Winning The Room

SECTION 1Planning: Reviewing Strategic Fundamentals

Regardless of the audience or topic, there are core strategic principles that underlie any successful, live data‐driven presentation. This section covers fundamental presentation concepts that you should review and account for as you design, develop, and deliver your presentation. Here are some of the concepts discussed in this section:

• Realize that your presentation is at least as important as the work behind it.
• Understand your audience.
• Recognize your responsibility to make your material accessible to the audience.
• Embrace the need to tell a story, not just present facts.
• Be yourself and earn the trust and confidence of your audience.

The tips in this section will support the presentation creation and delivery process that follows. After all, doing a great job with the details discussed in later sections of the book won't make up for having a foundational presentation approach and strategy that is poor.

Tip 1: Results Are Not the Biggest Factor in Success

The most important factor in determining if a given project will succeed or fail in a business environment is not the quality of the results. In an ideal world, that would be the case, but it isn't true in the real world. Using analytics as an example, let's discuss why your presentation is at least as important as the results.

First, let's be clear that producing accurate results is crucially important. Every professional creating any type of analytical output must ...