Presentation Skills That Will Take You to the Top (Collection), 2/e

3. The “So What?” Syndrome: ... and How to Avoid It

How often have you sat in an audience listening to a presentation and said to yourself, “So what?”

If you are like most audience members—or like me, a presentations coach—your response to that question would likely range from “Quite often” to “Too often.” Most presentations fail to address the audience’s point of view. Worse still, most presentations, being all about the presenter, fail to offer benefits. Either failure produces the dreaded “So what?” Syndrome that produces disinterest and, ultimately, disconnect in the audience.

As a coach, I help my clients avoid failure by using “So what?” to a positive end. In coaching sessions with clients, I role-play an audience member: a potential customer ...