The Tribune

By D’Arcy Rahming

Years ago I once had to deliver a presentation to a high level executive board of a multibillion dollar company. I had six months to prepare. I created a 40 page presentation and had to do a dry run in front of my boss, a senior VP. About 2 minutes into my presentation, he said, “D’Arcy, you are missing the point. These are executives. You can’t command hours of their time. Take this back and give me this presentation in one slide. Then leave this thick research paper for them, so they can see that you actually have some backup behind this.”

This was some of the best advice I have ever received. There is nothing more tedious than sitting through a power point presentation consisting of multiple slides. The lights go off and immediately people start reaching for their coffee to fight off sleep. If it’s an after lunch presentation, you can literally hear some people snoring.

The reality of the situation is that in order to produce a concise summary, you need to have a firm grasp of the situation you are presenting. If your summary is good it will invite questions. Notice the last part of the advice he gave me. When the executives or decision makers start to ask decisive questions, you will need to have done the work. The same is true for position papers. This was traditionally handled by an executive summary. The truth of the matter is, the larger the paper, the less likely anyone is to read it at all.

Today I’ll do one even better; the larger the paper, the less likely anyone is to even open it. It looks like work and who wants to do more of that? So, the solution that I use to get my information across is a brief video presentation on the paper itself. The video should generally be between 12 and 20 minutes. This precise time has been tested and retested. If the video is too short, it will leave too many questions. Too long and people move on in their thoughts even though the body is present.

Because it’s a video, people naturally hold their questions until the end. I have been in presentations which are constantly interrupted because each slide creates a series of questions in the minds of the executives. If you are the presenter, you know that you constantly have to say, “we’re going to come to that in a few minutes.” Believe me when I tell you, putting a video in the front of your presentation really works. You will be amazed at how well you will be perceived. This is one of my top tips for marketing. If you are trying to win contracts, it is certainly worth investing in this strategy.

• D’Arcy Rahming holds a MBA from the prestigious Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A Lecturer at the College of the Bahamas. Rahming has clients in General Insurance, retail, health and medical fields, sports federations and Financial services. He is also Treasurer of the Bahamas Olympic Committee. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://darcyrahming.com.