The art of conversational presenting: Two-way dialogues

- When you present your quarterly digital marketing update to the CMO, you can't tell her everything you know. It will just take too long. Besides, you have maybe 20 minutes with her and you want to be presenting for a maximum of five to eight minutes and then listening or being in conversation for the rest of the time. But you do need to be prepared to talk about or present any part of it when asked. How can we build a presentation that allows you to give the important information, but also enables a tailored discussion that are addresses their interest and concerns directly? Let's take a look at how you can use conversational presenting to have a genuine two-way conversation with your CMO. The idea with conversational presenting is that we create a flexible presentation where we can navigate to any part of it easily and quickly, and then present. It has everything in it that we might need to present, but then we let the conversation decide in real time what it is we actually present. To do this, we need to give it a pyramid structure that encourages clarity as well as a logical flow on how the meeting might go. Remember what we said earlier about not burying the lead. Well, at the top of the pyramid, we start with our main message. We want to bring surprise and engagement at the outset. We give our most important information, our North Star message. This helps us to set a clear direction for the conversation that follows. The middle layer of the pyramid, we present our three key messages, our main arguments or supporting statements as to why the North Star message is correct. In this case, we'll give the three ideas for how we can secure an additional $1 million in revenue. This logical flow makes it easier for the audience to follow along and engage in the conversation. It also helps us distill the information into clear, concise points. This clarity is crucial in conversational presenting, where the goal is to create understanding and conversation without overwhelming the audience with too much information at once. At the bottom of the pyramid, we want to have evidence and proof for each of our three key messages in the form of data or research or results from pilot tests. The focus here is to build trust and minimize the risk in the mind of the CMO. This way of structuring the presentation, maps to the three filters of revenue, risk and cost and will make it easier for you to use the presentation to have a conversation with a CMO and ask or answer any questions that might come up. Okay, when we are actually in the meeting, we will only present first two sections, our North Star message and our three key ideas or arguments. Then we want to get into a conversation. You want to be asking for directions. Your CMO may want to dig deeper into one or more of the ideas to understand it better or to check if there is risk or not. This way, you can navigate to the content she asks about and present more. For example, after giving the North Star message, you might ask, "Given the significant potential for ROI improvement, "what are your initial thoughts "on exploring these strategies to protect "and enhance our revenue next year?" Or when talking through the three main ideas, you might ask questions like, "How do you feel about leveraging, "customer-generated content more aggressively?" Or "Are there any aspects of these strategies "that you are particularly excited about or skeptical of?" Conversational presenting transforms your quarterly update into a dynamic conversation with the CMO, making sure that your most important insights are shared succinctly with the room for deeper exploration based on her interests. This is a powerful way to help you be seen as a trusted advisor and to get your ideas for campaigns approved.