The # 1 Way to Organize and Remember Your Presentation

Every presentation you deliver needs to be built around your premise, central theme, or big idea.

Your next step is to organize your “chunks” of content in a way that they are easy for you and your audience can remember your message.

The first chunking example: Explanation, Example, Application

Once you introduce your point of wisdom, add a needed explanation, an example of how your idea would apply, and then the application for this audience.

Example: Point of Wisdom

“Our goal as a presenter is to speak to be remembered and repeated. This often means going against what is commonly used. For example, use time as a set-up phrase.”

An explanation:

When you talk about a unit of time, as in “today,” “in this seminar,” “our last fiscal year,” your comments will be more memorable if you go against common practice and put them at the beginning of a sentence. If you are speaking to be remembered the “set-up phrase” is always at the beginning of your sentence to put what follows into context.

An example:

If we turned on CNN, you would hear a phrase put together traditionally. and it would sound like this: “Bill Gates delivered a speech on practical ways to eliminate disease at Yale University yesterday.”

When you use the Fripp “Time as a set-up phrase,” formula it sounds like this: “Yesterday at Yale University, Bill Gates delivered a speech on practical ways to eliminate disease.”

Follow the model of When, Where, Who, What Happened.

What happened goes at the end of your statement. The set-up phrase puts everything else into context. What Bill Gates discussed is more important to remember than yesterday or the day before or Yale or Harvard.

The application:

This goes against what your English teacher taught you. Try this formula in your emails and your next few conversations or reports or presentations.  I promise you will have higher retention if you consistently practice this “time as set-up” technique.

How often have you heard, “You will be learning audience involvement techniques today”? Try, “In the next 4 hours, you will be learning audience involvement techniques.”

You see how we added time at the beginning and specifics, four hours, for the session length. Today really is 24 hours!

The second chunking example: Past, Present, Future

You might take a historical view of your content.

Most yearly sales meetings use this formula.

“Welcome to the January sales conference.

As you reflect on our rich three-year sales results,

congratulations! Your efforts are paying off.

Last year you produced five times more sales than we predicted.

It is appropriate to celebrate your success. After our celebrations, however, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent.

The sales goals for this year are . . .”

The third chunking example: Different Demographics

It would not be unusual for you to have an audience mix of various disciplines, divisions of a company, or professionals from different companies or industries.

In that case, you need to make sure that the content of your talking points includes how your audience mix relates to your content. For example, from the point of view of HR, Payroll, and IT.

Here is an example:

“As we introduce our new payroll system, you can feel confident that it will make your workload easier.

For our payroll professionals, you will spend less time answering our employees’ frequent questions.

For our friends in HR, you will be able to stay more compliant with less time invested.

For our IT heroes, thank you for your work on this project. As you worked long hours to make this happen on time and under budget, you will all receive two extra vacation days with pay. Let us all congratulate them!”

Another corporate example is a “mixed audience makeup” of local, national, and international distributors or resellers.

 Here is an example:

“As we introduce our new product line, we have taken into consideration the economic environment in each of your areas.

For our local resellers, we have developed a marketing strategy that . . .

For our national resellers, we researched the differences in each state and . . .

For our international resellers, until now a smaller percentage of market share, you will be excited to know we have doubled the market budgeting and hired a seasoned marketing agency in each country.

Here is a personal story example that could be part of the local, regional, international chunk.

“When my father first opened our business, he sold to his friends and neighbors in the same town.  He was excited at the progress, and his family did not need for anything. My brother and I grew up knowing we would take over the business. Twenty years ago, when Dad finally took my mother on the world cruise that he had promised for 30 years, I became president.

Within three years, because of the Internet, we expanded the business nationally. Ten years later my daughter graduated from Stanford with a business degree and a fluency in Spanish and French.As a university exchange student, my nephew studied in Japan and became fluent in Japanese. If my dad were here, he would tell you, “Yes, entrepreneurs, you can expand Internationally. How? By raising smart children who have even smarter children!”

Thank you for the opportunity to tell how we built our business, what we have learned, and why it will be easier for you. Let us roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Remember, to connect with your audience, it is important to make sure that every segment of the audience is recognized.

If you would like Patricia Fripp to help you improve your presentations. Let us have a conversation.

“I wanted a super bowl quality coach. Patricia Fripp’s help in coaching and scripting was world-class. With Fripp on your team, you can go places.” Don Yaeger,  Long-Time Associate Editor for Sports Illustrated magazine, Eleven Time New York Times Best-Selling Author

“As the author of a best-selling sales book the best investment in my speaking career was to hire speech coach Patricia Fripp. She is the master at helping structure and script your presentation.” Andy Paul, Author, Zero Time Selling
“Every year, my appreciation for you grows stronger! With great enthusiasm and reliability, you have proven yourself to be an integral part of our annual conference and a favorite among our members. Thank you so much for being an important part of our success! My most gracious thanks.” Dan Maddux, Executive Director, American Payroll Association
“When we hired Patricia Fripp to improve our sales conversations and presentations, my expectations were high. Patricia Fripp’s customized approach before, during, and after with her FrippVT online learning has resulted in more and larger sales. Patricia’s ability to excite, inform, and coach our team was impressive.” Scott Hamilton, Vice President of Sales, Distech Controls