If you haven't yet picked a topic for your presentation, you need to do so now. Do what I asked a moment ago and figure out what's the one thing you want your audience to do. But now we got to figure out what's going to motivate your audience to do that. So it's time to brainstorm on message boards on ideas that you could put in your presentation. By the way, I'm going to use terms in this course. presentation, speech, talk, briefing.
It's really all the same. It's anytime you're talking to someone. And it's not just oh, great game on TV last night. It's not just social chitchat, you're presenting about something of some importance that relates to business, personal professional life. So don't get caught up in Oh, I don't give speeches, but I do give presentations. All of us speak.
All of us present. All of us talk And that's what this is about. So I need you to brainstorm on message points that will motivate your audience to do what you want. This is a really hard thing for most people, because all they can think about is, here's everything I know you need to look at it from the perspective of what is your audience feel like they need to know what's in it for them, what's going to motivate them. The big problem, too many speakers have too many presenters have is all they do is brainstorm on message points, they write them all down. Worst case scenario, they typed them up, put them on PowerPoint slides.
And next thing you know, you've got 89 slides, and there's 52 bullet points on each one. So all they did was brainstorm on message points. They didn't narrow it, they didn't refine it, which you've got to do right now relatively quickly is brainstorm on every possible message you could have in this presentation, but then you get to narrow it down to just five. You heard me mentioned it earlier mentioned again, I test audiences all over the world. Nobody ever remembers more than a handful of ideas from often the best speaker they've ever seen. So you know, going into it if you have 10 or 15 or 20 ideas, they're not going to remember why start off a presentation knowing you're going to fail.
If you can get people to remember two or three ideas, you're probably going to be one of the best speakers that audience has seen in a long time. If you can get them to remember a handful you will be the best. So this is the first thing you need to focus on. After you've determined your goal from your presentation. It's not what color font for your slide deck. It's not what suit or dress to wear.
Not is it better to speak at eight in the morning or before launch or all these things people want to waste time on, when it comes to helping them with their presentation skills. Those things really don't matter very much. Not nearly as much as Do you have good messages for your audience. If it's something that's just a part of your marketing documents that you always say, because you'll always say it, leave it out. Don't include that in your presentation. If it's something that is historically significant, but isn't of interest to your audience, or leave it out.
If it's something you find fascinating and no one else does, or leave it out. If it's dry and cold and boring, either leave it out or figure out a way of making it a lot more interesting. You've got to make sure you have some messages that have an emotional connection to your audience. You've got to make sure have messages that are understandable to them. So much of good speaking, and good presentation skills has nothing to do with the quality of your voice. Whether you walk around the stage gracefully or not, or whether you repeat someone.
Yes, Jim. Good point. Jim. I'm glad you asked that. That can be cheesy. So much of your ultimate success when it comes to presentations is to just do your job of being a better editor and looking at every possible message you could narrowing it down to just a handful.
Mark Twain once said a lot of other famous writers have been given credit for this as well. I'm sorry, I wrote you a long letter. I didn't have time to write you a short letter. The message obviously, it's easy to just give people all the data, all the messages, all the stuff, it's actually much harder. To write a short letter to narrow your messages down to a handful, so that's what I want you to do. Now, I'm not going to ask you to say it out loud or even post it in the q&a section, but I would like you to write down on a single sheet of paper or a single computer screen however you like to process information.
Five ideas, don't worry about making it pretty. Don't worry about it flowing or connecting or the introductory sentence. just isolate your five ideas right now.