Nearly every business team leader has experienced it at one time or another. You have just 15 minutes to make a presentation to upper management about an initiative your feel deeply about. You work hard to prepare the perfect presentation, only to met by the executives with stony silence after you are through. What happened?
My work over the past decade with change leaders has allowed me to hear some great tips for making successful presentations to senior management. I have also seen the flip side with more than one flop. I went straight to the source and asked leaders in both public and private industry what they wanted to see from their mid level managers when hearing presentations.
Too much information in a proposal for monetary or other support is one mistake made by many team leaders, agreed the executives. A lot of proposals they hear fail because the executives don't have time or interest to digest every nuance of the proposed project. It is not necessary for most senior managers to understand every task involved in the proposed initiative. And the executives agreed that in most cases, minor decisions can be left to the team, leaving senior management out of the day-to-day.
Here are three proven strategies to have a presentation to senior management that will limit the presentation to the most important details.
1. Use visual aids such as PowerPoint to give a summary of your main goals and objectives
A PowerPoint deck is a great briefing tool because it requires you to summarize your points into brief bullets. Keep your points at a high level and mentally prepare stories, anecdotes, and illustrations to bring depth to the words on the page. Plan to spend no more than 3 minutes per page during your pitch. Bring backup information with you, but pull it out only in response to questions about the details.
2. Group your main activities, goals, or steps into "buckets" or categories.
In a presentation I witnessed recently, the team leader included every detail of the tasks his team intended for 2009. While he had hoped to strengthen his case with a lot of details, it really just irritated the executives instead. One senior manager even spoke up and told the presenter that they had no interested in hearing what activities the team intended to undertake. The only thing important to them was the key highlights.
I find it helpful to group goals or activities into categories. For example, you might say that in 2009, your team will focus on cutting costs, streamlining processes, and developing bench strength. You could then list examples of goals in each of the three categories. This helps the executive team quickly focus on the strategic impact of your team's work and enables them to weigh in on whether they believe these are the right areas of emphasis.
3. Summarize in a few words what you would like senior management to provide to move your initiative forward.
A good deal of proposal presentations are merely informational. The team leader will give an update on the progress of the project and then asks the executives if there are any further questions. Their hope with this approach is that the executive team will be so impressed that they offer funding and support to the project without being asked, which is rarely the case.
A better approach is to end the presentation with a visual that describes what you are looking to senior management to support. Perhaps this will be a financial commitment, a key decision only they can make, or additional resources to complete the project. True, there is always the possibility that what you ask for will be denied, it is a much better situation to understand right away if what you need to be successful is a possibility.
In the 1990s a team of external consultants worked with General Electric to develop a change acceleration process. The team came up with a four-step formula for effective elevator speeches:
* Our project or initiative is about. .. * It is critical to the company because. .. * What this means for you is. .. . * Here's how you can help. . .
This approach will work both in informal individual conversations with senior management staff as well as in your formal group presentations. And, as you become more proficient at answering those four key questions, your ability to get your proposals approve will increase.
Streamlining your sales presentations so that they are short and to the point, you will be much more successful at communicating your goals and not your tasks. Being very specific and clear about what you need will help senior management to know right away what you are proposing, what you would like from them to help you succeed, and, most important, how it will positively impact the entire organization.
More Information:
Wendy Mack is an experienced advisor, trainer, and author with a focus in leading and communicating change. Contact Wendy at, or obtain her free e-book, Transforming Anxiety into Energy at
www.WendyMack.com.
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