Banned Until Further Notice: All Boring Business Presentations

Wow!! Wouldn’t it be great if we, business people, could give better presentations...guaranteed to be more interesting, informative and easier to attend and more successful?

Business Presentations, Today.

You arrive in the hotel conference room or auditorium; the chairs and tables are neatly lined up in audience format. The lectern is set-up on stage and there’s this huge screen with a projected greeting, welcoming you to the event. On the tables in front of each chair is a stapled package containing the presentation slides you are about to see during the presentation..

Over my career, I have personally sat through many boring slide presentations at conferences and after the room is darkened, the speaker aims his pen laser at the screen. I start to leaf through the slides in the package. In fact, I usually count the slides in the handout and estimate the time it will take to go through all those busy graphs and information soaked visuals. After some time, I have to fight valiantly against dozing off.

I have also listened to ‘kitchen table’ sales presentations which made me yearn to watch the most boring re-run on TV. No matter the forum, presentations have become all, too common in style.

What Has Happened to Our Presenters?

Over the past thirty years or so, we have discovered ‘overhead slide’ projectors and subsequently graduated to the ‘PowerPoint’ computer slide shows. Our love affair with color slides grew and graphic representations; even video went into high gear. Not one presentation exists without an exhausting and painful display of graphics, numbers, words and colors, complete with special effects and chase scenes.

Audience members are now treated like toddlers whose parents need a break and get it by sitting them in front of the TV to baby-sit for a while. The whole presentation process has become an exercise in visual aids. The audience is left somewhat unattended.

The True Reason for Presentations

As a presenter, your job is to “entertain” your audience with the intent of informing, persuading or selling them on your point of view, your product or service or to convince them to follow you in some endeavor...or to invest their time or money in you. They came to listen to you not to read “your presentation” off a bunch of slides.

The Real Presenter

The Real Presenter should be “Conversing” with her audience. That’s right, she should be speaking to an audience just like she would speak to a group of her closest friends. A presenter, who shares information in a direct and friendly way, with audience interaction, invites interest and discussion.

True Stories

“Jim, a retired airline pilot, told his audience about an episode in which he was giving flying lessons to a new pilot when the engine on the aircraft quit at two thousand feet over an interstate highway. He struggled for some time to restart the engine, but finally had to land the plane in a farmer’s field. The small aircraft wound up leaning on its nose but both he and his student walked away without injury.”

Wouldn’t you want Jim as your instructor? Wouldn’t you feel safe flying on an airliner with Jim at the controls? In one short story, Jim convinced his audience that he knew his business.

“Marty was introducing herself to the group and happened to mention how she backpacked across Europe in her college days, then she stowed away on a “tramp steamer” from southern France to Africa. Her tone and demeanor was relaxed and conversational. Her audience was mesmerized; she had obviously captured their attention. They believed her because she was telling a true story”