Stop boring your audience in a presentation

Speaking
Written By Liam Sandford

When you are pitching or presenting, it is common to make everything about you. After all you are delivering it, right? You make slides as prompts to remember what is next. You memorize a script as if you are just reading it out loud and in the mean time you are destroying your connection with the audience.

You are making it extremely hard to engage your audience, land your message, or persuade them buy your product or invest some money.

When it comes to all forms of communication it is not about you. It is about the people receiving the information. They may like receiving information in a slightly different way to you. You should play into this. Everything you say, and how you deliver it should be for your audience. That is a big shift to make but when you do this it unlocks new levels of connection and generates bigger results for you.

Simple over complicated

As humans we tend to overcomplicate things in attempt to sound clever or to try and impress others. The reality is this does not impress anyone, it loses them. The key question that you should always ask, and be brutally honest with yourself:

‘Will somebody with no technical expertise in this area understand?’

If not, the chances are it is too complicated. There is a common forum called ‘explain like I am 5’ and this is a good principle to apply. Maybe explaining like someone is 5 is going too far, but it is a good reminder that not everybody is where you are at in terms of knowledge.

You have to meet the audience where they are at in terms of their knowledge and their attention. Simple is always better than complex.

Make every interaction about them

People only care about themselves. How is this of interest to them? How can this relate to something in their life? Why should they care? This is a harsh reality that is important to face if you are going to improve your communication.

You don’t automatically have the right to someones attention, even if they chose to show up at your presentation or if they clicked the ‘follow’ button. You still have a job to make it about them.

Solve problems that they directly have, and learn about what causes those problems through 1:1 conversations. Go away and solve that problem for them and they may just pay you for the solution. With every interaction focus on what the other person needs — remember that you don’t automatically have the right to their attention.

Give them no choice — capture them immediately

You can capture somebody easily if you know what emotion you want to trigger. This is why ‘start your presentation with humor’ is common advice (although this is often unhelpful). Intentionally open your presentation with something that triggers emotion. I have found the best to be:

  • Surprise them: ‘That is amazing’

  • Shock them: ‘That is crazy’

  • Share a harsh reality: ‘Finally someone said how I feel’

  • Keep them in suspense: ‘I need to know what happened next’

By triggering emotion you captivate people and immediately they are in. Now, it would be wrong to suggest that once you have their attention you maintain it — you have to work on that too. But it is much harder to captivate attention once you have lost it once already. You have one chance — give them no choice but to pay attention by crafting a captivating open.

Actionable takeaways

  • Simplify your message. Use the ‘explain like I am 5’ principle to ensure you meet the audience where they are at.

  • Make everything about them. With every interaction have your audience in mind — this is a chance to build connection and scale your impact.

  • Open by triggering emotion. Don’t lose them before you get to the good stuff — be intentional about attention as you don’t automatically have the right to anyone else’s.

More from me

Liam Sandford
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