Welcome to the Perfect Presentations Podcast, created for executives and business people who struggle to create and give compelling presentations. We're going to break down the breakdowns...to share with you the tools and techniques we teach to executives around the country that help them craft presentations that stick.
In our first episode we'll talk about understanding your audience, and the ways most executives fail to consider who their real audience is. We'll discuss a method for segmenting your audience, and how to get them to understand, buy in, and act upon your message.
If you're frustrated with your ability to hook your audience, keep them engaged and get them to act, this podcast is here to help.
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Prefer to read? Transcript:
Welcome to P3, the Perfect Presentation podcast. My name is Doug Borsch and I'm co-owner of Perfect PlanIt. Since 2005, our company has created more than 7,000 presentations for conferences, trade shows, road shows, sales meetings, board of director meetings. Any kind of presentation you can imagine chances are we've created one. And because we've been at this for so long, we've seen practically everything when it comes to how people create presentations, both good and bad, and what I'm excited to talk about today is how to do it better. That's probably a good place to start.
Since this first episode is about understanding your audience let me start by sharing who will and who won't get a lot out of this podcast. If you're an executive, a sales person, a product manager, an engineer, or anyone who gives presentations in a business environment, this is for you because chances are you struggle with how to keep your audience engaged or how to get them to walk out of a room and act upon what you've shared. In other words, you've spent some time together, but was it really quality time?
What we aren't going to talk about is the traditional approach of how to be a great presenter, stand up tall, enunciate, don't say um and like. There are a lot of good resources out there for that, but I'm going to make the assumption that if you're interested in creating better presentations you probably have some of the core skills at being in front of an audience.
We also aren't going to cover how to use PowerPoint or Keynote or Prezi or whatever your preferred software is. Now, a lot of what we talk about will certainly relate to how to use presentation programs, but we won't be focused on the minutia and the mechanics of PowerPoint or Keynote, such as how to add images or change text or add video.
Before I start talking about understanding your audience let me tell you a little bit about why you're sitting here listening to me at all today. About a dozen years ago, my wife and I had just started working together at Perfect PlanIt. I had joined from a previous company and was hoping to expand upon the marketing work that I had already been doing. But as often happens when you're starting a new company, things weren't going very well. I was in the midst of trying to develop a new client list and to be honest, I was just struggling.
Out of the blue, I received an email from Microsoft. They had found my writing samples on a website where I had them posted, trying to develop some work. They asked me if I'd be willing to take a copy test in exchange for a Starbucks gift card. Now, I was at a place in my career where I no longer worked for coffee and it's funny when you get into a situation like this how it's so easy to let ego get in the way. I figured I had a stellar client list and I just happened to be in a low spot, but the truth is I wasn't busy and I do like coffee.
After I reviewed the test, I realized the entire premise of what they were asking for was wrong. It just didn't make any sense to me. I figured they were either moving too fast, or didn't know what they wanted, or maybe they wanted somebody to tell them they were doing it wrong, and that's what I told them.
