Dr Simon Raybould, business and conference speaker, TEDx speaker, consultant, author and trainer.
No matter what your particular expertise is in the health marketing space, from account management to sales, to writing or training, a good presentation is an invaluable tool for helping get the message across.
Presentations in healthcare communications range from formal pitches and stakeholder briefings, to less formal status update meetings and client calls. Whatever the context, presentations are your opportunity to impart valuable information to your audience.
Research indicates that there are a considerable number of phenomena that make people more likely to act on what you tell them in your presentation. For example, people cannot act on what they can’t remember, and don’t act on what they don’t trust or don’t understand. An effectively designed and delivered presentation is a major step towards both of those things.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that from even before you start to speak, audiences are assessing you and your content. That’s why the start of your presentation is critical. Not only do you have to deliver your content, but you need to establish your credibility – and the credibility of your content.
There are a number of ways to do this, but the easiest is to make sure your introduction does a lot of the work. An alternative is to replace your introduction with some immediate content. Oh, and never start with an apology of any kind: “I’ll only take up a little bit of your time”.
Whatever you do, the important thing is to get to your key point across immediately.
Your audience’s attention levels are highest as you start to speak, so don’t waste that opportunity with things they’re not interested in, such as how glad you are to be there; how big your company is; a list of your clients; or how pleasant the surroundings are!
What’s more, people can’t pay attention to stuff they’re not interested in. Far too many presentations build towards ‘the big reveal’ – but by that time your audience has lost interest. Instead, take the ‘big thing’ you’re going to share at the end and share it the very first opportunity you’ve got – usually just after you’ve established your credibility.
Ironically, the other bit of your presentation you absolutely need to nail is the ending. Contrary to what you’ve seen everyone else do, don’t finish with questions if you’ve got a choice. Either you’ll not get any (which is embarrassing) or you’ll carry on answering until there are no more. If you do that, two things happen. Firstly, the energy of your presentation drains away like water over the sand on a beach, and secondly, the audience begins to feel that they’re in charge.
Instead, include or try and do at least one of two things.
Technique one is to include questions as part of your presentation (remember to manage the time carefully!). That way your last question section is only about the last part of your presentation. Ideally then you’d go back to your slides and finish with a call to action (C2A).
Your C2A should be designed to answer one simple question: what is it you want your audience to do next? Don’t give them too much of a choice. For example, if you want them to engage further with your content, don’t offer a slide deck, website or podcast link, or a list of thought leadership material! Faced with choices where the correct thing to do is obvious, many of your audience will make the psychologically safer choice of, well… doing nothing at all.
Technique two is to carefully frame what the questions should be about. Instead of simply saying “Any questions?” try to steer the choice of questions to where you want them to go. For example, you could ask “any questions about what to do next?” or “any questions about how XXX fits into your current workflow?”.
Not only can you steer people subtly to what you want them to do, but it also gives you a fighting chance of having good answers prepared!
Some final thoughts…
You might have noticed that the advice here suggests you should be doing things differently to the way most presentations are done. And that should trigger a question: if doing it like this is so much better than what I’ve seen others do, why have I seen presentations done the way I’ve seen them done? The answer is in the question: people do what they’ve seen other people do.
To be memorable, what I’m urging you to do is what the research into what works suggests you should do. Your boss, and your audiences, will thank you for it.
Next steps
Dr Simon Raybould is delivering the next Presenting with Credibility and Impact course for the PM Society. You will learn how to deliver impactful presentations in any setting, including pitches, meetings, presentations, and training sessions. Additionally, you will acquire skills that can be applied to online, virtual events, and recordings of talks and webinars.
About Simon
After a PhD in medical statistics and a career as a research scientist, advising everyone from the World Health Organisation to successive governments, Dr Simon Raybould turned his attention to the ways we communicate – and how we don’t.
Drawing on over 20 years as a trainer and professional speaker, but mainly on his extensive research, and having been a health researcher for two and a half decades, Simon’s style is semi-formal, concentrating on the principles and ideas of how to make presentations, so that you’re able to apply them how you see fit in your circumstances and using whatever software (or none) is your preference.
He’s the author of three books on presenting. “Presentation Genius” got to number six on the high street best sellers list, and his next book, StoryMaking, is due out in November.