Credit Management July and August 2020

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Making Memories
How do you make your presentation memorable?
AUTHOR – Clive Hawkins
THE goal of any public speaking
event is to inform, engage
and entertain your audience
- but this shouldn’t be at the
expense of making your
presentation memorable.
Ultimately, you want your audience to
understand key points of your delivery
and be able to recite them to colleagues in
team meetings or in the workplace over the
following days and weeks. The challenge is
how to do this?
Previously I have provided insights on
how to create powerful presentations by
using effective content, slides and visual
aids. I have also covered off how to use
powerful openings and body language to
engage positively with audiences from the
start. We now need to consider how to use
these elements alongside other techniques
and make your presentation a positive
experience on the day and, importantly, help
your audience remember your key messages
afterwards. So here are some simple tips:
Rule of Three – you need to decide on
your key messages and use these wherever
possible. Since the times of Greek
philosopher, Aristotle, the ‘rule of three’
has been widely recognised as the optimum
amount of information that an audience
is likely to remember – four or five key
messages are acceptable but can become
more of a retention challenge. To help with
this, if a journalist wanted to cover your
presentation but could only write three
things about your delivery, what would you
want them to be?
Simple, Memorable and Real – once you
have started your delivery with a powerful
opening to capture attention from the start,
your narrative needs to take your audience
on a journey using the key messages as
bedrock points of your presentation. Each
key message needs to be simple, memorable,
real and supported with supplementary
information – anecdotes, facts, figures
and research data – to make them easy to
remember.
Signposting – repeat your key messages
throughout the presentation to help keep
the audience on track with what you are
saying. You can show agenda slides for this
or simply refer to them in your delivery.
The latter allows you to keep slides to a
minimum and use your body language –
such as a change in voice tone – to reiterate
each key point and its alignment with your
overall narrative. This is also a useful way
of refreshing an audience’s attention and
drawing them away from distractions such
as mobile phones!
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
An essential part of your delivery is the
Q&A session. I prefer this to be facilitated
at the end, to avoid overrunning my allotted
time slot or allowing an audience member
to interject on a point that I am planning
to cover off. Some presenters do not relish
Q&A’s, but this session is a valued part of
your presentation as it provides you with
an extra period of time to cover off any
questions and, where appropriate, gives
you an opportunity to repeat key messages
in your answer. This is called a bridging
technique and increases the likelihood of
an audience remembering the key points of
your delivery – which is your goal!
EFFECTIVE PUBLIC SPEAKING
As we move out of the COVID-19 crisis, all
organisations will need to re-engage with
their employees, customers, suppliers and
other key audiences. The ability to deliver
a powerful presentation, either face-toface
or online, will be a key part of every
business leader’s communications toolkit
and fundamental to future business success.
However, you need to nurture this discipline.
This is best summed up by American writer
and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin: ‘Tell
me and I forget. Teach me and I remember.
Involve me and I learn.’
Clive Hawkins is Senior Associate at
Spoken Word Communications
clive@spokenwordgroup.co.uk
Clive Hawkins
Some presenters do not relish Q&A’s, but this session is a valued
part of your presentation as it provides you with an extra period of
time to cover off any questions and, where appropriate, gives you
an opportunity to repeat key messages in your answer.
Advancing the credit profession / www.cicm.com / July & August 2020 / PAGE 49