Effective Business Presentation
Creating a clutter-free business powerpoint presentation
How to talk less, engage more and deliver what the audience wants

An exclusive interview on effective business presentation with Arte and Ram from presentation process

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Effective business presentation experts, the husband and wife team, Arte Ranganathan and MS Ramgopal (Ram), have walked their talk. Both have had extensive and successful experience in senior roles for multi-national corporates during which time they had ample opportunity to see the good, bad and very ugly of business presentation.

Their website and business, presentation process, is a natural extension and development of their skills. At its core is the essence of effective business presentation: the art of making the complex simple and accessible to an audience.

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Toward Effective Business Presentation

Perhaps you've had the experience of knowing your presentation didn't go over well. You prepared it as best you could but still something was missing. Was it the powerpoint slides? Were there too many? Or was it the message?

To help identify and suggest solutions for specific problem areas in business presentations I interviewed Arte and Ram.The questions I asked are bolded. Their answers are below them.

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What have you identified as the biggest anxiety producing area for presenters?

Many business presenters think that if their idea is strong, their audience will get it. They get frustrated when audience is unable to understand their well researched presentation. I’ve seen that happen a lot when technical experts are invited to make a product presentation to a group of users.

They don’t realize that the skill set required to come up with great ideas is very different from the skill set required to communicate those ideas to others in an effective way.

What is the solution to the problem?

The solution is to change the way you see your audience. Instead of seeing them as recipients of your message, start seeing them as carriers of your message. This automatically changes the way you design your presentation and makes it significantly more effective than the usual way of presenting.

Can you explain the difference a bit more in detail?

Sure.
From our experience, we’ve seen that most business decisions are taken long after the presentation is delivered by the presenter. Often key decision makers are too busy to attend presentations and they make their decisions based on the message passed on by those who did.

So, the real presentation is not made by you but by the carriers of your message. That’s why the change in orientation is so vital.

How specifically does this orientation change the presentation design?

When you see the audience as message carriers, you focus on making your message transferable.
You automatically make the following adjustments:

• You prioritize your points and limit the number of ideas you cover in a presentation.
  In an effective business presentation, the lesser the points, the better the message gets passed on.
• You focus on depth of coverage instead of width of coverage.
  This ensures that the transfer is accurate.
• You make your ideas visual and relevant, so the message is understood better and remembered longer.

You've seen hundreds of business presentations through the years.
What have made the stand-outs you remember significantly better or memorable?

In my view, the presentations that make a lasting impression on the audience have always been simple and visual.

Great business presenters relate their ideas and concepts to their audience using simple, powerful diagrams instead of relying on text based slides.

In fact, drawing diagrams forces a presenter to have thought clarity even at the preparation stage. It is impossible to draw a diagram when you are not clear about an idea. When your ideas are clear, it makes it easier to transfer the idea.

Most audiences understand a diagram faster and remember it longer. This possibly explains why most of the memorable presentations have been visual in nature.

Here is an example that shows the difference:

That's great but creating professional diagrams can take a lot of time and skill.
Do you have any solution to help busy and not so graphically-skilled business presenters?

Yes! We have a very elegant solution that's gaining popularity throughout the world. The product is - our Mega PowerPoint diagrams pack with 301 unique diagram templates.

From choosing a professional color palette to adding a professional custom animation, we’ve done all the hard work to save time for presenters. All they need to do is to just ‘copy- paste’ diagrams to their slides and create professional slides instantly.

The template pack covers almost every business situation imaginable. In case presenters want to create their own diagrams to suit their specific needs, they can easily do so by mixing and matching elements in different templates. Our templates are fully editable.

Here are a few sample images to show the kind of quality we provide.

But we don't just sell products! We also give them away. There is a huge amount on offer through our website. Visitors will find help with every aspect of creating a great presentation.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Yes! Maybe your readers would like a 5 day free e-course on Creative Presentation ideas.
They will discover 29 different ways to make their presentations more visual.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on giving an effective business presentation. It has been a pleasure talking with you.

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Many thanks to Arte and Ram for sharing their expertise. One of the stand-out ideas for me is the concept of the audience as carriers of your message. It does change things!

If you want to learn more about effective business presentation visit presentation process.com. You'll find a wealth of material all designed with you in mind.

Or you could ASK ARTE right here, right now!

This is new feature and a response to feedback received after the interview with Arte and Ram above went live. The good, bad and ugly of using powerpoint in business presentations pushed a few reader's buttons hard enough to send in their thoughts.

We, Arte and I, thought everyone would benefit from the discussion. Here it is for you to share, to add to, or you can start a new topic as you wish.

This your official invitation to ask, to comment, on any aspect of effective business presentation and get an expert's opinion.

So go ahead, you're welcome to ...

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