I’ve sat through some drivel, recently. Some of it was witty and entertaining at the time, but still drivel. Why? Because it didn’t tell me anything I wanted to know.
I’m sure this scenario is familiar to you – you give up hours of your time to hear about X, Y & Z. The publicity for the event promises that you’ll learn answers to specific questions to do with X, Y & Z: you go with high hopes and perhaps even a note-pad…
… only for the presenter to tell you “something” about X, Y & Z but not the specific questions you were expecting to hear about. You leave, annoyed at the end of the event.
Why do people do that? Because they make the mistake of presenting from their perspective, not their audiences. They know about X, Y & Z so they talk about X, Y & Z – forgetting that what’s imprtant to them isn’t important, automatically, important to the audience.
Let me give you a specific example. The presenter was the front man for a large Quango, the first-point-of-contact-and-one-stop-shop for a particular service. Fantastic! Great! Just what I needed…….! except that for the full 20 minutes of his presentation he never once told us how we could contact his organisation.
No website, no phone number, nothing!
Frankly, I didn’t care about how his organisation was being re-organised, I wanted to know how to get in touch with him.
Today’s tip is basic! Ask yourself this critical question before you start to design or write your presentation: “what do my audience need to know?” It’s not rocket science!
And if you think I might mean you, I probably do. Give me a call and I’ll do you a discount on some presentation skills training! 
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