AUTHOR: Lolly
HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR PRESENTATION STORY
Your presentations are all style and no substance. We've gotta change that.
picture this.
you need to create a presentation.
you open powerpoint.
ahhhhh tricked ya.
Ya damn silly idiot. If your first action is to open PowerPoint, you’re definitely style over substance.
HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO INSTEAD.
Get a big piece of paper. If you’re of a youthful disposition, I suppose you could use a tablet or something fancy. Write down everything you know about your audience - who are they? What do they want most in the world? What’s standing in their way?
Then write down everything you can do to solve their problems. If you can’t solve a challenge, cross it out - there’s no point bringing it up and getting their hopes up.
Once you have a solution for every challenge, you have the core part of your story. Lovely.
no. get those fingers away from that powerpoint icon. you're not done yet.
a rough structure might look something like this.
Now, write down everything you can do to prove you’re as good as your word. Do you have client success stories? Do you have testimonials? Awards? Certifications? Good. Get ‘em down.
Finally - what other benefits could your solutions bring, beyond the initial challenges your audience knows they need to fix.
Once you’ve figured all that out, you have the foundations of a compelling story. And now you can treat yourself with a lil ppt.
Title page
Intro - audience landscape
Challenge one
Solution one
Challenge two
Solution two
Challenge three
Solution three
Credibility
Summary
Contact page
You could also go through all three challenges followed by all three solutions - notice I said three. People love threes. Even if you have more, find ways to group them into key themes. You could also do a fancy fucking menu system and get them to pick the challenge they want to talk about first. Well, we could. I don’t know about you.
Organise your key messages into the speaker notes of your slide. Edit edit edit. Once you’re happy with the flow of your story, move only the hard hitting words onto the slide - and only then start to add some visual flourishes. Story first. Always.
Of course, if you want something stylish and substantial, you’re going to want to join the Club.