Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

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Delivery Plan

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

Alan Lakein, author on time management

You can tell any story 20 different ways. The trick is to pick one and go with it.

Clint Eastwood, American actor, director, producer, and politician

There seems to be a belief in many businesses that it is possible to take a message and create a single presentation that can be used in every situation. We often see sales teams with a standard presentation deck for their product that simply has the new customer's name and logo placed on the corner of every slide. The same concept happens internally in many organizations, with a standard presentation used many, times regardless of the audience. Sometimes a message has to be carefully controlled, and this is a good way to do that. However, many times this kind of reuse happens because it's simply more efficient for a presenter to reuse the same materials over and over.

A typical presenter will quickly adapt a standard presentation's content, removing irrelevant slides, and varying the time spent on each slide for the specific audience. Unfortunately, the result is a presentation designed for the convenience of the presenter. It ignores the specific learning and decision styles of the audience and likely focuses on generic reasons for making the proposed decision, rather than a specific sense of urgency.

A great presenter goes deeper. He or she will start every delivery by considering ...