Are you delivering important presentations to the BORED room instead of the board room?

Do you wish you could captivate your audience with enthusiasm, engaging content, and perhaps even a little pizzazz? We sat down with the figurative, but sometimes literal presentation wizard Hans Eckman to hear his thoughts on delivering successful presentations.

Delivering quality and impactful presentations is nearly as important as being able to gather precise requirements. As an analyst’s career progresses the shift in focus from writing requirements to presenting material often becomes more prominent. Here are several key tools you can add to your toolbelt to ensure your next presentation goes from snoozing to amusing your audience.

Tell Stories with Your Data

The human brain is wired to remember a good story. Our societal evolution is built on using storytelling as a means to share information, establish moral values, and pass on historical lessons to future generations. It makes sense then to use this delivery method to engage the most primal part of the listener’s brain.

Anyone can read facts off of a slide and how-to slide deck tips are everywhere. Even Microsoft provides tips on how to create a good slide deck. However, the best part about a great presentation isn’t the technical details, it is the compelling story behind it.

Beginning a presentation with a compelling story about a memorable customer experience or about another company that just released a game-changing feature sets your audience up to listen to the next thing you want to tell them. Once our brains start to hear a story they are compelled to hear the ending.

Here are four elements you will want to include to make sure that your audience is engaged and enthralled:

Conduct Story-Stakeholder Analysis

Understanding how your audience thinks and feels is an integral part of storytelling. In a corporate environment this is even more vital, as discussed in another post. As analysts, we often demand attention from stakeholders who are overallocated and persistently being pulled in different directions. It’s crucial that we know who is involved, how they think and what motivates them. Once we understand our audience, we can tailor our story so that it is meaningful to our audience and focus on the next element, emotional connection.

Elicit Emotion

Storytellers that build an emotional connection with their audience are masters of their craft. They are able to guide their messaging to ensure that their audience not only hears the message but feels it themselves.

To trigger an audience’s emotional response, include words that describe how a person would experience the setting you are building. If you are telling a story, start at a point of action avoiding any unnecessary backstory. Use words that elicit emotion. According to psychologists there are six basic emotions: Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Enjoyment, Fear, Sadness and Surprise.

The goal is to use words that make the listener feel like they are actually in the story themselves.  When we feel empathy our brains release oxytocin or “the love hormone”. This makes us trust the person that is delivering the information more and therefore believe what the presenter is saying.

Minimum Viable Content

Have you ever been told a story that wanders so much, you don’t know where it is going? It’s frustrating isn’t it? That’s a sign of a bad story teller.

Upon hearing a story, our brains hone in on details and try to come to the conclusion before the presenter shares it. This is how comedy works. A comedian will set up a joke with a premise, give us the important details so that the audience comes to an expected conclusion and then the comedian will provide an opposing conclusion. The unexpectedness is what is “funny” about the story. Judy Carter writes a great book about this experience and comedy writing in general.

However, most of us aren’t trying to deliver a “tight five” at the office. When telling a story, it is tempting to want to include as many details as possible so that the audience has all the information you had when you were experiencing it. Unfortunately, when we include too much information, we actually divert the audience’s attention from what is important. This can take an engaged, emotionally connected audience and turn them into clock watchers or worse, multitaskers.

When developing a presentation, minimize the amount of information you are sharing so that you are carefully selecting only the details you need and nothing else. If stuck, try mapping out the story starting at the end and working towards the beginning. It should now be easier to only include what’s necessary.

Call to Action

Every good story has a moral at the end, a lesson that encourages the listener to act or not act in a specific manner lest they end up like the storyteller. However the most impactful stories aren’t about the story teller, they are about the audience.

Supposing that you understand your audience, have tugged on their heartstrings, and mastered whittling your story down to its core premise, the call to action is the final piece to bring the presentation home. This is the real reason why you are telling the story to begin with. The other details are how you get your audience’s attention, the call to action is how you get them to respond.

A presentation without a call to action is just a nice story. Remember these 3 tricks and you’re on your way:

1. Make the Action Specific – Keep to 1 distinct request to incentivize action.
2. Make the Action Simple – Offer an action that could be completed by an individual and is doable within a day or week.
3. Provide a timeline – Give a date target for when the action should be complete. The sooner the better.

Happily Ever After…

By following these tips, a business analyst can deliver a presentation that motivates the audience to take action and achieve their desired results. The call to action should be specific, achievable, and related to the presentation’s goal and the audience’s interests. Utilizing persuasive language, emotional hotspots, and reminding the audience of the larger goals or mission of the company can help create a powerful call to action.

If you have additional tips or speakers you find enthralling, share them in the comments. We’re always seeking great storytellers to follow and ways to encourage our followers to hone their craft.

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