�94&SearchText� (accessed June 16, 2007).

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Chapter Outline Purposes in Oral Presentations

Comparing Written and Oral Messages

Planning a Strategy for Your Presentation

• Choosing the Kind of Presentation • Adapting Your Ideas to the Audience • Planning a Strong Opening and Closing • Planning Presentation Visuals

Choosing Information to Include in a Presentation

Organizing Your Information

Delivering an Effective Presentation

• Dealing with Fear • Using Eye Contact • Developing a Good Speaking Voice • Standing and Gesturing • Using Notes and Visuals

Handling Questions

Making Group Presentations

Summary of Key Points

The power to persuade people to care about something you believe in is crucial to business success. Making a good oral presentation is more than just good de- livery: it also involves developing a strategy that fits your audience and purpose, having good content, and organizing material effectively. The choices you make in each of these areas are affected by your purposes, the audience, and the situation.

Purposes in Oral Presentations Oral presentations have the same three basic purposes that written documents have: to inform, to persuade, and to build goodwill. Like written messages, most oral presentations have more than one purpose.

Informative presentations inform or teach the audience. Training sessions in an organization are primarily informative. Secondary purposes may be to per- suade new employees to follow organizational procedures, rather than doing something their own way, and to help them appreciate the organizational culture.

Persuasive presentations motivate the audience to act or to believe. Giving information and evidence is an important means of persuasion. Stories, visu- als, and self-disclosure are also effective. In addition, the speaker must build goodwill by appearing to be credible and sympathetic to the audience’s needs. The goal in many presentations is a favorable vote or decision. For example, speakers making business presentations may try to persuade the audience to approve their proposals, to adopt their ideas, or to buy their products. Some- times the goal is to change behavior or attitudes or to reinforce existing atti- tudes. For example, a speaker at a meeting of factory workers may stress the importance of following safety procedures. A speaker at a church meeting may talk about the problem of homelessness in the community and try to build support for community shelters for the homeless.

Goodwill presentations entertain and validate the audience. In an after- dinner speech, the audience wants to be entertained. Presentations at sales

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Selling Your Message

A lot of schools teach the “art” of advertis-

ing. But not one has a course or section devoted to the brutally important topic of presenting. Presentation skills are critical to an ad exec’s career, especially in the creative department. And not just in pitches [selling a cam- paign to a client]. If you cannot sell yourself, how can you hope to sell anything? . . .

Being nervous is OK. It is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of respect. Tell your clients that. I do this all the time. It works be- fore speeches as well. People will warm up to you. Remember, some of the best performances begin with a healthy dose of stage fright. . . .

So many people try to cover up and play cool. . . . You know they know [you’re afraid], and you end up stuttering and say- ing “basically” too much. Be honest about your nerves. Tell them this is the biggest meeting you’ve ever been in and of course you’re nervous. Tell them it would be disrespectful if you weren’t. Not only is it the truth, it’s a great opener. . . .

When all is said and done, confidence tempered by re- spect is the most important trait a team can bring into the room. Second only to big ideas and a cashmere jacket from Barneys.

Quoted from Steffan Postaer, “The Rules of Presenting,” Adweek, Feb- ruary 24, 2003, 19.

meetings may be designed to stroke the audience’s egos and to validate their commitment to organizational goals.

Make your purpose as specific as possible.

Weak: The purpose of my presentation is to discuss saving for retirement.

Better: The purpose of my presentation is to persuade my audience to put their 401k funds in stocks and bonds, not in money market accounts and CDs.

or: The purpose of my presentation is to explain how to calculate how much money someone needs to save in order to maintain a specific lifestyle after retirement.

Write down your purpose before you start preparing your presentation. Note that the purpose is not the introduction of your talk; it is the principle that guides your choice of strategy and content.

Comparing Written and Oral Messages Giving a presentation is in many ways very similar to writing a message. All of the chapters up to this point—on using you-attitude and positive emphasis, developing benefits, analyzing your audience, designing slides, overcoming objections, doing research, and analyzing data—remain relevant as you plan an oral presentation.

A written message makes it easier to

• Present extensive or complex financial data. • Present many specific details of a law, policy, or procedure. • Minimize undesirable emotions.

Oral messages make it easier to

• Use emotion to help persuade the audience. • Focus the audience’s attention on specific points. • Answer questions, resolve conflicts, and build consensus. • Modify a proposal that may not be acceptable in its original form. • Get immediate action or response.

Oral and written messages have many similarities. In both, you should

• Adapt the message to the specific audience. • Show the audience how they would benefit from the idea, policy, service,

or product.

Oral presentation skills are a big asset in the business world.

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• Overcome any objections the audience may have. • Use you-attitude and positive emphasis. • Use visuals to clarify or emphasize material. • Specify exactly what the audience should do.

Planning a Strategy for Your Presentation A strategy is your plan for reaching your specific goals with a specific audience.

In all oral presentations, simplify what you want to say. Identify the one idea you want the audience to take home. Simplify your supporting detail so it’s easy to follow. Simplify visuals so they can be taken in at a glance. Simplify your words and sentences so they’re easy to understand. Researchers at Bell Labs are practicing these techniques. Where once they spent their days on basic research and academic papers, they now are condensing their scientific work into eight-minute PowerPoint presentations for potential corporate partners and venture capital as the Lab’s new director seeks to make it profitable.1

An oral presentation needs to be simpler than a written message to the same audience. If readers forget a point, they can turn back to it and reread the paragraph. Headings, paragraph indentation, and punctuation provide visual cues to help readers understand the message. Listeners, in contrast, must re- member what the speaker says. Whatever they don’t remember is lost. Even asking questions requires the audience to remember which points they don’t understand.

Analyze your audience for an oral presentation just as you do for a writ- ten message. If you’ll be speaking to co-workers, talk to them about your topic or proposal to find out what questions or objections they have. For au- diences inside the organization, the biggest questions are often practical ones: Will it work? How much will it cost? How long will it take? How will it impact me?

Think about the physical conditions in which you’ll be speaking. Will the audience be tired at the end of a long day of listening? Sleepy after a big meal? Will the group be large or small? The more you know about your audience, the better you can adapt your message to them.

Choosing the Kind of Presentation Choose one of three basic kinds of presentations: monologue, guided discus- sion, or interactive.

In a monologue presentation, the speaker speaks without interruption; questions are held until the end of the presentation, where the speaker func- tions as an expert. The speaker plans the presentation in advance and delivers it without deviation. This kind of presentation is the most common in class sit- uations, but it’s often boring for the audience. Good delivery skills are crucial, since the audience is comparatively uninvolved.

In a guided discussion, the speaker presents the questions or issues that both speaker and audience have agreed on in advance. Rather than function- ing as an expert with all the answers, the speaker serves as a facilitator to help the audience tap its own knowledge. This kind of presentation is excellent for presenting the results of consulting projects, when the speaker has specialized knowledge, but the audience must implement the solution if it is to succeed. Guided discussions need more time than monologue presentations, but pro- duce more audience response, more responses involving analysis, and more commitment to the result.

Give the Audience Problems

To meet the challenge of getting and keeping

the audience’s interest, some speakers are adapting a method used by teachers: problem- based learning. With this tech- nique, students identify a problem and learn principles and meth- ods for solving the problem, often working as a group.

For presentations, speakers apply problem-based learning in various ways:

• They might present the topic in terms of a problem to be solved. For example, if the topic is employee morale, the speaker might describe an employee who feels unappreciated.

• The speaker might ask audience members to work in pairs and brainstorm possible sources of the problem. This activity might last just five minutes, but it gets the audience alert, focused, and involved in the topic.

• The presentation should allow plenty of time for questions. Before replying to a question, the speaker might ask audience members to suggest solutions.

• The presenter should offer resources for further learning after the presentation is over. Motivating participants to continue learning is one of the goals of problem-based learning.

A common thread of the various techniques is that they shift the presenter’s role. Not just a deliv- erer of information, the presenter aims to help the audience learn.

Adapted from Richard T. Kasuya, “Give Your Audience a Problem and They Will Learn,” Presentations 18, no. 8 (August 2004): 46.

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An interactive presentation is a conversation, even if the speaker stands up in front of a group and uses charts and overheads. Most sales presentations are interactive presentations. The sales representative uses questions to deter- mine the buyer’s needs, probe objections, and gain provisional and then final commitment to the purchase. Even in a memorized sales presentation, the buyer will talk a significant portion of the time. Top salespeople let the buyer do the majority of the talking.

Adapting Your Ideas to the Audience Measure the message you’d like to send against where your audience is now. If your audience is indifferent, skeptical, or hostile, focus on the part of your message the audience will find most interesting and easiest to accept.

Don’t seek a major opinion change in a single oral presentation. If the audi- ence has already decided to hire an advertising agency, then a good presenta- tion can convince them that your agency is the one to hire. But if you’re talking to a small business that has always done its own ads, limit your pur- pose. You may be able to prove that an agency can earn its fees by doing things the owner can’t do and by freeing the owner’s time for other activities. Only after the audience is receptive should you try to persuade the audience to hire your agency rather than a competitor.

Make your ideas relevant to your audience by linking what you have to say to their experiences and interests. Showing your audience that the topic affects them directly is the most effective strategy. When you can’t do that, at least link the topic to some everyday experience.

When was the last time you were hungry? Maybe you remember being hungry while you were on a diet, or maybe you had to work late at a lab and didn’t get back to the dorm in time for dinner.

Speech about world hunger to an audience of college students

Planning a Strong Opening and Closing The beginning and the end of a presentation, like the beginning and the end of a written document, are positions of emphasis. Use those key posi- tions to interest the audience and emphasize your key point. You’ll sound more natural and more effective if you talk from notes but write out your opener and close in advance and memorize them. (They’ll be short: just a sentence or two.)

Consider using one of the four modes for openers that appeared in Chapter 12 ( pp. 394–95): startling statement, narration or anecdote, question, or quota- tion. The more you can do to personalize your opener for your audience, the better. Recent events are better than things that happened long ago; local events are better than events at a distance; people they know are better than people who are only names.

Startling statement

�

Audience Feedback

Just as when you’re speaking with some-

one face-to-face, when you’re presenting in front of a group it’s important to look for feedback from your audience. Pay atten- tion to body language, and ask your audience questions: the feedback that you get will help you build rapport with your au- dience so that you can express your message more clearly.

In some settings, such as when you’re presenting to a large group, you might use other tools to gather audience feedback. For example, you could build a group discussion into your pres- entation: give your audience some questions to discuss in small groups, then invite them to share their answers with the room. Give questionnaires to your audience, either before your presentation or during a break. Have a member of your team tabulate audience responses, then build them into the remainder of your talk.

Audience response devices give you another option for get- ting instant audience feedback. These devices—about the size of a television remote control and popular in schools and with train- ing departments—allow your au- dience to respond directly to your questions. These devices come with a variety of useful features.

Look at the product Web sites of some popular audience response devices:

• www.meridia-interactive.com

• www.optiontechnologies.com

• www.qwizdom.com

• www.turningtechnologies.com

How do these devices compare to each other? How might you use them in your own presentations?

Twelve of our customers have canceled orders in the past month.

This presentation to a company’s executive committee went on to show that the company’s distribution system was inadequate and to recommend a third warehouse located in the Southwest.

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Narration or anecdote

When the salespeople for a company that sells storage of backed-up computer data give presentations to clients, they open by telling a story:

Strategy for a Corporate Speech

Security directors of the 50 most prominent interna- tional banks meet periodically to discuss common problems. BankAmerica’s Bob Beck wanted to talk to the group about chemical dependency and BankAmerica’s approach to the problem.

Audience’s initial position: Resistant. Most favored testing, not treatment.

One point to leave with audi- ence: Treatment is a practical alternative that works.

Adapting message to audi- ence: Used terms from sports, banking, and security to make it easy for audience to identify with message. Backed up points with details and statistics. Explained problems of drug testing. Did not ask for action.

Opener: Hard-hitting statistics on how much chemical depend- ency costs US businesses—$26 billion a year.

Outline: (1) Chemical depend- ency as a disease; the size of the problem; testing as the usual re- sponse. (2) BankAmerica’s treat- ment approach: policy, program design, and education in the workplace. (3) The business ad- vantages of treatment: protects investment in trained people; confines business losses caused by chemical dependency.

Adapted from Robin Welling, No Frills, No Nonsense, No Secrets (San Francisco: International Association of Business Communicators, 1988), 290–93.

A consultant asked a group of people how many of them had [a backup plan]. One brave soul from a bank raised his hand and said, “I’ve got a disaster recovery plan—complete and ready to go into action. It’s real simple, just one page.” And the consultant asked, “A one-page disaster plan? What would you do if your com- puter center blew up, or flooded, or caught on fire? How could you recover with just a one-page disaster plan?” He said, “Well, it’s really very simple. It’s a two- step plan. First, I maintain my résumé up-to-date at all times. And second, I store a backup copy off-site.”2

This anecdote breaks the ice in introducing an uncomfortable subject: the pos- sibility of a company losing valuable data. It uses humor to make major points—that a variety of disasters are possible, many firms are unprepared, and the consequences are great. The client will be more open to listening than if the salespeople started by questioning the client’s own planning.

Even better than canned stories are anecdotes that happened to you. The best anecdotes are parables that contain the point of your talk.

Question

Asking the audience to raise their hands or reply to questions gets them ac- tively involved in a presentation. Tony Jeary skillfully uses this technique in sessions devoted to training the audience in presentation skills. He begins by asking the audience members to write down their estimate of the number of presentations they give per week:

“How many of you said one or two?” he asks, raising his hand. A few hands pop up. “Three, four, six, eight?” he asks, walking up the middle of the aisle to the back of the room. Hands start popping up like targets in a shooting gallery. Jeary’s Texas drawl accelerates and suddenly the place sounds like a cattle auction. “Do I hear 10? Twelve? Thirteen to the woman in the green shirt! Fifteen to the gentlemen in plaid,” he fires, and the room busts out laughing.3

Most presenters will not want to take a course in auctioneering, as Jeary did to make his questioning routine more authentic. However, Jeary’s approach both engages the audience and makes the point that many jobs involve a multitude of occasions requiring formal and informal presentation skills.

Quotation

According to Towers Perrin, the profits of Fortune 100 companies would be 25% lower—they’d go down $17 billion—if their earnings statements listed the future costs companies are obligated to pay for retirees’ health care.

This presentation on options for health care for retired employees urges exec- utives to start now to investigate options to cut the future costs.

Your opener should interest the audience and establish a rapport with them. Some speakers use humor to achieve those goals. However, an inappro- priate joke can turn the audience against the speaker. Never use humor that’s directed against the audience. For example, the following joke was effective in the context of an oil company executive addressing other industry members

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about government regulations—and would have been disastrous if told to a group that included environmentalists:

[When regulations slowed the construction of a chemical plant,] I got to feeling a little like Moses crossing the Red Sea with the Egyptians in hot pursuit. When Moses asked God for help, God looked down and said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I’ll part the Red Sea, let your people pass through, and then destroy the Egyptians.” “That’s great,” said Moses. “What’s the bad news?” God said, “First you have to file an environmental impact statement.”4

When in doubt about humor, be sure it makes fun of yourself and your own group, not of others.

Humor isn’t the only way to set an audience at ease. Smile at your audience before you begin; let them see that you’re a real person and a nice one.

The end of your presentation should be as strong as the opener. For your close, you could do one or more of the following:

• Restate your main point. • Refer to your opener to create a frame for your presentation. • End with a vivid, positive picture. • Tell the audience exactly what to do to solve the problem you’ve dis-

cussed.

When Mike Powell described his work in science to an audience of nonsci- entists, he opened and then closed with words about what being a scientist feels like. He opened humorously, saying, “Being a scientist is like doing a jig- saw puzzle . . . in a snowstorm . . . at night . . . when you don’t have all the pieces . . . and you don’t have the picture you are trying to create.” Powell closed by returning to the opening idea of “being a scientist,” but he moved from the challenge to the inspiration with this vivid story:

The final speaker at a medical conference [I] attended . . . walked to the lectern and said, “I am a thirty-two-year-old wife and mother of two. I have AIDS. Please work fast.”5

When you write out your opener and close, be sure to use oral rather than written style. As you can see in the example close above, oral style uses shorter sentences and shorter, simpler words than writing does. Oral style can even sound a bit choppy when it is read by eye. Oral style uses more personal pronouns, a less varied vocabulary, and more repetition.

Planning Presentation Visuals Visuals can give your presentation a professional image and greater im- pact. One study found that in an informative presentation, multimedia (PowerPoint slides with graphics and animation) produced 5% more learn- ing than overheads made from the slides and 16% more learning than text alone.6

Well-designed visuals can serve as an outline for your talk (see Figure 17.1), eliminating the need for additional notes. Visuals can help your audience follow along with you, and help you keep your place as you speak. Your visuals should highlight your main points, not give every detail. Elaborate on your visuals as you talk; most people find it boring to have slide after slide read to them.

Build Interest through Multimedia

One of the fastest ways to engage your

audience is through a multimedia presentation that combines text, images, animation, video, and sound. Though multimedia was once an expensive, time-consuming option, you can incorporate sim- ple multimedia techniques into your own presentations:

• Add video clips and sound clips to your PowerPoint presentations.

• Use a screen-capture program like Camtasia to create interactive demonstration movies.

• Create your own animated banner ads and product brochures using Flash.

• Convert your printed brochure into a website for your clients to visit.

The next time you surf the inter- net, pay close attention to your favorite websites. What exam- ples of multimedia do you see? How do those sites use multi- media to grab your attention?

Adapted from Guy D. Ball, “Creating Multimedia Presentations for Train- ing,” Intercom, May 2005, 25–26.

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Designing presentation slides

As you design slides for PowerPoint and other presentation programs, keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Use a big font size: 44 or 50 point for titles, 32 point for subheads, and 28 point for examples. You should be able to read the smallest words easily when you print a handout version of your slides.

• Use bullet-point phrases rather than complete sentences. • Use clear, concise language. • Make only three to five points on each slide. If you have more, consider

using two slides. • Customize your slides with your organization’s logo, and add visuals:

charts, pictures, downloaded Web pages, and photos and drawings.

Use animation to make words and images appear and move during your presentation—but only in ways that help you control information flow and build interest. For example, in a sales presentation for Portola Packaging, a bar graph showing sales growth was redesigned to highlight the company’s strong performance: instead of static bars, the graph featured upward-sloping arrows drawn from the initial sales level to the new, higher level. The presenter clicks the mouse once to display the graph title and labels; with the second mouse click, the arrow wipes up, emphasizing the growth pattern.7 Avoid using animation or sound effects just to be clever; they will distract your audience.

Use clip art in your presentations only if the art is really appropriate to your points and only if you use nonsexist and nonracist images. In the 1990s,

Use simplified graphs and charts

Build goodwill Summmarize main points

Use a consistent background

Use simplified headings

Use clipart or images that match the topic

Figure 17.1 Poorly Formatted Presentation Slides (Top) and Well-Formatted Slides (Bottom)

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Marilyn Dyrud found the major clip art packages to be biased.8 Today, however, Internet sources have made such a wide variety of drawings and photos avail- able that designers really have no excuse for failing to pick an inclusive and visually appealing image. Even organizations on tight budgets can find free and low-cost resources, such as the public domain (that is, not copy- righted) collections of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (http://images. fws.gov) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http:// www.photolib.noaa.gov/).

Choose a consistent template, or background design, for your entire presentation. Make sure that the template is appropriate for your subject matter and audience. For example, use a globe only if your topic is interna- tional business and palm trees only if you’re talking about tropical vaca- tions. One problem with PowerPoint is that the basic templates may seem repetitive to people who see lots of presentations made with the program. For an important presentation, you may want to consider customizing the basic template. You can also find many professionally designed templates available for free to download online to help lend your presentation a more unique look.

Choose a light background if the lights will be off during your presentation and a dark background if the lights will be on. Slides will be easier to read if you use high contrast between the words and backgrounds. See Figure 17.2 for examples of effective and ineffective color combinations.

Using visuals in your presentation

Visuals for presentations need to be simpler than visuals the audience reads on paper. For example, to adapt a printed data table for a presentation, you might cut out one or more columns or rows of data, round off the data to sim- plify them, or replace the chart with a graph or other visual. If you have many data tables or charts in your presentation, consider including them on a hand- out for your audience.

Your presentation visuals should include titles, but don’t need figure numbers. As you prepare your presentation, be sure to know where each visual is so that you can return to it easily if someone asks about it during the question period. Rather than reading from your slides, or describing visuals to your audience in detail, summarize the story contained on each slide and elaborate on what it means for your audience.

Light colors

disappear against a

light background.

Use high contrast

between words and

background.

Dark colorsDark colors disappear against adisappear against a dark background.dark background.

Repeat colors in

words and

design elements.

LimitLimit thethe numberumber ofof bribrightght colors.colors.

Effective

Ineffective

Figure 17.2 Effective and Ineffective Colors for Presentation Slides

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Using technology to involve your audience

Projected visuals work only if the technology they depend on works. When you give presentations in your own workplace, check the equipment in ad- vance. When you make a presentation in another location or for another or- ganization, arrive early so that you’ll have time to not only check the equipment but also track down a service worker if the equipment isn’t working. Be prepared with a backup plan to use if you’re unable to show your visuals.

Keep in mind how you will use your presentation slides. Most likely, they will provide visual support for an oral presentation in a face-to-face meeting or videoconference. The slides should visually identify the key points of your presentation in a way that allows you to interact with your audience. Your oral presentation should always include more material than the text on your slides. If the audience can read the entire presentation for themselves, why are you there?

Consider ways to stimulate your audience’s curiosity, invite questions, and build enthusiasm. For instance, instead of saying, “Sales grew 85% with this program,” you could show a graph that shows sales declining up to the intro- duction of the program; invite the audience to consider what this program might do; and finally, after explaining the program, reveal the full sales graph with an animation that highlights the spike using a dramatic magenta line.

You can also involve the audience in other ways. Demonstrations are effec- tive, especially to teach a process and to show how a product works or what it can do for the audience. Hewlett-Packard has developed a series of presenta- tions that show consumers how to use its products for applications that may be unfamiliar. In one presentation, demonstrators teach how to use an HP computer to prepare digital photographs. A specialist showed how to restore a 50-year-old photograph of a football team. When she was done, she com- mented that the picture included her father, who had died two years earlier, and she planned to give the restored photo to her mother. The personal infor- mation made her presentation memorable and brought home the value of learning the skill she was teaching.9

In another presentation, the speaker used himself as an illustration. Sam Reese, then vice president of sales at Kinko’s, wanted to fire up a sales force he thought had grown complacent with past successes. Reese wanted to shift their attention from the past to the challenges of the future. During the com- pany’s national sales meeting, he stated this position and proclaimed, “We’re planning on being successful, and I’m not letting up.” Then he took off his shoes and his shirt. Reese continued with his speech and then removed his pants. Underneath were a singlet and shorts—the track suit Reese had worn as a star runner at Colorado University. Reese explained that as silly as it was for him, in his midthirties, to boast of being “one of the fastest guys in the country,” it was equally misguided for the salespeople to continue “living in the past.” The audience laughed but took the message to heart. That year, sales at Kinko’s shot up again.10

Choosing Information to Include in a Presentation Choose the information that is most interesting to your audience and that an- swers the questions your audience will have. Limit your talk to three main points. In a long presentation (20 minutes or more) each main point can have subpoints. Your content will be easier to understand if you clearly show the relationship between each of the main points. Turning your information into a

Not every speech needs visuals. As

Peter Norvig shows, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is hurt, not helped, by adding bland PowerPoint slides.

http://norvig.com/ Gettysburg

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story also helps. For example, a presentation about a plan to reduce scrap rates on the second shift can begin by setting the scene and defining the prob- lem: Production expenses have cut profits in half. The plot unfolds as the speaker describes the facts that helped her trace the problem to scrap rates on the second shift. The resolution to the story is her group’s proposal.

One way to keep the choice of supporting information focused on what the audience needs to know is to start by writing the conclusion. Then move back- ward, identifying the main points that lead to this conclusion.

As part of choosing what to say, you should determine what data to pres- ent, including what to show in visuals. Any data you mention should be re- lated to the points you are making. Databases and presentation software (such as PowerPoint) have given employees direct access to ready-made and easy- to-create slides. The temptation is to choose these and sprinkle them through- out the presentation, rather than starting with decisions about what the audience needs to know. Corporate trainer Pam Gregory observes, “What presentations are supposed to do is save the audience time in sifting through data themselves. But often presentations are overloaded with data; there may be an argument but it is buried.”11

Statistics and numbers can be convincing if you present them in ways that are easy to hear. Simplify numbers by reducing them to two significant digits.

Hard to hear: Crude petroleum and natural gas extraction in the United States pro- duced $85,906,216,000 in sales revenues in 2002.

Easy to hear: Crude petroleum and natural gas extraction in the United States pro- duced almost $86 billion in sales revenues in 2002.12

In an informative presentation, link the points you make to the knowledge your audience has. Show the audience members that your information an- swers their questions, solves their problems, or helps them do their jobs. When you explain the effect of a new law or the techniques for using a new machine, use specific examples that apply to the decisions they make and the work they do. If your content is detailed or complicated, give people a written outline or handouts. The written material both helps the audience keep track of your points during the presentation and serves as a reference after the talk is over.

To be convincing, you must answer the audience’s questions and objections.

Sharing the Stage with Visuals

The audience can look at the speaker or the

visual, but not both at the same time. An effective speaker directs the audience’s attention to the visual and then back to the speaker, rather than trying to compete with the visual.

When Steve Mandel coaches clients on public speaking, he teaches them to use brief si- lences for visuals, so the audi- ence has time to pay attention. For example, a speaker might say, “I’ve just talked to you about several problems you might ex- perience. Now I’d like you to see a possible solution.” Then the speaker shows the slide without talking for several seconds. This gives the audience time to ab- sorb the contents of the slide. The presenter can regain attention by stepping toward the audience as he or she begins to speak again.

At its sales workshops, Com- munispond teaches a technique called “think-turn-talk.” The pre- senter stands next to the visual and points to it with an open hand, thinking of what he or she intends to say. Then the presen- ter turns and makes eye contact with a person in the audience. Finally, the presenter talks. Com- munispond also teaches presen- ters to walk toward the audience when giving details from a visual. The connection is between pre- senter and audience, not presenter and slide.

Adapted from Dave Zielinski, “Perfect Practice,” Presentations 17, no. 5 (2003): 30–36; and Julia Chang, “Back to School,” Sales and Market- ing Management 156, no. 7 (2004): 28–31.

Some people think that working women are less reliable than men. But the facts show that women take fewer sick days than men do.

Trade show entries use visuals and oral presentations to convey information.

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However, don’t bring up negatives or inconsistencies unless you’re sure that the audience will think of them. If you aren’t sure, save your evidence for the question phase. If someone does ask, you’ll have the answer.

Quotations work well as long as you cite authorities whom your audience genuinely respects. Often you’ll need to paraphrase a quote to put it into simple language that’s easy to understand. Be sure to tell whom you’re citing: “Ac- cording to Al Gore,” “An article in BusinessWeek points out that,” and so forth.

Demonstrations can prove your points dramatically and quickly. During the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the late physicist Richard Feynman asked for a glass of water. When it came, he put a piece of the space shuttle’s O-ring into the cold water. After less than a minute, he took it out and pinched it with a small clamp. The material kept the pinched shape when the clamp came off. The material couldn’t return to its original shape.13 A technical explanation could have made the same point: the O-ring couldn’t func- tion in the cold. But the demonstration was fast and easy to understand. It didn’t require that the audience follow complex chemical or mathematical formulas. In an oral presentation, seeing is believing.

Demonstrations can also help people remember your points. Dieticians had long known that coconut oil, used on movie popcorn, was bad for you. But no one seemed to care. Until, that is, the folks at the Center for Science in the Pub- lic Interest (CSPI) took up the cause. They called a press conference to an- nounce that a medium (and who eats just a medium?) movie popcorn had more saturated fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined. They provided the full buffet for TV cameras. The story played on all the major networks as well as the front pages of many newspapers. Even better, people remembered the story and popcorn sales plunged.14

In their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath say that ideas are remembered—and have lasting im- pact on people’s opinions and behavior—when they have six characteristics:

1. Simplicity: they are short but filled with meaning; both demonstrations above could be comprehended in seconds.

2. Unexpectedness: they have some novelty for us: a bag of movie popcorn is worse than a whole day’s meals of fatty foods.

3. Concreteness: the ideas must be explained with psychological descrip- tion (see page 387) or in terms of human actions.

4. Credibility: ideas have to carry their own credibility if they do not come from an acknowledged expert. In both demonstrations above, people could see the effects for themselves.

5. Emotions: the ideas must make people feel some emotion, and it has to be the right emotion. Antismoking campaigns for teenagers have not been successful using fear, but they have had some success using resentment at the duplicity of cigarette companies.

6. Stories: the ideas have to tell stories.

The Heaths call the combination of these six factors stickiness. And the con- cept really works. Amounts of saturated fats are not exciting ideas, but CSPI changed movie popcorn with its demonstration.15

Organizing Your Information Most presentations use a direct pattern of organization, even when the goal is to persuade a reluctant audience. In a business setting, the audience is in a hurry and knows that you want to persuade them. Be honest about your goal, and then prove that your goal meets the audience’s needs too.

How Not to Give a Presentation

John R. Brant has some excellent ad-

vice on how to give an awful presentation:

• Have a dull opening: If you really want to lose your audience in the first few minutes, read a prepared statement to them from a slide or a handout.

• Bury them in slides: Bore your audience with more slides than they’ll be able to remember, or speed through your slides so quickly that your PowerPoint turns into a blur.

• Use the wrong humor: Make everyone uncomfortable with self-deprecating humor.

• Show them your back: Demonstrate how disconnected you are with your audience by turning your back to them, and avoid the possibility of rapport-building eye contact by looking at the screen instead of at your audience.

Think about the uninspiring pre- sentations you’ve seen from other students, or even from your in- structors. What could the presen- ters have done to improve their work and gain your interest?

Adapted from John R. Brandt, “Miss- ing the (Power) Point,” Industry Week, January 2007, 48.

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In a persuasive presentation, start with your strongest point, your best reason. If time permits, give other reasons as well and respond to possible objections. Put your weakest point in the middle so that you can end on a strong note.

Often one of five standard patterns of organization will work:

• Chronological. Start with the past, move to the present, and end by looking ahead. This pattern works best when the history helps show a problem’s complexity or magnitude, or when the chronology moves peo- ple to an obvious solution.

• Problem–causes–solution. Explain the symptoms of the problem, iden- tify its causes, and suggest a solution. This pattern works best when the audience will find your solution easy to accept.

• Excluding alternatives. Explain the symptoms of the problem. Explain the obvious solutions first and show why they won’t solve the problem. End by discussing a solution that will work. This pattern may be neces- sary when the audience will find the solution hard to accept.

• Pro–con. Give all the reasons in favor of something, then those against it. This pattern works well when you want the audience to see the weak- nesses in its position.

• 1–2–3. Discuss three aspects of a topic. This pattern works well to organ- ize short informative briefings. “Today I’ll review our sales, production, and profits for the last quarter.”

Make your organization clear to your audience. Written documents can be reread; they can use headings, paragraphs, lists, and indentations to signal levels of detail. In a presentation, you have to provide explicit clues to the structure of your discourse.

Early in your talk—perhaps immediately after your opener—provide an overview of the main points you will make.

First, I’d like to talk about who the homeless in Columbus are. Second, I’ll talk about the services The Open Shelter provides. Finally, I’ll talk about what you—either indi- vidually or as a group—can do to help.

An overview provides a mental peg that hearers can hang each point on. It also can prevent someone from missing what you are saying because he or she wonders why you aren’t covering a major point that you’ve saved for later.

Offer a clear signpost as you come to each new point. A signpost is an ex- plicit statement of the point you have reached. Choose wording that fits your style. The following statements are four different ways that a speaker could use to introduce the last of three points:

Now we come to the third point: what you can do as a group or as individuals to help homeless people in Columbus.

So much for what we’re doing. Now let’s talk about what you can do to help.

You may be wondering, what can I do to help?

As you can see, the Shelter is trying to do many things. We could do more things with your help.

Being Interviewed by the Press

Business people and community leaders are often in- terviewed by the press. To ap- pear your best on camera, on tape, or in a story,

• Try to find out in advance why you’re being interviewed and what information the reporter wants.

• Practice answering possible questions in a single sentence. A long answer is likely to be cut for TV or radio news.

• Talk slowly. You’ll have time to think, the audience will have more time to understand what you’re saying, and a reporter taking notes will record your words more accurately.

• To reduce the possibility of being misquoted, make your own recording.

Adapted from James L. Graham, “What to Do When a Reporter Calls,” IABC Communication World, April 1985, 15; and Robert A. Papper, Personal communication with Kitty Locker, March 17, 1991.

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Delivering an Effective Presentation Audiences want the sense that you’re talking directly to them and that you care that they understand and are interested. They’ll forgive you if you get tangled up in a sentence and end it ungrammatically. They won’t forgive you if you seem to have a “canned” talk that you’re going to deliver no matter who the audience is or how they respond. You can convey a sense of caring to your audience by making direct eye contact with them and by using a conversa- tional style.

Dealing with Fear Feeling nervous is normal. But you can harness that nervous energy to help you do your best work. As one student said, you don’t need to get rid of your butterflies. All you need to do is make them fly in formation.

To calm your nerves before you give an oral presentation,

• Be prepared. Analyze your audience, organize your thoughts, prepare visual aids, practice your opener and close, check out the arrangements.

• Use only the amount of caffeine you normally use. More or less may make you jumpy.

• Avoid alcoholic beverages. • Relabel your nerves. Instead of saying, “I’m scared,” try saying, “My

adrenaline is up.” Adrenaline sharpens our reflexes and helps us do our best.

Just before your presentation,

• Consciously contract and then relax your muscles, starting with your feet and calves and going up to your shoulders, arms, and hands.

• Take several deep breaths from your diaphragm.

During your presentation,

• Pause and look at the audience before you begin speaking. • Concentrate on communicating well. • Use body energy in strong gestures and movement.

Using Eye Contact Look directly at the people you’re talking to. In one study, observers were more than twice as likely to notice and comment on poor presentation fea- tures, like poor eye contact, than good features, and tended to describe speak- ers with poor eye contact as disinterested, unprofessional, and poorly prepared.16 In another study, subjects rated speakers who made more eye con- tact and longer eye contact as being friendlier and more engaged than speak- ers who had poor eye contact—especially when speakers combined good eye contact with friendly facial expressions.17

The point in making eye contact is to establish one-on-one contact with the individual members of your audience. People want to feel that you’re talking to them. Looking directly at individuals also enables you to be more conscious of feedback from the audience, so that you can modify your approach if necessary.

Michael Campbell suggests some techniques to improve eye contact. Make eye contact before you start speaking. With each person, make eye contact for about five seconds. Then look at someone else for about five seconds. If you can, pick a few friendly faces in different parts of the room,

Public Speaking and the Law

When you speak on behalf of a business or

group, remember that your pres- entation doesn’t reflect just on you: your public statements can create legal liabilities for both you and your organization. Laws that govern truth in advertising apply to public speech just as they do to public written statements.

Presentations offers useful ad- vice for you if you find yourself in the role of spokesperson:

• Be especially careful to prepare your presentation with accurate information. Don’t rely on hearsay for facts and figures: have the actual sources in hand before you create your presentation.

• Don’t send different messages to different audiences. It’s all right to tailor a message to the needs and expectations of each audience, but don’t change the message between groups: doing so is deceptive.

• When in doubt, get advice from experts. Many organizations have legal services available to help you avoid public-disclosure pitfalls. If you have important or sensitive information to share with a public audience, it might be wise to get a legal opinion first.

Look through the news for sto- ries about businesses or organi- zations that face legal troubles because of information that they did—or didn’t—share. What penalties did those businesses face? What happened to the employees involved?

Adapted from Dave Zielinski, “The Speech Trap,” Presentations 19, no. 8 (2005): 20–25.

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so that you feel encouraged. Without the five-second eye contact, your gaze will appear to be roving aimlessly around the room. If you are read- ing notes or a speech, pause while you read, and then make eye contact while you speak.18

Developing a Good Speaking Voice People will enjoy your presentation more if your voice is easy to listen to. To find out what your voice sounds like, tape-record it. Also tape the voices of people on TV or on campus whose voices you like and imitate them. In a few weeks, tape yourself again.

When you speak to a group, talk loudly enough so that people can hear you easily. If you’re using a microphone, adjust your volume so you aren’t shout- ing. When you speak in an unfamiliar location, try to get to the room early so you can check the size of the room and the power of the amplification equip- ment. If you can’t do that, ask early in your talk, “Can you hear me in the back of the room?”