Get. To. The. Point.

I recently saw a presentation from an accountancy firm. Here are some of the ‘highlights’:

1. It had 24 slides
2. It was titled “Credentials Presentation”
3. Slide #2 listed lots of numbers about the business – date of formation, number of partners, etc
4. Slide #3 was a map of their offices
5. Slide #4 listed all their services …
6. … there was lots more detail, and then …
7. Slide #24 concluded “and that’s why we can save you £20million”

Or, another way to describe it:

1. Slides #1-#23 = boring
2. Slide #24 = fascinating

But the problem with putting your best point on the final slide – building-up to your best point – is that people have switched-off long before you get there.

Even worse: people tend to remember more of the first things they see/hear. So people hearing this presentation are more likely to remember the year the firm was founded, and not that they could save £20million!

So, a simple way to transform all this – in just a few seconds – would have been for them to copy/paste the final slide’s wording to the front slide. They could have re-titled the presentation “How we can save you £20million”

Start like that, and no-one is thinking “but how many partners have you got?”

We see this – people getting to the interesting bit at the end – lots of times with communication:

1. Emails’ first 2-3 paragraphs that don’t say anything
2. Meetings’ first ten minutes being a waste of time
3. Long paragraphs, whose most interesting point is in the final line (which is a problem, because people tend to skimread the top 1-2 lines, and then jump to the next paragraph!)
4. Case studies which start with boring background (nobody cares) and end with the amazing results your client got (everyone cares)

This happens because:

1. We communicate in the order that we think; and
2. We think by building up to our points
3. Which means our final conclusion comes at the end of things – bottom of paragraphs, bottom of slides, the last section of a document, the last slide of a presentation, etc.

But – for audiences – this does NOT work.

Instead, they want us to get to the point. As early as possible.

So, we need to re-think the order. We need to put our best points first.

It is straightforward to do:

1. Either – before you start your communication – identify your most important point. And put it at the start
2. Or create your communication in the normal way – and then review it, to find your best bits. Then copy/paste these best bits so they appear in prominent places – page 1, headings, etc.

I could have called this Tip “Accountancy Presentation”. But you might not have opened that.

First Impressions count. How epic are yours?

Action Point

Next communication, get to the point – early! Put your most persuasive, interesting point at the start. Win them then, and you’ve got them. Lose them then, and you’ll never get them back …