If you were writing a romance novel, wouldn’t you use different language and a different writing style than a historical biography? If you were writing a children’s book, wouldn’t you choose different vocabulary and illustrations than you would in a college textbook? And wouldn’t an article for the New England Journal of Medicine be different than one written for Popular Science or Prevention magazine?
I have identified the following 6 different “genres” for persuasive business slideshows. I propose that different guidelines be used to create each type of presentation. Please note that this discussion is limited to persuasive presentations, excluding those strictly for training or for inspirational or informational purposes, although some elements of training and inspiration will often be included in persuasive presentations.
Live presentations for a large audience:
This is what we often think of as the stereotype when we hear the word “Presentation”. There will be a speaker at the front of the room, addressing an audience ranging from 20 to thousands. There will most likely be a projector and a large screen, although other types of visual aids may be used, as well as PowerPoint or Keynote slides. The presenter can answer questions from the audience, but most of the communication will be one-way from the speaker to the audience.
An example might be an all-staff meeting in a large conference room to learn about health benefit changes for the coming year and encourage staff to enroll in a new program. Another example might be a 2-day introductory real estate seminar for thousands of participants, held in a grand hotel ballroom and taught by an out-of-town real estate expert.
Live presentations for a small audience:
This type of presentation will often involve senior management focusing on strategic decisions, although this category would also include a small cross-departmental working group with various levels of staff meeting on a project. Yet another type of presentation in this category would be a sales proposal (sometimes called an interview) in response to a Request for Proposal or any other type of sales or marketing proposal being considered by a selected management team.
The meeting can take place in a boardroom or other small conference room. There may be a team of various presenters, either internal or external, and written materials will most likely be handed out to the participants. The brochures could include a hard copy of the slides, charts/graphs, and additional details to study, or perhaps a company brochure or package from an outside company. If it’s an internal discussion, at least there will probably be a written agenda for the meeting.
The slides can be projected on the meeting room wall or on a small pop-up screen. If the group is very small, perhaps just 2-3 people, the presenter may choose to sit next to them at a table and share the slides on a tablet.
While there may be a persuasion passed of some kind made by the presenter(s), there will also be a lot more discussion around the table associated with this type of presentation.
Webinars with “live” narrator:
Webinars are an extremely popular form of presentation delivery due to the huge savings on travel expenses. Webinars are a standard tool in the corporate training toolbox, but are also widely used for marketing purposes, delivering a “educational marketing” webinar to a public audience as a lead generation method. Additionally, organizations can use webinars as another form of staff communication for situations like the one described above: informing and persuading staff to enroll in a new benefits program.
Communication in this format is largely one-way, though well-trained webinar presenters use a wide variety of tools to elicit audience interaction. The slides used in a webinar are even more important than during a live presentation because the audience doesn’t have a presenter on stage to watch. The presenter also has far less feedback from the audience to tell if they are staying engaged with the webinar content.
Conclusions for live performances:
Each of these presentation types has slightly different requirements to meet the needs of the audience in that specific setting. But in general, whenever a speaker or storyteller shares spoken information, you want to limit the amount of text on the slides so that the audience can focus on listening to the speaker without trying to read at the same time, something the human brain doesn’t do very well.
It’s also a good idea to stick to one idea per slide. This way, the audience isn’t reading something other than what you’re talking about right now. “One idea per slide” it also means you’ll be changing slides more often, and that helps keep your audience more engaged.
Slides work best when they support what the speaker is saying, not replace or duplicate it. Instead of putting so much text on your slides, try filling them with a large image related to the theme of each particular slide. This will improve the audience’s ability to hear and absorb the spoken message by helping them simultaneously process the information in the visual channel of their brains.
It’s also important to carefully plan your presentation before you start creating slides. Make sure you have the right amount of information for the duration of your presentation. Most people can only process 3-4 main ideas in a typical 30-45 minute presentation.
Find a way to structure your content and make that structure clear to your audience, helping them keep track of where you are in the presentation. This keeps them more engaged and not wondering how many more slides they need to see. It can also help them summarize and process all the new information so they can make a better decision on any offer at the end.
