5 tips for effective business presentation

Nivrutti Garud

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

- Peter F. Drucker

Leadership expectation: Project team should help the leadership to make the decision

Leadership Project team

Make decision

Help to make

decision

Responsibility of project team to help Leadership in making right

choice

I DON’T CARE, COME TO THE POINT

1

The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.

- Philip Crosby

Start with results / recommendation; Result is A, because of X, Y & Z

Start with recommendation

/ executive summary

Then support your

recommendation (answer WHY?)

• Recommended for presentations to Leadership

• Conveys message when audience is likely to be attentive

• Retaining the audience’s attention is easier

• Easier to link the information to conclusion

Conclusion first

• Use when the topic is controversial

Results in the end

Avoid presenting information first and then conclusion

Creator (Presenter)• Already knows the conclusion

• Can correlate slides to results while presenting

Audience• Does not know the conclusion if not presented in the

beginning

• Difficult to correlate slides to the conclusion

THE 80 / 20 PRINCIPLE

2

Ask yourself, “if I had only sixty seconds on the stage, what would I absolutely have to say to get my message across”.

- Jeff Dewar

Focus on important things that matter most

Most important points (20%)

• Spend appropriate time

• Share first

• Discuss each point separately

Other points (80%)

• Spend as minimum time as possible

• Share after you are done with important points

• Summarize all points together

Remember: What you have is 20 – 40 minutes

Do not spend too much time on being 100% accurate or perfect; evaluate how much is good enough

How much is good

enough?

To convince

To conclude

To make decisions

DATA IS NOT INFORMATION

3

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.

- Clifford Stoll

Analyze the data and present conclusions

Share conclusions

Use data to support your

conclusion

Do not leave things for

interpretation

Share data with purpose

It is easier to convince with a picture than showing a drawing paper, a color box and explaining about the picture

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR THE WORST?

4

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

- Benjamin Franklin

Talk about your top risks and plans to mitigate these risks

• Worst case scenario is important consideration while making decisions

Decision Making

• Are you prepared for the worst?

Leadership concern

What can go wrong

• Share risks

What are plans to

manage it?

•Share mitigation plans

Gives confidence to the leadership that you are prepared

LESS IS GOOD

5

No one complains about the speech being too short.

- Ira Hayes

Do not fall in a trap of including everything or isn’t something missed out?

Include everything

Everything heard but

not received

• One message per slide• 3 bullets (>3 should be an

exception) per slide• 5 words per bullet

Focus on being concise

• More time is spent listening to you

• Less time is spent eading the slides

Advantage

A wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool speaks because he has to say something.

- Plato

Be wise

All the best - Nivrutti