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Presentation Success ROAD Map

Guest post by: Milly Sonneman

Article Overview: Imagine having a simple and memorable 4-step road map for presentation success. No doubt you could use this to streamline planning for any and every business presentations. Ready to get your hands on the ROAD Map to success?

Presentation Success ROAD Map

Imagine having a simple and memorable 4-step roadmap for presentation success. Would you like to get your hands on it? I bet you would! I was just looking at The 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report from Marketing Sherpa. (I'm not an affiliate for them or for the report, just in case you were wondering.

But something in their email caught my eye: the acronym of ROAD. And I got to thinking.

You could use similar categories to develop a ROAD Map for your business or sales presentation. These basic buckets work for any type of presentation. Social media. Face-to-face client pitches. Sales presentations.

The four categories spelling ROAD, as outlined by Marketing Sherpa are:

Research

Objectives

Actions

Devices

Here's my spin on the ROAD Map for presenting. I often use the concept of a roadmap to describe why presentation storyboarding is so powerful. A storyboard is essentially a roadmap of your presentation.

There are many ways to look at the big picture, milestones, and details. Working with a storyboard is the fastest way to see where you are going - and how you want to get there.

Let's look at how each of these areas can help you get focused and get results.

R = Research

Focus on your target audience. Find out about their roles, responsibilities, needs and history. As you investigate, be sure to also take note of specific language, issues and problems your audience is facing. When you do this, you can use what you're finding for this audience to get a head start on presenting to similar audiences.

O = Objectives

What is your objective in presenting? Do you want to get your foot in the door? Are you hoping to seal a deal? Do you want to target decision makers or influence influencers?

In every presentation, you'll want to refine your objectives. The clearer you are going into your talk or speech, the better you can focus the outcomes.

Similarly, it's essential to understand why your audience is attending. Are they interested in information gathering? Are they coming with an urgent need? By understanding objectives from both perspectives, you can tailor your presentation to match the situation.

A = Actions

A clear and specific plan of action will help you prepare and give an exceptional presentation. This includes a plan of action about actions. Know what you want your audience to do - before you ever enter the room.

This is a lot like goal setting. If you know where you want to go, and what action you want your audience to take, you can organize your entire presentation to ignite this action.

D = Deadlines

I adapted the "D" from Devices to Deadlines.

Nothing inspires action like a deadline! This is true to get that old procrastination habit out of the way. If you've been stalling on preparing your presentation, set a tighter deadline. You know what I'm talking about.

There's nothing, and I mean nothing, like the creativity that comes at the 11th hour.

The same is true for your clients and prospects. If you create deadlines for action, you will ignite decisive action.

If you are looking for a proven ROAD Map for your presentation, this is an easy way to sketch out the milestones to success.

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Article Tags: business presentation, presentation coach, visual story



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Re: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD...RIGHT NOW!!! - Success = Thinking (Head) + Heart (Feeling / Interest) + Hand (doing/ action). Success - H3 Robert
Re: Poll: Video Marketing Online, Do you use it? - Hi GT, One of my goals for this year is to start using video over the summer. I checked the "actively researching" box as I have been looking into it in the last six months with that in mind. I have practical experience with making videos as that is what I do with my "English Presentation" students at college in their second term. Earlier this year, I used iMovie on my Mac OSX to make a DVD stringing together edited versions of the students' presentations, so I'm OK with the technical side... It's the production side that is more of a challenge at the moment!
niche forum categories - I think Kevin just touched on the point that I was going make... and that is developing 'categories' that stick. Sales and Marketing may be too broad for example. However I can almost guarantee you that you would see many more sign-ups if you tailored a category to 'internet marketing' for newbies. I've seen this work on other forums, however, [i:1i903wkn]it can get a little frantic[/i:1i903wkn]... Fine tuning the categories, or expanding the scope should be effective. I think a lot of IM folks are surfing right on by because they're not finding what they're looking for here... Just a few thoughts: Better Blogging Developing Info Products Internet Marketing Presentation Skills More How to's Another point is... a lot of people don't know that they can benefit from participating in forums. The signature links to their site - if they have one - can / should be motivation enough to get more involved. The more internet savvy members that have signatures seem to stick around more... Don't you think?
Re: Public Speaking and Presentations - Hi Annette, Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your passion. I suppose if you include teaching and lecturing, as well as weddings and a funeral, and some acting, I've built up quite a lot of experience of public speaking. I also teach "English Presentation" to several classes at a women's college here in Hiroshima. That can be quite a challenge due to the language level and for the most part the complete inexperience of public speaking on the part of my students. Great fun to teach, though. I seek to encourage them and to build up their confidence, and also give them feedback about posture, fidgeting (hands in hair seems to be a favourite distraction), sniffing loudly while reading/speaking and so on... Giving that kind of feedback without embarrassing people can be quite a delicate task so I wonder if you have any "easy to understand tips" about helping with confidence and posture etc. Best wishes, David H


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