Essential
Sales Systems

Funnel
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Performance & Response Metrics

Customer Relationship Management

Customer
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Script
Management

Sales Force
Management

Channel management

Presenters face many challenges. One of the most significant is that the target audience are usually jaded because they have already attended far too many presentations. 

A random selection of executives were questioned on what they remembered from several presentations they had attended recently. They could only remembered isolated chunks of information - and in many cases the information was not related to the key points of the presentations.

The first issue
Suppose you can present several slides full of facts and figures. Surely all that information will convince your audience? In fact the research suggests it won’t  – it will do the opposite.

Scientists who have worked on knowledge retention uncovered a significant issue. They found that people forget what they’ve learned extremely quickly, so quickly, in fact, that most of it is gone before they’ve made any decision about it.

The second issue
Another group of researchers established a second issue. All that carefully prepared detail that you squeezed into your slides? They found that most audiences won’t be able to absorb that level of detail - and it’ll just confuse them.

Less is more
The more detail you use the less likely it is that anything will stick. The reason is that people can only process small amounts of information at one time. If they can hold on to seven chunks of information they're doing well. (You can put all the information in a handout and distributed it after the presentation.)

Summary
So, to recap, decision makers are never going to absorb all the information you give them. Most of it will pass them by and what little they do absorb will be forgotten before they can act on it. So it's no wonder that the presentation failure rate is as high as it is.

All this is bad news for the traditional presentation but it's good news if you know what works because then you have an advantage over the competition.

Coming up: The three principles of effective presentations