Powerful presentations : understand it

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It may sound simplistic, but there are several things you have to understand before you give any presentation:

• Your subject
• Your audience
• Your objective

Let's start with your subject. Your first rule of presenting is: Focus, focus, focus. Let's look at an example. Say you plan to discuss online privacy issues and how they affect your company. You won't be able to discuss everything about online privacy within fifteen or thirty minutes. Instead, you'll need to get a firm grip on a few highlights you want your audience to understand, then pound those points home.

Remember, you have a limited amount of time to make your point. You also have a limited amount of your audience's attention. Depending on the time allotted to you -- and the mood of your listeners -- it's best to stick to two to five main points. It's usually best to err on the conservative side. If there's a question in your mind about how many points you can reasonably discuss, go with the lower number.

Tip: You need to provide supporting evidence for each main point, so allow enough time to develop each point in adequate detail. Find out more about evidence in the Plan It section.

For instance, you might choose to discuss recent changes in privacy regulations and how they affect your privacy policies. Alternately, you might decide to address the topic of consumer confidence and the methods your company uses to reassure its customers. Whatever you choose, make sure you maintain a narrow focus throughout. As Billy Flynn tells songstress Roxie Hart in the remake of Chicago (the 2002 musical starring Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere), "Now remember, we can only sell them one idea at a time."

Once you know what to communicate, your next job is to figure out who you want to reach. Consider the following possible audiences for your presentation on privacy policies:

• Example 1: You are trying to convince your boss that your company needs to rewrite its privacy policies in light of new regulations or increasing customer concern.
• Example 2: You're presenting the highlights of a newly drafted policy at a company-wide meeting.
• Example 3: You need to convince a roomful of potential investors that your company has sufficient protections in place.
• Example 4: You're presenting your company's stellar policies to dozens of privacy advocates, legislators, and computer scientists at the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference.

The success of your presentation lies in your ability to reach your audience. Even the flawless speaker can fail to inspire if the message isn't relevant to listeners' lives, experience, or concerns.

To help target your presentation to your audience, consider the following characteristics:

• Size: Large group presentations often call for more formality and more structure, while highly structured presentations to a small group may seem rigid and out of place. If presenting to a large group, you'll need to do more to make all audience members feel involved in your presentation. With a small group, it may be easier to encourage participation.
• Demographics: Factors to consider include age, occupation, ethnic or cultural background, socio-economic status, educational background, and gender. For instance, presenting to a group of experienced executives will require more deference to age and experience than presenting to a group of recent graduates.
• Expertise: What does your audience already know about your topic? If you're speaking to a group of doctors, you can assume more medical knowledge than you would if you were speaking to a group of pharmaceutical sales executives. Some audiences may require more background/historical information than others.
• Motivation: Why is your audience listening to your presentation? Are you a consultant giving feedback to a group who has paid a lot of money for your opinion? Or did you call a meeting to voice your own opinion? If the audience is not inherently motivated to listen to you, then you'll need to present them with a compelling reason to do so.

Most presentations have one of two purposes: to inform or to persuade. Think back to the previous examples of different audiences for your presentation on privacy policies.

• In the first, you are trying to persuade your boss to modify the company's privacy policy; in the third, you are trying to persuade a group of investors that your policy is adequate.
• In the second and fourth examples, your goals are primarily informative. In one example, you are explaining your policy to other company members; in the other, you are presenting it to a large, third-party audience.

Of course, there's generally some crossover in purpose. As you try to persuade your boss, you'll have to inform him of a few things. Moreover, as you inform the techies at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference about your policy, you'll be persuading them of your plan's merits. It's very important that you know your own purpose before you give a presentation. Otherwise, you run the risk of giving away details you did not intend to expose, or leaving a weak impression on your listeners.