How to be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate!

5.2. BRAINSTORMING AND DEVELOPING A THEME

This is where you get to play James Carville or Mary Matalin, depending on your politics. You know exactly what you want to communicate—for illustration purposes, we'll pretend that they desperately want to know if you are awesome—and now it's time to pave a clear road to the logical conclusion that because of X, Y, and Z, you are exactly that. We have to use our heads here, because there is a distinct difference in whether the audience wants to know why you are awesome and if you are awesome. Why suggests that while they suspect you are awesome, they want quantitative evidence for this assertion—you run the 100m dash in such and such time, your hair smells like coconut and roses, you yodeled in Switzerland for P.E. credits in college, and so on. If, on the other hand, suggests that they have doubts about your awesomeness—they saw a YouTube video of you dancing at a bar several weeks ago and now seriously question whether you are capable of coaching their pre-K dance team.

Brainstorming must be a comprehensive process wherein nuance is the name of the game: We're trying to find a balanced, effective message for a specific demographic and a specific objective. Convincing the board you're the guy who can cut distribution costs by 33 percent requires an understanding of what matters most to a board member; convincing the hardworking folks down in the warehouse to work more efficiently, cap salary increases, and eliminate unnecessary positions ...