Your blueprint for quickly building a presentation from scratch

Carl Guess, an executive presentation coach with Elevator Speech, has worked with leaders in technology, healthcare and retail organizations. This column summarizes tips he recently shared with the American Water Works Association staff about how to quickly build a presentation from scratch. 

“What separates great presenters from those who are just OK is the amount of time they put in practicing out loud,” says Carl Guess, an executive presentation coach based in Seattle, who is helping AWWA staff hone their public-speaking skills.

To get the time necessary to practice, a speaker needs to build a narrative quickly. Guess suggests these steps.

Cut five minutes off the time you’ve been given to speak. Think of how often a meeting runs long, someone earlier in the agenda goes over their time slot, or the meeting doesn’t get started promptly. 

“You’ll be prepared, and the audience will love the fact you still finished on time,” Guess said.

Use an inverted pyramid structure. This concept, widely used with news stories, places the most important information at the beginning to grab the audience’s attention. The remaining details and background information follow, from most important to least important.

Begin with a headline. Come up with six-to-ten words that summarize the most important thing you want the audience to know. Everything in the presentation must support this one idea.

Then answer the question on the mind of everyone listening: so what, who cares? Guess says too many presenters focus on themselves, rather than the audience.

“Only in talking about what the audience cares about can you motivate them to focus on what you think is important,” he says.

Finally, drop in a signpost, which previews the key points you’ll make. In the next 15 minutes I’m going to talk about three things: a, b, and c. “Now your audience has a roadmap to the presentation,” Guess says.

Diagram the rest of your presentation. Using the inverted pyramid structure, you’ll need two minutes for your opening and about a minute to wrap-up. Divide the remaining time into sections that follow your signpost, like chapters in a book. Each of those sections is also organized as an inverted pyramid, with a headline, a “so what, who cares” statement, the most important information at the top, and a signpost that previews the key points within each chapter.

“This structure makes it very modular, so if you have to cut the length of your presentation, you simply take out the stuff in the last chapter and change your signpost accordingly,” Guess said. “You’ll still hit your key points because you’ve led with the most important stuff.”

For this diagramming, Guess suggests an electronic document in outline mode to make it easy to move ideas around. Once your outline is complete, you can build the narrative quickly because you know what you’re going to say. 

Better still, you’ve got the time to practice out loud. 

The best presenters record themselves on video and view the results to improve. They can spot when they’re speaking too quickly – causing lots of “ums” and other filler words – as well as gestures like hand rubbing and finger play that can distract an audience.  

“People who practice perform better in presentations than people who don’t,” Guess said. “It’s as simple as that.”

More career resources and job opportunities are available at AWWA’s Career Center and at Work for Water.