The 5-Point Plan for Convincing

Whenever you deliver a business presentation, your purpose will be to inform, to convince or to persuade. The purpose of your presentation will determine the way you organize your information so that your audience follows you effortlessly to your conclusion.

Informational presentations are organized according to the needs of your audience. You follow their priorities. Generally, this is easy because no matter how you organize it, the information itself does not change.

Persuasive presentations are more difficult because you’re trying to motivate your audience to take action. Before you can persuade, however, you have to know how to convince. So, let’s take a look at one way you can organize your information to be more convincing.

The structure we’ll discuss here is similar to what you used to write in your laboratory reports for chemistry class. These were organized according to what we call The Five-Point Plan. Let’s re-examine that structure now and see how you can use it to help you make more convincing recommendations in your business presentations.

Point One: Begin with an introduction. This will provide your audience with the background information they need. At the very least, your introduction should include your topic and your purpose – in other words, what you are presenting about and what you want to recommend.

Point Two: Explain your procedure. Tell your audience the step-by-step process you used to obtain your findings. This is very useful when you are speaking with a group of technical people; but remember, managers are often more interested in what you’ve got that in how you got there, so when you’re presenting to management, don’t dwell on the procedure.

Point Three: Show your findings. In a business presentation, this is best done graphically with photos, data tables, and charts. Keep your graphics simple, however, so that your most important findings are highlighted.

Point Four: Draw some conclusions. Tell your audience what your data means. Explain the relationships in your data that led you to your recommendations. Highlight your key conclusions so that your audience won’t have to do this on their own.

Point Five: Make your recommendations. Link your conclusions to your recommendations by saying, “As a result of these conclusions, what I would like to recommend is…”, and then explain.

By this time, if your findings and conclusions are in order, your audience should be convinced that what you have to recommend is worth following.