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Determining The Best Delivery Method For Your Important Business Presentation
You know that presenting and communicating is a core element of success as an accountant or professional.
The starting point is to effectively presenting is being clear about the purpose.
Put more simply what you want to accomplish as a result of your presentation.
It’s also vital that you know your audience, their likes and dislikes.
Having done all of that you need to consider what’s the best delivery method for your presentation?
With it being easy and cheap to create slides, the temptation can be to revert to a default of always having a slide deck.
For that reason I always encourage people to stop and consider whether slides are really necessary or whether you are just preparing them because that’s what you have always done.
Or worst still because others do it so you assume it must be right.
Slides do have their place
When your audience gets beyond a certain size there clearly is some benefit of having slides.
But ask yourself how often are you presenting to a significant number of people?
If you are presenting to a small group of less than 5 people, it’s questionable whether you need slides at all.
In this situation it’s probably much better to just outline your key points and then get quickly into a discussion.
Take the month end financial report.
The big question the audience wants answered is whether they are on or off track against plan.
If off track they want to understand the key contributors to being on or off track.
Once they have that information then you want to be changing the focus to what needs to happen going forward. That’s better done through discussion and agreement in my experience.
You could tell a story that focuses on a particular area of the business that has exceeded expectations.
Then weave that back to the impact it has had on the overall results for the period.
In many ways it’s simply about getting a little creative in your thinking. Not only will it help change perceptions but also get a much better engagement.
What have you done that’s created an impact when it came to delivering a presentation?
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.