How do you feel when the speaker dumps too much information?
Overwhelmed, bored and annoyed? Blah, blah, blah.
That’s how I feel and that’s how your audience can feel when you simply dump data on them.
This is an easy mistake to make because you want to be helpful. You want to give them everything you have. Guess what? They don’t want everything you have.
They want enough information to make an informed decision.
Or perhaps you’re concerned that if you don’t tell them everything, they’ll believe that you don’t know everything. And you want to impress them with your research and how much you know.
The audience doesn’t want to know everything about your research and what you know. They simply want to know that you know. And they only want what is most relevant to them now.
They want key information – not all the information.
What can you do to present the key information in a way that it is welcomed, understood and appreciated?
First, do your research to understand what is most important to them now.
What decisions are they grappling with? What are their mindsets? What key questions might they have?
Those questions might include Why? What? How? When? How much?
Organize your information to address those questions. Then prioritize the data in terms of what is most relevant to them now.
How do you present that information?
Use this key phrase.
Notice the power of that phrase. When you state that phrase you demonstrate that you have organized and prioritized the information for the benefit of your audience. Their first response is one of relief, (only three).
They can easily listen to three and remember three. They are more likely to perk up and listen to three key points. Imagine how they would feel if you said, “There are 28 steps in our process and I’ll walk you through all of them.”? Yuck.
When you say “The top three…” that also conveys that there are more, and you know them. You indicate that you won’t bother them with more unless they ask.
Must it be three? Not necessarily.
What if you want to highlight the top four or five? You can do that if appropriate Three simply works better most of the time. Of course, one key issue also works.
The number one issue is for the speaker to say less while prioritizing the information for the ease of the audience understanding.
When presenting information. It’s always vital to present the relevance.
Here are some phrases
When presenting formation, present the most important data along with the relevance.
The reason I tell you that is because your audience is impatient.
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