Fling and Wing
Derrick Thomson, AB15
How many business presentations in the last year can you really remember? The answer is probably about zero, okay? Because most people in business, they just come in, they fling a few slides together, and then they completely wing it. There’s been absolutely no rehearsal, no nothing, and no respect for you as an audience. You see, the thing about being a persuasive presenter is if you want people to invest in your business, buy things from you, work with you, then you have to do all of these things in persuasive presentation to get them to understand your story. And it makes money and it gets people. And the other thing about presentations, they’re all far too bloody complex. There’s too many words, there’s too many graphs, things that people can’t read. So there’s only two things really wrong that most people do, everything they say and everything they show. So if they just change those two things, then it would be fantastic and it would be a better place to work.
You see, bowling balls information is like a bowling ball. So if I give you a bowling ball, you can grab it and go, “Yeah, I like that. I get that. I understand that.” If I give you four bowling balls or 40 bowling balls, as most people do in presentations, you drop them all, and you walk out of the room going, “What the hell were they talking about? I don’t know.” You see, there’s these zones in a room, and I want you to always be in the never forget zone and the memory zone, because if you’re down here in the lost zone, the audience are lost. They’re in the weeds, and it’s not making sense.
You see, there’s this amazing thing in this next slide that’s about to appear in three seconds time, the iPhone line. You see, below that line people’s iPhones are more interesting than you. They’re doing Tinder, Grindr, Wordle, emails, and they’re not listening to you. So they’re down here in this distracted zone. And how many times have we seen that in an audience? You see, because most presentations start all in the dull zone. They go, “Oh, here’s a history and a vision. Oh, here’s our growth. Here’s our awards. And oh yes, a map of our operations. Isn’t that marvelous? And all the customer logos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” People are shtum, until you say, “And finally,” and then they’re all back in the room.
So rock stars, comedians, actors, they all practice and rehearse. So why the hell don’t we, as business people, take the time to do rehearsals, script things properly, and get on a stage and be really persuasive just as these do? So if I was to talk at a hundred words a minute, I’d actually sound like Gary Barlow on a very bad day. We actually talk about 170 words a minute. So take that, when you’re doing a 10 minute presentation, you need 1700 words. That’s it. The amount of times I see people coming in with scripts that have got 5,000 words for a 10 minute presentation, and they’re going, “Yeah, I’ll just take 10 minutes of your time.” And there they are, 70 minutes later and my life’s gone down the drain. So script things, script it to the end of there.
And then when you take that script, you can turn it into a storyboard. And you can have the storyboard in front of you, and you can wander around without any script and look amazing, just like Steve Jobs. Put your story on a storyboard and then it’s brilliant. Okay, so once you’ve done that, then the amazing thing about that, is moving on, your presentation will be memorable, it’ll be compelling, it’ll be convincing. And you’ll hit this purple spot in the middle called the sweet spot. You’ll be utterly unforgettable, totally convincing, and really memorable. So try and do all of those things in your stories that you build into your pitch.
And again, bring emotion into it. Bring evidence, show evidence of what you’re doing in your thing. And then there’s ESP, empty sales pish. “Oh, we’re disruptors. We’re game changers. We add value in everything we do.” Well, you’re bloody well better. That’s what I’m paying to. “Oh, we’ve got a rock star team.” And if Elton John doesn’t turn up, I’m going to be disappointed. So stories are the building blocks of your presentation. Pixar, do it beautifully. They keep you on the edge of your seat, there’s lots of drama, and by the end of it, you know where the story’s gone. So please try and build these into your presentations. And cleverly, every story has a setting, a turning point, overcoming struggle, a resolution, and an implication. And that’s what keeps us gripped. So try and build those into your pitches.
And coming up next here, it is this magic app in our head called our imagination. That’s what you’ve got to do, is make us come to life with the three D’s, detail, description, and dialogue. And that’s what we do every night when we watch the telly. That’s what EastEnders does every night, is just make us sit on the edge of our seats. And then entertain me. I want IKEA moments, something it keeps and earns attention. So wear a wig, have a rubber duck, come in with a bunch of gerbera. Just do something in your presentations. Get away from that corporate veneer. “Hello, my name’s Dave and welcome to my presentation.” Just entertain me.
And then finally, when you marry that out with your pitch, whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re selling, all you have to do is then answer the 12 questions in the audience head, primary and secondary questions. Not enough time for that tonight. But you’ll sell anything, if you’ve told a great story in your pitch. And this friend, this is your best friend slide. It’s called the Amy Winehouse principle. So when all else fails, go back to black, because you’re more interesting than anything that’s going on up there, because people are just reading it, and they can read faster than you can speak. So finally, all I’m asking you tonight, as Ronald Frump, the great presenter said, ladies and gentlemen, let’s make presentations great again. Good night.
Watch Derrick deliver his session over on Vimeo >>>>> DisruptHR Aberdeen 2.0 – April 24 2025 on Vimeo
