Keys to Successful Team Presentations

We recently helped a group of executives prepare for key presentations in which they sought to motivate both their employees and their clients about the company’s new products and ideas. In our on-site training program, we emphasized important techniques that would enhance their appeal.

Is your team preparing to lead a sales kickoff, product launch or annual meeting? At these events, companies rely on their leadership team to carry the day with presentations that convince attendees that their plans are solid, their projections are sound, and their ideas will succeed once they reach the market.

We recently helped a group of executives prepare for two consecutive events: their annual sales meeting, followed by a key conference that many of their clients and prospects would be attending. EMS provided on-site speaker training to help the execs prepare presentations that would engage both employees and clients about their products and services.

While providing coaching to each individual presenter, we emphasized important team concepts when working with the entire group:

Energy. Since the goal was to motivate employees and audiences about the solutions they provide to empower brands and retailers, each of the speakers needed to generate some of that excitement from the stage. Dialing up the energy helped the audience tap into the excitement and share the motivation with their co-workers and colleagues.

Evidence. Since this company had heavily invested in research to plan their approach to the market, they had a lot of evidence to share. Many in corporate America tend to rely on spreadsheets, timelines, and content-heavy slides. But we encouraged them to see how they could use metaphors, photographs, quotes and other presentation tools to illustrate the evidence and help the audience relate.

Authenticity. We’ve often noted how many speakers feel the need to be extra-serious when presenting to a business audience. They fall into a monotonic voice, stand stiffly behind a podium, and recite from their notes, looking like they want to be anywhere else but on stage. But to truly motivate their audience, we encouraged the speakers to bring their real personalities into the presentations, to be conversational instead of stiff, and to realize that they were speaking to PEOPLE, not robots.

Consistency of Message. When you listen to a slew of speakers from the same organization, you’ll take in information more effectively if you can sort out the terminology being used. Are all presenters committed to using the same product names, or describing the same processes as their co-presenters? It’s vital to make sure that all of your team’s presenters are working from the same script, so key people in the audience aren’t confused when one speaker refers to the “marketing strategy” while another calls it the “roll-out plan.”

Relatability. In this particular situation, the executives would be presenting to many employees and contacts that they knew personally. When you know the people in your audience, we recommend acknowledging them in the presentation, perhaps telling stories or anecdotes that involve certain audience members, recounting prior concerns—expressed in conversations in meetings or conversations—that might be relevant to the current topic. We encourage speakers, for example, to say something like this: “When I met with the regional team in Tampa last March, you expressed your concerns about the timing of our roll-out. We designed this new strategy to specifically address those concerns.”

Planning for effective team presentations will dramatically pay off when you put the work in up front to prepare your team. Bring in EMS to help your speakers excel during any event!