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.<\/p>\n
I’m sure this scenario is familiar to you \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 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<\/strong> questions to do with X, Y & Z: you go with high hopes and perhaps even a note-pad…<\/p>\n … only for the presenter to tell you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153something\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about X, Y & Z but not the specific questions you were expecting to hear about. You leave, annoyed at the end of the event.<\/p>\n Why do people do that? Because they make the mistake of presenting from their<\/strong> perspective, not their audiences<\/strong>. They know<\/em> about X, Y & Z so they talk<\/em> about X, Y & Z \u00e2\u20ac\u201c forgetting that what’s imprtant to them isn’t important, automatically, important to the audience.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n No website, no phone number, nothing!<\/p>\n Frankly, I didn’t care about how his organisation was being re-organised, I wanted to know how to get in touch with him.<\/p>\n Today’s tip is basic! Ask yourself this critical question before<\/strong> you start to design or write your presentation: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what do my audience need to know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It’s not rocket science!<\/p>\n