Business Presentations: Types and Delivery

• Lecture 4 focuses on types of business presentations.
• Key study terms include briefings, reports, repetition, redundancy, signposts, persuasion, problem-solution, comparative advantages, criteria satisfaction, motivated sequence, and social judgment theory.

Lecture Objectives

• Completion of this lecture allows you to:
• Prepare and deliver different types of informative presentations.
• Prepare and deliver different types of persuasive presentations.
• Select the best organizational pattern for a persuasive presentation.
• Apply ethical strategies in persuasive presentations.
• Work with others to plan and deliver a group presentation.
• Prepare and deliver remarks for special occasions.

Presentation Types covered.

• Informative, persuasive and group presentations
• Special occasion speeches.
• Build on techniques for making effective presentations.

Differences between Informative and Persuasive Speaking

• Informative speaking reveals and clarifies options, doesn't seek audience commitment, requires fewer ethical obligations, and hardly makes emotional appeals.
• Persuasive speaking urges the audience to choose options, seeks audience commitment, requires more ethical obligations, and often involves emotional appeals.

Types of Informative Presentations

• Common features include updating on projects, relaying information, and teaching new systems.
• Principles can be applied formally or informally and act as building blocks for persuasive presentations.
• The types are briefings, reports, training, webinars, and press conferences.

Briefings

• Short talks to inform a knowledgeable audience about a specific area with new knowledge.
• Length: Usually 2-3 minutes.
• Organisation: Simple, topically or chronologically organized. Attention-grabbing introductions or conclusions are not needed.
• Content: Summarizes a position but usually doesn't make complex arguments.
• Presentation Aids: May include simple visual aids.
• Language and Delivery: Conversational due to their informal nature.

Reports

• Give an account of what was done or learned, to internal or external audiences.
• They can be brief or detailed, formal or informal.
• The organisation's culture dictates the manner of presenting a report.
• Three common types are: status reports, final reports, and feasibility reports.

Status/Progress Reports

• Review the project's purpose.
• State the current status of the project.
• Identify obstacles encountered and attempts to overcome.
• Describe the next milestone/significant event.
• Forecast the future of the project.

Final Reports

• Done on completion of a project.
• Introduce the report with your name and a brief description of the undertaking.
• Provide necessary background on why the project was undertaken and your approach.
• Describe what happened during the project including challenges.
• Describe the results, including successes and failures.
• Tell listeners how to get more information.

Feasibility Reports

• Evaluate potential action steps and recommend courses of action.
• Introduction: Briefly define the problem and explain its consequences.
• Criteria: Give standards used to evaluate alternative courses of action.
• Methodology: Describe the process used to identify and evaluate the plan.
• Possible solutions: Provide these.
• Evaluation of solutions: Measure the suitability of each solution against your criteria.
• Recommendations: Describe the solution that best suits your criteria.
• Conclusion: Summarise findings showing how they help solve the problem.

Training

• Teaches listeners how to do something; topics are endless.
• Can be informal or highly structured.
• The average US organisation spends $1,252 per employee on training initiatives.
• About 75% of work-related training is done informally on the job.
• Guidelines for planning and delivering can assist with training.

Planning a Training Programme

• Define the Training Goal: Identify who you want to teach and what results you want.
• A vague goal is "Train employees to deal more effectively with customer complaints".
• A better defined goal is "Teach the Sales & Customer Service Departments staff how to use the tactics of listening, asking questions, and agreeing to deal more effectively with customer complaints".
• Develop a Schedule & List of Resources: Determine time needed to plan and publicise, identify needed staff, participants, facilities and equipment. Create or purchase training materials.

Delivering the Training

• Link the Topic to the Audience: Demonstrate the payoffs of listening.
• Start with an Overall Picture: Provide a clear preview so listeners see what they're expected to know.
• Emphasize Important Points: Highlight key points using various techniques.
• Number Items: Use numbers in presentations or listing steps to keep listeners aware.
• Use Signposts: These tell listeners how new material relates to the topic.
• Use Interjections: These highlight the importance or placement of an idea.
• Use Repetition and Redundancy: Repeating words or ideas intensifies the message.
• Add Internal Summaries and Preview: Summarize covered points.
• Cover Only Necessary Information for the listeners to know.
• Avoid Jargon.
• Link the Familiar to the Unfamiliar.
• Involve the Audience.
• Use Multiple Channels to better understand deliver your message.

Average Retention Rates of Various Training Methods

• After 2 weeks, people tend to remember:
• 10% of what they read.
• 20% of what they hear.
• 30% of what they see.
• 50% of what they see and hear.
• 70% of what they say.
• 90% of what they say and do.

Webinars

• Web-based seminars used in business.
• Seven uses for webinars: training/product demonstration, corporate communications, eLearning, lead generation, customer retention, reputation management, and providing association members with content, while charging nonmembers to see the content.

Designing and Presenting an Effective Webinar

• Identify a Specific Topic.
• Select an Engaging Host.
• Choose an Organizational Format: Webinars typically have five organisational formats.
• Design an Interactive Session.
• Prepare for Questions.

Webinar formats

• Presentation format: A presenter gives a rehearsed speech using presentation software. It's easy to create and scripted but can be less engaging.
• Interview format: An expert is interviewed by the host using preselected questions, engaging and allowing the speaker to prepare. Guests may go off script.
• Q&A format: Experts answer questions from the audience. The format is highly engaging, gives the audience opportunity to access an expert, requires interaction, and gathers information but it is unscripted.
• Panel format: Several speakers discuss a predetermined topic which means it's highly engaging offers various perspectives but there is potential for conflict between panelists.
• Product Demonstration format: Presenter demonstrates use of product or showcases a service for new or prospective clients, provides opportunity to engage prospective clients and generates leads.
• This format poses potential failure.

Press Conferences

• A press conference/news conference/presser is a meeting to share information about the organisation with the media.
• Purposes: Responding to emergencies, introducing new products, announcing new leadership, and releasing financial information.
• Choose a Newsworthy Story, one that is timely, affects many people, involves a famous person/organisation, and has human interest.
• Determine Time and Location: Consider journalists' deadlines, aiming for midmorning to noon. Ensure enough parking and seating.
• Necessary technical requirements include enough electrical outlets, room for cameras, a multi-box for audio feeds, and good lighting.
• Send a News Release or Media Advisory at least 24 hours beforehand.
• Select Speakers and Rehearse, with a host to welcome the media and chair the proceedings.
• Anticipate questions, rehearse communication, identify key messages, keep statements brief, consider visuals, and give short, clear answers.

Persuasive Presentations

• Unlike informative presentations that don't advocate a position, persuasive ones aim to change the audiences thinking, feelings, or actions.
• Persuasion: Motivating others to change belief, attitude, or behaviour voluntarily.
• Persuasive presentations are common in business as they influence others. Persuasion differs from coercion (force) or manipulation (trickery):
• Persuasion presents a message and allows an audience to accept or reject it.
• Coercion involves force or threat of force.
• Manipulation involves trickery.

Types of Persuasive Presentations

• Sales Presentations, Proposals, Motivational Speeches, and Goodwill Speeches.

Sales Presentations

• Remarks aimed at persuading someone to purchase a product or service.

Guidelines for Sales Presentations

• Establish Client Relationship before your Presentation.
• Put your Clients' Needs First by focusing on their problems, not your product.
• Business expert educator Robert Kiyosaki, "True selling means being passionate about your company's product/service, compassionate with wants, dreams, needs of fellow human beings" -. "Manipulation, deception, pressure, false sincerity, phony smiles is not selling, instead selling is communication.
• Listen to your Clients so you can field questions and gain a better understanding of client needs.
• "The great salespeople ask questions and have great listening skills. Poor salespeople get locked into script mode" - Trainer Kevin Hogan
• Emphasise Benefits and not Features. Features are qualities of a product or service that make it desirable and distinguish it from the competition.
• Use an Effective Closing Strategy by being upbeat and optimistic.

Proposals

• Advocate that your audience take specific action, both external and internal, with a problem-solution approach.

Problem-Solution Approach in Proposals

• Introduce the Problem so the audience understands. Show undesirable consequences, highlight ethical dimensions, and provide causal analysis.
• Provide a Solution with supporting evidence, describing positive benefits and showcasing how it avoids bad consequences. Highlighting reasons for your approach Show it's doable considering cost.

Motivational Speeches

• Generate enthusiasm and motivate others to accept changes (e.g. a manager inspiring workers to cut costs).

Goodwill Speeches

• Aim to create a favorable image and change attitudes/behavior.
• Representatives promote interest/support for their organizations.

Organising Persuasive Messages

• How you structure your message plays a major role in being persuasive.
• The choice will depend on the topic and the audiences attitude to it.
• Four ways to organize persuasive presentations include: Problem, Solution, Comparative, Advantages, Criteria Satisfaction and Motivated Sequence.

Problem-Solution Organisation

• Persuades the audience something is wrong with the present situation and then suggests how to remedy it. Show evidence that suggests the current problem is not working.
• Example Statement: Establishing a system of employee incentives can boost productivity.

Comparative Advantages Organisation

• This puts several alternatives side by side to show why yours is best for the particular situation.

Criteria Satisfaction Organisation

• This sets up criteria accepted by the audience and shows how your idea meets them.

Motivated Sequence

• The structure of the audience include:
• Attention in an interesting manner.
• Present Needs and offer a solution.

Steps for Motivated Sequence

• Attention, Need, Satisfaction, Visualisation and Action. State how the audience can benefit.

Considerations for Choosing an Organisational Pattern for Persuasive Presentations

• Problem-Solution Pattern: Helpful when the audience needs convincing a problem exists.
• Comparative Advantages Pattern: Useful to show how plans are superior relative to others.
• Criteria Satisfaction Pattern: Apply criteria and show how plans may measure to them.
• Motivated Sequence Pattern: See if the listeners can imagine what would be needed to do.

Strategies for Effective & Ethical Persuasion

• unlike coercion or manipulation, persuasion uses a message and allows an audience whether to choose or accept it.
• Guidelines include maximising Credibility, using Logical Arguments, and by understanding the use of Psychological Appeals.

Maximise Your Credibility

• "“In public speaking, what matters most is who you are, then how you say what you want to say, and, finally, what you say." - Sir Winston Churchill
• Demonstrate Your Competence and Knowledge.
• Earn the Trust of Your Audience by being ethical and impartial.
• Emphasise Your Similarity to the Audience.

Logical Arguments

• Fallacious reasoning weakens your case, so avoid fallacies

Common Fallacies

• Personal Attack (ad hominem): Attacks a person's integrity.
• Reduction to the Absurd (reductio as absurdum): Extends an argument to look ridiculous.
• Either – Or: Suggests false alternatives, making one choice unacceptable.
• False Cause (post hoc ergo propter hoc): Mistakenly assumes sequential events have a cause-effect relationship.
• Bandwagon Appeal (argumentum ads populum): Concludes that the popularity of an idea proves its validity.

Psychological Appeals

• Link your proposal to listener needs/values, with several needs if possible and an eye on realism.
• Be careful as those who are strongly opposed to your idea may back fire.
• Social judgement theory suggests that you will have the best impact with those who are already open to the message.
• Latitude of Acceptance. is most easily acceptable with little or no resistance.
• Latitude of Rejection. is something that a listener may not consider and is resistant to change.
• Latitude of Non-commitment. are conditions that listeners neither want to have resistance to, or care to accept.
• A persuader can increase the chance of agreement by positioning the persuasive message closest the listeners.

Appeals to the Critical Audience Segment

• Its critical to cater to the needs and interests if the the most important decision makers.
• Defer your Thesis with a Hostile Audience as its more persuasive than telling a group who is known to disagree.
• Consider those who have not accepted claims in the past and use a way to provide support for those claims.

Opposing Viewpoints

• When the situation needs more evidence and a good counter, it is better to bring better ideas when one has more support than their competition.

Adapting to the Cultural Style of Your Audience

• Be aware of certain cultural norms and how they might be interpreted by specific groups of people.
• The example says that those in the West respond favorably to analytics whereas the Arab traditions may not favor this approach as much.
• Be aware of the audiences tone to increase favorability.

Increase Appeal

• Increase the chances if others will respond positively to what would make them more aware of the speakers' attributes that do not harm their position.

Demonstrate Sincerity

• Demonstrate by getting support from those who have had great effects on similar experiences.

Group Presentations

• Group presentations are used in the working world and can be more effective
• Speakers can take up various perspectives allowing diversity of skill sets.
• Breaks are allocated by the audience as needed.

Organising a Group Presentation

• Organising by Topic: Break the presentation into sections with different speakers. This is useful when skills and special expertise are an asset.
• Organising Task: This is useful by assigning tasks and separating roles. Guidelines apply to introductions.
• Follow the instructions and transition to create different sections.

Introductions of a Group Presentation

• It is useful to provide one group member to act as a master of ceremony or the task may be passed onwards.
• After each section is complete is is helpful to either take in more from the audience or summarize and transition to the next section of the presentation.

Delivering and Welcoming aspects

• The key for presentations is to rehearse.
• When not presenting, look to the audience and pay close attention to when to deliver more instructions.

Special Speaking Occasions

• Settings for speaking events are important when preparing to organize. Some are outlined below:

Welcoming a Guest or Group

• Welcoming remarks set the tone for an entire event. Be sure to do the following:
• Say who the speaker is and what they will do.
• Identify who the person is and why you are welcoming them.
• Thank the guest speaker for showing up to speak.
• Tell the audience the importance and significance of the speaker.
• Invite those to participate and share their experiences with others.

Introducing Another Guest Speaker

• Preview the topic and allow those not familiar to explore it, highlight the importance, mention the qualifications of the topic and allow the speaker to share their insights.
• Allow notes and speaking points to appear spontaneously when delivering the message.
• Be sensitive to the cultural setting and gender if necessary and assure everyone is being treated fairly.

Honouring a Person or Institution

• Follow either chronological or topical aspects and allow the person to speak to how they have been touched by them personally. Some methods shown below:
• Show details how their life or career shows them the support that they have
• Showcase the main points and include ways to have them relate to the audience in multiple ways.
• Include accurate details from the speaker to showcase they have listened for proper engagement.

Giving a Toast

• Choose a wise time for everyone during attendance.
• Be thoughtful and what will happen during their points, but do to rely on notes.
• Speak shortly and try to give what the people are thinking through cheers. Be visible if possible.
• Show support and gaze on how people want to hear their loved ones being praised. Stay level headed to deliver their message.

Presenting and Accepting an Award

• Show when the person has made an important statement and share their name if already public, build the speaker's anticipation. Use points to help:
• Describe the details and let them know reasons the subject or person gets to have this chance
• Let all awards follow a presentation and to be the focus of the speaker and not yourself
• If they show great kindness, they are more able to show support with thankfulness.

Career tips for making presentations

• It is effective to tell a story for any good message that helps support the topic at hand and the audience wants to participate.
• Let the audience explore or give more examples, as these show when to sit or stand as follows:
• See when to speak with the correct energy you give.
• Pay regard to any interruptions with the speakers given for what they might say. Be professional.
• Review with different audiences, and take the time to adjust your presentation to meet everyone's needs.

When speaking:

• Address each listener more formally than you might like to say.
• Be simple in design and avoid terms that certain members may not be aware of or understand.
• Use visuals and review the best support, if you want to perform well on your test.

Use a smartphone to analyse your delivery

• Check to see who looks best while preparing from the front to help those to analyze the presentation, take it to those who may not be welcome and prepare to edit.

To minimize interruptions:

• Keep everything professional and maintain a well thought out presence.

While selling:

• Know what to sell at a budget you are willing to negotiate.
• Get to know those who will attend.

Steps to become more confident:

• Allow those who have had success to help guide what points you want to make, if you are in doubt, find support and give your best.

Annex B summary: Instructions for group presentations

• Use of information collected over the ten lectures in order to prepare for a group presentation. You should use techniques and tips explained from lectures.
• Task is to prepare and deliver about business presentations and follow conduct
• Each presentation should last from 10 ot 15 minutes max

Organization Patterns:

• You are required to select one based on submissions, the information below shows the following:
  • Informative and Persuasive
• Some topics are not required but if any point goes to a general need may come after or before those points.