(24-hour sale) Yesterday's presentation today!

If only this was possible (sigh). Let me start by saying this if you wish to set yourself up for failure you should leave your presentation until the last minute. If you wish to succeed and put your best foot forward you should not be leaving your presentation until 24-hours before your sales pitch, presentation or keynote. You should be planning your presentation well in advance.

Working in a presentation design agency we see the art of procrastination at its best. Clients reach out to us with 24 hours’ notice and plead that we help them with their presentation and believe me, we wish we could. We are in business to do business, however, we want to deliver real value to our customers and nurture longer-term relationships and we have learned this cannot be done last minute.

So let us look at the time that should be spent on crafting a presentation that can be delivered with impact and influence and hopefully end up with you closing the deal.

Nancy Duarte recommends a presenter spend 90 hours creating an hour long presentation with 30 slides. That was not a typo, yes 90 hours. I hear you, we are busy people we don't have that kind of time. But if you want to deliver a truly impactful presentation you can be sure you are probably not putting in enough time. One-third of that time is spent building slides. Another third is rehearsing, but the first third is spent collecting ideas, organizing ideas, and sketching the story.

Many of our clients come to us without spending enough time on firstly understanding what message they want to get across, what story will they tell to deliver this message and the flow in which they should deliver it. This leaves us with the challenging task of delivering a presentation with little direction or understanding of the message that is trying to be conveyed. On top of all that, creativity takes time. Designers need time to decipher the story and then turn it into a rich engaging story.

Even if we can deliver a presentation to our customers with such short notice this generally does not give the presenter enough time to practice delivering their presentation and redefine it. With that said presentations for most of us are a big deal, they are an opportunity to showcase our products, our work and our personality. Plan your presentation well in advanced bearing in mind a 1-hour presentation can take up to 90 hours of preparation. If you put in the right amount of time thinking, sketching and scripting we can help you deliver a presentation that communicates your story effectively.

Below is some work from our clients:

If you need support with your presentation please feel free to visit www.audiencealive.com

Conor Hyland