Key Points
In any presentation you will be making some key points. These are the primary factors that ideally sway or convince your audience to agree to your ‘Call to Action’ (the purpose of the presentation), in other words, what you want them to do now that they’ve listened to your presentation. Your key points should be easy to distinguish and remembered. Here’s some tips to help you in doing just that:
1) Try to contain your key points to three. Three is the magic number in presentations and although there are exceptions you would do well to bear the rule of three in mind. If you tell your audience that you have 7 key reasons they should do as you say – I think they’ll ‘turn off’ immediately.
2) State your three key points three times. We remember most things if we hear them three time. In a presentation you should:
(A) Introduce the key points. Perhaps something like:
“In today’s presentation I will be covering Point 1 (plus 1 sentence description of the point), Point 2 (plus 1 sentence description of the point) and finally Point 3 (plus the 1 sentence description of the point)”.
(B) Talk to each point separately (obviously the biggest segment of your presentation). Please let your audience know when you are leaving one key point and moving onto the next. I.e..
“That brings me on to my second point…” etc.
(C) Restate the three key points in the summary. Perhaps the likes of:
“In summary, I’ve covered three points. Point 1 (plus 3 sentence description of the point), Point 2 (plus 3 sentence description of the point) and finally Point 3 (plus the 3 sentence description of the point)”.
3) Keep your key points succinct. We find it easier to remember short, sharp and succinct points. Well I do anyway.