066: Dustin Mathews - Presentations That Drive Effective Results
Many business owners have found themselves working on important presentations throughout their careers. However, have you ever worked on one that has fallen flat, or even failed to wow investors or clients? Well, today’s episode breaks down what goes into a successful presentation!
Dustin Mathews is the co-founder of Speaking Empire, a company that helps train aspiring speakers into pros. He is also the author of the No B.S. Guide to Powerful Presentations, which is why he makes for an excellent guest on how to develop inspiring presentations that produce results.
Dustin never wanted to be front-and-center with an audience. He was always a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, and would constantly run from the idea of standing in front of a crowd. One day, he couldn’t run from it any longer and he had to cover for his boss. When he stood up there and spoke, something interesting happened — it was not as bad as it seemed. He’s been hooked ever since.
Dustin ended up doing 3,000 events in a short time frame with his team. Through lots of trial and error, he learned there are five components to an effective presentation: An intro, powerful stories, an offer, the meat of the presentation (the content), and the close.
To expand on each of these five components, the intro is what sets the stage. If you look at the most influential people out there, there are always introduced by somebody else. So, when you’re personally about to do a presentation, have someone, or something, introduce you. One of Dustin’s tips is that he has a video to give him the introduction. This gives his audience an idea of what he’s done in the past.
The 2nd component is the story. Stories need to be in a presentation. You have to be able to tell a before/after story. A story of why your client’s life was awful, what happened when they found/used the product, and how they’re life is now 10X better now.
Now that you’ve told your transformative story, the next step is the offer. This is where you do not make assumptions about the audience. Do not use jargon or expect you’re talking to experts/peers. In your offer, you have to describe why this is a challenge/a real pain for your target audience. When you effectively describe the pain, that’s when you come in with the solution.
This naturally leads you into the fourth component, the meat of the content. Here’s where you offer a three-to-five-step process as to why this product will solve their pain point. Do not give them more than five, as this will overwhelm the audience! Be sure to bring out your client case studies as well, to help convince those who are skeptical about your solution.
The last piece of the presentation is the close. In reality, when you’re trying to close, you don’t wait till the very end. In a room, make sure you get clarification that you’re making sense to your audience. You ask your audience questions throughout the entire presentation to get ‘mini closes’ along the way before you go into your big ask. This is key!
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