Four secrets behind a powerful board presentation

Like you I’ve sat in and listened to hundreds, if not thousands of presentations over the years. Longwinded product presentations, board meeting presentations, status update presentations—not to forget the endless stream of presentations I’ve watched when as I was waiting to go on stage and present.

And honestly, I’ve forgotten most of them. They were just a moment in time that despite the tens if not hundreds of hours used by all these people to make an impact on the board, the senior management, the audience or me—they rarely seemed to resonate.

I don’t know why but most business people fundamentally believe business people only like serious, and may I add boring presentations. Don’t be too flashy as it is seen as being too humorous, but as technology has captured a bigger and bigger share of our lives—private as well as in business—something interesting has happened.

Recently, as I was just about to present a major turnaround strategy for a company I was sitting in the very back of the conference room, which allowed me visual access to everyone as they were busy fiddling with their phones. The guy next to me was on Facebook, the person next to him was on Blendr, and one person was updating his LinkedIn profile; another person was typing an email to his boss. None of them were actually listening—more if anything—only pretending that they were listening.

Our attention span has diminished, despite us being business people and thus, the rules for presentations have changed. So what are the rules? Should we shorten our presentations and get straight to the point? Should we cut out unnecessary stories and present only the facts? The answer may surprise you, as the rules, like most of our lives, are somewhat counter intuitive.

Ever since I’ve become a professional speaker I’ve refined my own little rule book. I’ve learned that building a journey into your presentation, which is based on emotional content, often beats even the most well prepared number show. If I should simplify my rules, I’d use four simple letters to do so—NASA. NASA, not to be mixed up with the space center at Cape Canaveral, but the acronym for Need, Accept, Solution, Accept. It is a technique that eliminates poorly preforming presentations, and converts them into presentations with a perfect match between the need of your audience and your message.

The overall purpose of your presentation will always be to activate a Need. Remember, if the people attending your presentation do not see any need for the solution you want to sell, your recommendation is doomed. Need activation is the key to a successful presentation. Your goal is to activate the need as hard as possible. First, when you clearly feel you have a need-activation-homerun, you’re allowed to proceed to the next step.

There’s a ton of ways you can activate a need. One approach is to answer the following question:

What is the worst possible consequence for the company or your organization if management decides not to proceed with your recommendation?

Your role is not to answer the question but to begin building a story around independent cases all pointing towards the consequences. Think of a true story, find a powerful case or identify a real world observation and turn this into your opening story, with only one single purpose, to activate their need. Counter intuitive to what one may think, your mission is not to cut away emotions, stories, and anecdotes, in fact personal stories, emotional stories, and stories that generate emotions are welcome. The rule of thumb for your selection of these is simple, they need to make a person think and reflect.

I hate to tell you but fear, more than anything, helps to sharpen peoples mind. The fear of losing out, fear of being taken over, fear of going broke, the fear of being the publisher rejecting the next Harry Potter, the company missing the next iPhone wave, the food manufacturer missing out on the artesian trend, can give even the most hardnosed CFO chills down the spine.

Accept, the second letter in NASA, is all about you observing and picking up indications that your audience has bought into your argumentation. Don’t assume a nod and a smile means you have the go-ahead to precede to the next step in NASA. Ask. Ask people in the room if they agree, if in doubt pull the hand-breaks and seek to understand where you’ve missed activating their need. Perhaps they feel your cases weren’t relevant to their situation, perhaps the fear you were painting didn’t resonate properly, or perhaps they weren’t listening, but on their phones instead.

Where some people would precede, no matter what, the trick is to be prepared to pull the breaks and revisit the topic of fear one more time. This time though, from a completely different angle. Whereas your first angle was supported by independent cases, it might be that your second angle would be competitive observations, and your third angle would be interviews and research studies conducted with your customers. My point is simple, activating the need is essential before proceeding; however, once you’ve secured the Accept, the next step is almost given.

You’ve probably guessed what the third letter in NASA stands for—Solution. At this stage you have spent considerable time building up to your solution, and chances are that even before winning “your war,” you have already won—in short if the needs you were activating in the beginning of your talk are directly linked with the solutions you’re about to present, you’re diving into an uneventful experience.

So what if there’s still push back? Pull the hand-breaks and stop pushing your solution altogether. The answer is simple, you haven’t activated the need properly. Go back to the N in NASA and revisit the key issues you needed to activate, and stay there until you’ve fully activated the need. 

Do I need to tell you what the last A stands for in NASA? If the people attending your presentation buy your solution you’ve by default secured the A—the Accept.

In our instant gratification obsessed world, we’re often fooled to believe that people attending our presentations want us to get straight to the point. And yes, in theory you’re right, but just like anything else, the build-up, whether it’s the welcome reception, champagne and closed curtains before the shows begin, or aperitif and starter before the main course, these foreplays all have one thing in common, they build up anticipation and help to align the expectations with the solution.

About the author:

Martin Lindstrom, a global expert and pioneer in the fields of consumer psychology, marketing, and neuroscientific research, has worked with such brands as McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Nestlé, American Express, Microsoft Corporation, The Walt Disney Company, and GlaxoSmithKline.

Named one of TIME Magazine’s “World's 100 Most Influential People”, he authored the NY Times and international bestseller "Buyology—Truth and Lies About Why We Buy” and "Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy".

Get to know Martin better on Twitter, Facebook or at MartinLindstrom.com