3 ways conversational presenting saves time

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that time is precious. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, or what your chosen career track is— the more time to live it all, the better. And when it comes to business, more time means more money. 

Here are the top 3 ways you can make your minutes more memorable with conversational presenting.

1. Ditch the script

For many of us, memorizing material as a student was exhausting. When you’re trying to demonstrate your expertise on a topic, repeatedly reviewing the same information can quickly dull the passion you have for it. Worse, you’re likely to be so dependent on your script that forgetting anything — even something minor — can be enough to throw off your entire performance. Things don’t improve much once you move from the classroom to the boardroom, either. As presenters in a business setting, delivering a memorized script allows far too many opportunities for a negative interaction with your audience, whether it’s forgetting a line, losing track of your place in the story, or simply coming off as some kind of professional cyborg. 

It’s more than a waste to invest the time required to cram your memory with facts and recite the same content over and over again. It’s simpler to have a conversation with your prospects. Conversational presenting is a far more natural approach to sharing information; it relieves pressure on the presenter, is far more engaging for the audience, and won’t require you to run lines before your big moment.

2. Skip the boring stuff

Gone are the days of using filler material in a presentation, such as the dreaded About Me/Us slide. When you have the flexibility to ask a room full prospects what they want to learn about that day, and continue to use their feedback to navigate through the information you have prepared, you’re only ever going to present what’s needed — and what’s most interesting to your audience.

Think back to the last time you visited a website. Chances are you didn’t read every bit of copy on every single page and subpage before you were satisfied. Instead, you selected the points that were relevant to you in that moment, and then you left (most likely with an opinion of what you read, too). This is exactly how conversational presenting works, and for sales and marketing professionals, it can make all the difference. 

3. Start with the a-ha! 

Conversational presenting allows you to get to the key points of your presentation much more quickly than you can with slides. By ditching the script and only presenting on topics that your audience wants to know about, an hour long presentation can easily be reduced to half, or even a quarter of the time it might otherwise take. In the end, you’re qualifying leads and making sales a lot faster, which makes a lot more room for a lot more business.

Presenting conversationally isn’t just about converting your slide deck into a dynamic presentation (though that’s certainly part of it). The way you design your presentation has a major impact, too. Find out how you can become a more effective, engaging presenter with our awesome ebook, Presentation Design 101. Download it today.