{"id":845,"date":"2011-03-15T08:27:13","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T07:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=845"},"modified":"2011-03-15T08:27:13","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T07:27:13","slug":"presenting-for-accountants-and-other-number-crunchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/presenting-for-accountants-and-other-number-crunchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting for accountants (and other number-crunchers! :) )"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like my accountant. \u00c2\u00a0Apart from the fact that he smokes, he’s pretty cool. \u00c2\u00a0If I say to him “How much money do we have?” he gives me a very specific, detailed answer to the nearest penny, as at “close of play yesterday” – by which he means when the banks shut. \u00c2\u00a0Great. \u00c2\u00a0It’s precise and detailed and accurate… which is exactly what I want from my accountant.<\/p>\n

I know quite a few accountants – particularly those who are starting out – who have to make a lot of presentations (particularly pitches for work) – and here’s the rub… the very things which make me like you as an accountant are likely to make you a bad presenter. \u00c2\u00a0(Okay, that’s a generalisation, but hang on in there… :) )<\/p>\n

If I’m listening to your presentation (or pitch), I don’t want to know how you do X, Y and Z. \u00c2\u00a0I just want to know that X, Y and Z will be done, on time and how much it’ll cost me. \u00c2\u00a0If I wanted to know how<\/strong> to do X, Y and Z, I’d be an accountant myself, right? Rather like Geeks<\/a>, the sad thing is that no one cares about your work like you do.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, that’s good: because if they did, you’d be out of a job! \u00c2\u00a0:D<\/p>\n

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard (probably) great accountants crash out in a presentation because they wanted to tell people too much. \u00c2\u00a0Listeners are interested in story-lines, not facts. Unlike accountants, ‘real people’ get turned off by the site of a row or column of numbers. \u00c2\u00a0They don’t<\/strong> think checking and reconciliation is sexy.<\/p>\n

Like I said, if they did, they’d be accountants!<\/p>\n

But – I hear from accountants all the time – we’ve got to present details and facts, not stories and summaries…<\/p>\n

Well yes, fine. \u00c2\u00a0Like \u00c2\u00a0said, I want accurate facts and figures from my accountant, but not in presentations – and besides, facts and figures are<\/strong> stories. \u00c2\u00a0What’s an average if it’s not a story? \u00c2\u00a0There are a whole range of numbers encapsulated in that single summary figure. \u00c2\u00a0You don’t give them the full list of numbers do you? No, of course not.<\/p>\n

An average is a story.<\/p>\n

A trend is a story.<\/p>\n

A prediction is a story.<\/p>\n

Almost everything you do with numbers is a story.<\/p>\n

And once you’ve got the idea, it’s not so hard to take it further and make decent presentations using those stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like my accountant. \u00c2\u00a0Apart from the fact that he smokes, he’s pretty cool. \u00c2\u00a0If I say to him “How much money do we have?” he gives me a very specific, detailed answer to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}