FT Essential Guide to Making Business Presentations

2

Why presentations fail

In this chapter

• The story behind the failure of space shuttle Columbia
• One-minute checklist of presentation essentials
• Common misconceptions
• Dirty Dozen reasons for failure

Here are three startling research findings:

1. Eighty per cent of business presentations fail.
2. A survey of CEOs in Florida revealed that over 71 per cent of them admitted to dropping off during business presentations.
3. A Practical Training for Professionals (PTP) survey revealed that 75 per cent of UK managers find business presentations boring.

In my own experience of working with business people on their presentations since 1994, at least 80 per cent of them were somewhere between poor and embarrassingly bad.

The actual percentages are not important. ...