You’ve employed, intelligent, expensive data people. If you’re investing large amounts of money but there is a disconnect between your data team and your clients or the rest of the business, it could be how they deliver their ideas.

Presenting ideas effectively is a skill that most people need to learn and practice, especially if they’re detail orientated, technical and highly logical … as your data people undoubtedly are.

The gap between what they say and what clients or the business hears can be a chasm and make the difference between success and failure of an idea, project or product.

The additional hurdle of presenting data online means that they can quickly lose the very people who need to understand and invest in them.

Presentations – is this your data leader?

• Passionate about their topic
• Been researching & working on the information for quite a while
• Excited and focused on the detail
• Committed to getting the client or business to share their vision and ideas

Then they make their presentation and … it falls flat or fades from memory all too quickly. That’s a lot of time and investment wasted. How can that change?

We’ve all sat through bad presentations. No-one sets out thinking their presentation is going to be poor, boring or forgettable. Do you remember watching a great presentation, one that sticks in your mind or inspired you to take action? Why did it stand out?

From our many years in the data space, including training data leaders to present data effectively and mentoring data people and Boards, we’ve put together some top tips to improve the impact and success of data presentations to senior stakeholders and clients alike;

Top 5 Tips – presenting to a business audience;

1. Talk the audiences language in order to engage them. Think about their drivers. The way to present to business should be very different to presenting to data people.
2. Focus on the high level facts that are easy to digest and remember. Don’t turn off an audience with lots of technical detail and jargon.
3. Create a memorable story around key insights or main message for the audience to connect with and buy in to. Otherwise it will all be forgotten as soon as it finishes.
4. Understand the nuances and restrictions of online presentations. There’s different techniques and structure compared to being in the room.
5. Define the desired action(s) the presentation needs to elicit from that particular audience. It shouldn’t be left open to interpretation or it will confuse the audience about what to do with the information.

That’s 5 top tips that, if done right, will increase your team’s effectiveness and help their message stick … and I haven’t even touched on how to improve presentation visuals yet.

If you want to see communication at its finest, here’s the Two Ronnies – Four Candles sketch URL: 2 Ronnie’s Four Candles Sketch

Alternatively, we’ve packaged up all your data people need to know in our “Perfecting Data Presenting” workshop that you can check out here Presenting Masterclass.