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Tag: Persuasive

Persuasive Presentations Get Results

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

Your Presentation Needs To Be Modified For Each Audience

 

How many presentations have you listened to that were more annoying than informative or persuasive? Most, I’m sure.

Why didn’t your audience jump at the chance to invest in your deal or buy your product?

Was it the opportunity, the product, or the presentation? Many times, it’s the presentation.

 

Most presentations are designed to put every possible piece of data regarding the “opportunity” on a slide.

These “data dumps” do not impress audiences.

They turn audiences off. If you are talking to investors, they want to know

your product or service and how you will deliver it to a large market.

But they do not care to know about every product feature and function;

they want to see why they should invest in your opportunity.

 

As Jerry Weissman, in his book, “Presenting To Win,” states:

Your job is to get the audience from A (uninformed) to B (wanting to accept your call to action), and you do it through persuasion.

 

So the first thing you need to do is recognize that you must customize each presentation to the specific audience you are addressing.

One standard presentation will not do the job. For example, if you have a complicated, technical, or medical product,

will everyone in the audience understand your description, jargon, etc?

You better make sure everyone knows.

 

How much data do they need? Only enough data to get them from A (uninformed) to

B (further discussions, commitment to investing, a sale), etc.

 

But facts alone will not persuade them.

They need to know how they will benefit from your opportunity.

What’s in it for them?

Benefits are one area that is missing from most investment presentations.

A simple exit statement is not enough.

One way to accomplish the desired result (B) is to list the important facts you need to convey

and the benefit related to that fact. The fact then benefits, then fact, then benefit.

Rinse and repeat. You don’t need that fact if there is no benefit to the audience for a given fact.

 

You will know if you got through to the audience if you get a lot of difficult questions.

If you don’t get questions, you probably missed the mark.

 

How To Get Audience From Point A (skeptic) To Point B (convinced)

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

Being persuasive is one of the most important skills one can develop. Compelling situations themselves will be varied, each one posing its unique challenges and opportunities.

All presentations have one common element. To take the audience from Point A, the start of your presentation and move them to your objective Point B (your call to action). This dynamic shift is real persuasion.

 According to Weissman, your presentation may be entertaining, most everyone wants that, but entertainment is not the primary purpose. When your point is not clear, you have committed one of the five cardinal sins. When your position is readily apparent, you have the opportunity to achieve your call to action.

Here is a closer look at your challenge. Point A is where your audience starts: uninformed, uninformed, dubious and skeptical about your business. Or in the worst-case, resistant, firmly committed to a position contrary to what you are asking them to do.

Weissman puts it simply. To reach point B, you need to move the uninformed audience to understand, —the dubious audience to believe, —and the resistant audience to act in a neutral way.

Understand, belief, and act are not three separate goals but three stages in reaching a single, cumulative, ultimate goal. Audiences will not act as you want them to if they don’t first understand your story and believe the message it conveys. Point B is the objective of every presentation, and the sure way to create a successful presentation is to begin with, your goal in mind.

You would be surprised at how many people forget to ask for the order at the end of their presentation. At the same time, to reach this goal, you have to understand that you have to see yourself and your presentation from your audience’s point of view. In other words, there must be empathy, an emotional connection, between you and the audience.

One way to do this is to shift your focus from features to benefits. Simply stated, a feature is a fact about your product. A Benefit is how that fact will help your audience. A feature may be necessary, but a benefit is always required. It’s their reason to act.

Every Presentation Is Mission Critical

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

 

Every business presentation that requires a decision is critical and depends on your ability to tell your story. You have one objective, persuading your audience to say yes to your call to action.

Most presentations are not stories they are lists of their product’s features and functions. Most presentations are designed to convey data, not to persuade the audience to grab your opportunity. Also, most presentations are packed with technical information, and jargon they may not understand. That means they have to think. Don’t make them think.

When the audience has to think, they are not paying attention to you, and they will soon lose interest and become irritated. Consequently, your message becomes the casualty.

The focus of your presentation must be on the story. It’s your story that makes the presentation powerful and persuasive. A compelling story will also make you more confident. How many times have you sat through a presentation counting the minutes until the pain would be over?  

According to Jerry Weissman, author and Coach, many presentations commit the following five cardinal sins,

1. No clear point. The audience wonders why they are there. This sin is called the data dump.

2. No audience benefits. The presenter talks about things the audience may not care about.

3. No clear flow. The presenter jumps from topic to topic, and the audience has to try to keep up.

4. Too detailed. Too many facts not relevant and too technical

5. Too long. The audience gives up before the presenter does.

When you commit these sins, you waste everyone’s time, and you miss your opportunity to persuade your audience.

Entrepreneurs are often absorbed in the many issues that have to deal with; they think every tree is necessary when the audience only wants to know about the forest. “They think that for the audience to understand anything, they have to be told everything.” The solution to these problems is to focus on your goal: persuading the audience to go from skeptic to evangelist.