Your message and other things you say

In working with so many technical presenters (or rather, technical people presenting), I’ve noticed an interesting trend.  Most of them give feature-rich, technically precise, and logically crafted presentations.  And they’re missing one very important part.

I can’t quite put a finger on why, but they will frequently fail to connect the dots from the facts to come to a conclusion.  They’ll give the architecture diagram, the facts on performance, a comprehensive how-to demo, background on the process leading to the product, what didn’t work, and  a precise  accounting for the project’s investment.  And yet they’ll fail to say why any of that matters one bit.

The phrase I’m falling in love with in helping these folks in their message is “What that means to you is…” When pressed, one presenter said “We think this is a revolutionary step forward that will set us apart in the market.“  His presentation was full of facts and figures but nothing close to that statement.  I guess he thought they’d figure it out.  He almost seemed apologetic for even mentioning it.  I guess he thought that ’spin’ should be left to marketing, or that trying to convince anyone is left to sales, or explaining next steps is a job for tech support.

Whenever a presentation is essentially a lesson in facts or information, the temptation is to stop right there.  But most often, the next step to tell the listener what the meaning and value to them is the most important one.  Don’t allow a listener to infer or have to make their own suppositions about what they should get from the talk.  Lead them to a logical, proper, and beneficial conclusion.  That’s why they’re listening in the first place.

Answer the question “What that means to you…” for the audience.