Karnataka - Bangalore

A business presentation is more than visuals

Special Correspondent

A bit of humour often goes a long way, especially when the statistics get piled up

Bangalore: Making a business presentation is more than colourful visuals and sound effects, though they matter.

"Avoid cluttering your talk with statistics right at the beginning, they can come later. For example, you can start by explaining how your firm managed to remain a market leader in your product category in a specific market and what gave the edge to the product, and then show the graphs and pie charts on the screen," acording to management consultant K. Panduranga.

In visuals, the tendency now is to supplement or even replace a graph with its meandering lines with a broad arrow, hinting at steady growth, provided your organisation is on the growth path.

Research has found this gets more attention than the traditional graph.

Presenting figures

"When presenting market share figures, do take the trouble of going into some demographic analysis. Your bosses or business associates will want to know who is buying and why and this adds weight to your presentation," the consultant suggests.

In other words, if single women, homemakers or young families are the mainstay of your business let it be clear. It will show you have done your homework well and not just left it to your sales team to assemble a power point.

A bit of humour often goes a long way, especially when the statistics get piled up.

Make that witty remark relevant to the topic being presented and give a real-life example or two and the attention span of your listeners lasts longer.

Anecdote

"If you find more than one person yawning or fidgeting, it is time to avert a disaster ... you can't afford to lose your audience," advises former HR head and now corporate consultant M.K. Rao. Breaking off from a monologue to tell an anecdote, related in some way to be subject at hand, also helps to get back attention.

The way you present yourself matters a lot about how the audience reacts to you.

As in theatre so in a boardroom or the annual general meeting. You dress neatly in a business suit, accent the sober dark grey or blue with a necktie not too colourful as to distract, have a neatly groomed hair, well polished shoes and an even intonation which is friendly without being condescending, and you have it made.

Chances are your company will want you to be the main spokesperson at more public events to come.

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