Nobody’s job is ‘too boring’ to make a compelling business presentation

I was coaching a team of senior logistics executives once and eventually the time came for the one person who didn’t really want to be there to make a presentation. He was an engineer whose job essentially had been to construct data warehouses in far-flung destinations. By way of pre-amble I asked him what was his general feeling about giving presentations. “A necessary evil”, he replied, “that I don’t enjoy”.

He ran through his presentation as quickly as possible. It was based entirely on showing us screen shots of a complicated budget approval form. It wasn’t much fun for anyone and my feedback included: “none of what you showed us was actually a presentation aid; if you have to use that stuff, at least tell us where to look; and please, when you run through the ‘Benefits’ list at least show some enthusiasm there”.

I made a point of cutting my feedback short and said: “Let’s forget about your presentation for a moment. You have presumably been to these far-flung locations. What did you tell your loved ones when you got back”?  “Actually”, he replied, “they were quite upset with me as I hardly contacted them at all, because it was almost impossible to get a phone signal. I knew they would never believe me so I started taking photographs of the telegraph poles to show how archaic the communication systems were. I had plenty of opportunity to do that because the traffic was an absolute nightmare; we sometimes sat going nowhere for an hour at a time. The only upsides were that the people were absolutely charming and food was unbelievably delicious”.

Suddenly, by getting him to think how he relates the situation to his family rather than to a procurement committee we had the building blocks for some storytelling. We had local colour and indications of inside knowledge. We also the potential for a central plank for the presentation – a striking image that would be memorable and maybe even sum up the whole situation. At the moment, though, it was just a snapshot stuck on the guy’s phone as an excuse for why he had appeared to be ignoring his family. 

“Show me one of those pictures”, I said. As he reached for his phone a smile was beginning to spread across his face. What we then christened the ‘Mad Telegraph Pole’ had more wires coming, going, criss-crossing and hanging loose than you could even begin to count. Then, to my delight, he reached his own conclusion: “actually, this would be a good way of explaining why I have asked for so much in the infrastructure budget”.  Bingo!  To my even greater delight, the man who just a few minutes earlier had been declaring the process a ‘necessary evil’ said: “I’m quite looking forward to doing this presentation again”.

We hear a lot about the need for storytelling, but few go on to explain what to actually do about it. As I have said before, it is often the apparently trivial things that can provide invaluable material. Here’s another tip: Forget for a moment the people you are planning to address; how do you talk about it to your loved ones?

To build a reputation as an expert you need some tasty bits of trivia

If you want to get ahead in business it usually pays to display the expertise that your position implies whenever you can, everywhere from the boardroom to the conference stage. Presentation skills can help to create such a reputation and there is a trick to conveying expertise and being remembered for it: find yourself some tasty bits of trivia.

The fact is that quantity and even quality of knowledge is not necessarily going to enhance your reputation. Selecting knowledge that creates insight is what you should probably be aiming for, but even that is not necessarily going to make you memorable. To get people going away remembering and re-telling your gems of wisdom you need to be counter-intuitive and come up with a few simple one-liners that you might even go home and tell to your loved ones.

Think in terms of the little stories Sir Michael Caine used to come up with in his many chat show appearances. He claims he never actually said: “Not a lot of people know that”, but it’s exactly the sort of thing he would have said following one of his little trivia stories, so the phrase was used by all the impressionists and became attached to his persona. Nowadays the concept is exploited by Steve Wright on Radio 2 with his ‘factoids’ feature and the long-running Qi TV series is built entirely around the concept of: “I heard something quite interesting about……”.  You know the sort of thing: Fleas can jump 350 times their own body length; elephants are the only animals that cannot jump; polar bears are left-handed.

So how do you make this work in business?  Reflecting on what you say about your work to friends and family is probably a good start. I was coaching a travel market analyst in presentation skills; he was from Georgia and his latest assignment was to become the expert on all things Russian within his firm. In the initial run through of his presentation he displayed a lot of graphs and statistics, which were all very sound but left little lasting impression. When we took a break for coffee I happened to mention something about the big global online brands such as Amazon, Google and YouTube.  He responded, saying: “We have all those brands in Russia, except they are rip offs. They work on the same model and at a glance they look the same, but they are all fake versions”. 

I suggested he should use this concept in his presentation and he struggled at first to understand why it was applicable. I replied that it was not directly applicable to selling travel in his region, but he should remember his personal agenda: to become the ‘expert on all things Russian’. Telling this story and showing some pictures will give his audience a little bit of trivia they will remember and take away with them to use as chit chat at home and down the pub, as well as around the office. He could justify a small deviation like this as creating context for the hard facts and figures that follow. The audience might not remember that data, but the trivia would make them remember him as the ‘go to’ person on everything Russian. As a final convincer, I asked him if he had seen Top Gear the previous Sunday; he said he had missed it, so we looked it up on the iPlayer. Clarkson and May were visiting China and they made a very entertaining and extremely memorable feature on the fact that Western car brands such as Mini, BMW and even Rolls Royce had all been copied by rip off replicas.

So stand back, look at the bigger picture and pick out a few elements from the lighter side. That’s what is most likely to get you remembered as the serious player in your field.

Turn the Storytelling spotlight onto yourself - to add memorability and conviction to your business presentation

Having mouthed off last week along the lines of there being too much talk about storytelling and not enough about how and when to apply storytelling techniques, I am now going to suggest you tell more stories about yourself.

Some years ago I was doing some Presentation Skills coaching for a marketing executive whose job was to develop travel agency business throughout Russia and Eastern-Europe. As part of this responsibility he was expected to be - and to be seen to be - the expert on all things travel within Russia and Eastern-Europe. He hailed from the region himself and made mention of his credentials within his presentation. It all sounded fine but I wouldn’t remember him today on the basis of that simple extract from his CV. The reason he remains clear in my mind several years later arose from a chat we had over coffee as we took a break from preparing his presentation.

“In Russia”, he said, “we have all the big brands, such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, except they are not the real thing; they look and act very much like the real thing, but they are all fakes”. I urged him to talk about this in his presentation. “But what has it got to do with travel and the services I am selling?”, he asked. “Nothing directly”, I replied, “but it provides a little insight into life within the region. People will relate to and be intrigued by the topic, and they may even go home and talk about it. With respect, they are not going to home and talk about those extracts from your CV. Most importantly, they will remember you. Those stories of Russian rip-offs will fix you in their minds; you will be remembered as the person who really knows what’s going on in Russia and Eastern-Europe”.

I sensed I had not entirely convinced him, so I asked him if he had seen Top Gear on TV the previous Sunday evening. “No”, he replied, wondering what on earth was coming next. I told him how Clarkson and May had visited China and found what appeared to be Minis, BMWs and Rolls Royces, until closer inspection revealed them to be fakes. “Ah yes, I heard about that”, replied my client. “Precisely”, I said, “people are talking about it – the team identified a great opportunity to entertain as well as inform as they filmed their trip. You too could achieve that degree of engagement”. So we set about a bit of reconstruction of his presentation, building in some stories that we teased out by juxtaposing real brand images with their fake equivalents and my client discovered a whole new level of self-confidence as he progressively became known as the ‘go to’ man for all things Russian and Eastern-European.

None of this takes anything away from the most important principle of a business presentation, which is that the more time you devote to thinking and talking about your audience, the more you will be getting straight onto their favourite subject. There does, however, come a time when it’s appropriate to talk about yourself and it often pays to go a little deeper than you might realise. Compelling content aside, allowing a little light to shine on yourself makes your audience warm to you; as a result, everything you say becomes that little bit more convincing.

There's too much talk about Storytelling, not enough about how, when and when NOT to apply storytelling structure

You really can’t move within the communication world these days without someone banging on about the importance of ‘storytelling’. What’s generally missing is any real clue as to what you are meant to do about it. Some people are probably a little confused; indeed, it’s possible that there are business executives planning their next inter-office meeting and imagining that their contribution needs to be re-thought and built around a ‘arc’, complete with antagonist, protagonist, conflict and suspense, all divided into three Acts and not forgetting a ‘crucible’.

Those who have started to preach about the importance of storytelling tend to leave the notion hanging, probably in the hope that you will feel the need to seek specific storytelling expertise from the likes of those preachers who appear to be among a chosen few who have had storytelling skills passed down to them in some mystic manner through many generations. So please allow me to try and get things back into perspective.

The first point is that if you are giving a business presentation the very last thing you want to do is deliver it in classic storytelling style whereby you lead them in slowly and build progressively to a big climax. In a business presentation you need to get the big point into the minds of your audience immediately – you want to open with it, you want to close with it and everything in between should serve to bring that big point alive. In Army terms it’s the old ‘tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them again’. If you tried to turn this process into a story you would be giving the end at the very beginning, so ruining the story!

So where and when should you use storytelling techniques? Three places in particular, at least one of which may come as a surprise.

First, and perhaps most importantly, short stories should be used as examples to bring your key points alive. Everything the storytelling preachers tell you applies here and your big point will register all the more effectively. If your story comes from your own personal experience it will be all the more effective, for two reasons. First, it will be more credible. Second, letting a little light shine on yourself has the effect of making your audience warm to you, with the result that you are more engaging and everything you say becomes more convincing. The other great benefit of telling a story, which you are unlikely to hear from the preachers, is that you will automatically go into a slightly different, more conversational tone of voice. This brings the variation in tone that is so important to your pacing and audience engagement.

Second, think storytelling when using PowerPoint. As a general rule bring your bullet points up one at a time or else your audience will inevitably be reading ahead and they will know the end of that slide’s story way before you get to it!

Third, most graphs present storytelling opportunities; and arguably those opportunities need to be exploited if the graph is to work to its fullest potential. The best example I can provide here is that every Fund Manager I have ever coached has built their presentation around one key graph which features two lines, one showing the market as a whole, the other showing how well their fund has been performing in comparison. They beam with pride at the big, positive gap between the two lines, but I say: “Slow down. There’s a story to tell here and you’re giving away the end before you have even begun”. 

The first thing you need to do when presenting any graph is to allow your audience to familiarise themselves with what they are looking at, rather than be bamboozled by an instant barrage of information. So ideally you should start by displaying and explaining just the axes. Then you can start overlaying the meat of the graph, but you should do so gradually, allowing a story to unroll. In the case of those Fund Managers they can probably put up the whole of the line for the market as a whole, talking about the general ups and downs. Now, without any kind of reading-ahead distractions, your audience is all keyed up to hear about the most important element – the performance of your fund.  But again, roll it out gradually. Display it in three or four progressive elements eg: show how you got off to a good start and let your audience imagine ‘did they maintain that?’; relieve the tension and show that you did; now point to the downturn that the market as a whole went into and have your audience fearing for you, as you then go on to reveal that you rode out the storm. Now you have them on tenterhooks for the big finale – did to manage to maintain that performance. Pause momentarily, then hit them with a big triumphant finish. None of this drama – and close attention to the fine details that results - could ever have been achieved by simply putting up the graph in its completed form.

So the preachers are right in certain respects, but you don’t want to simply launch into storytelling without thinking carefully about how to use it and certainly not as the basis for a whole business presentation. Well-placed bite-sized stories, however, can bring life, meaning, memorability and conviction to your messages while also adding a whole new dimension to your pacing.

Extracted and adapted from Nick Fitzherbert's book 

Presentation Magic