How much does presentation failure cost your organisation?

This may come as a shock to some people: Virtually everybody performing presentations to an audience needs to improve in some way. And the potential lost revenue from not improving can be staggering.

Consider the following:

How much does a Pitch Cost to a client in your organisation? (PC)

The Number of pitches performed by your team in a week? (N)

What is the percentage Success Rate of those pitches? (SR)

Now consider your losses per week:

Lost Pitch Cost/week = PC x N x (100-SR)

This does not include the value of the contract lost to a competitor

Finally ask yourself this question:

If an organisation has a pitch conversion rate in the region of 65 - 75% a 10% increase in that conversion rate could be worth tens of thousands or millions to the organisation.  The cost of training staff to improve their presentation ability then becomes insignificant to the benefit available.

"How much would you invest to optimise presenting performance?" 

In the scenario above, as little as 1% of the potential gain could be enough and that as we say appears a 'no brainer'.

 Below are five tips to consider when organising training for colleagues in an organisation.

1. Individuals

Assess the staff members in any organisation as individuals. Do not treat them as equals, any training course should be bespoke to cater for individual needs.  Sending a colleague on a course for self confidence when they are already confident is not going to reap a high reward. Therefore pick and choose wisely the course that best matches the individual.  If you are unsure then get an expert in to assess presentations either by viewing in person or through video analysis.

2. Presentation

Consider the presentations that are currently used at your pitches.  Do they meet presentation rules? Are graphs too complex? Are people looking out of the slide rather than into the slide? So many presentations rely on the concept of bullet points. These are then used as the script for a presenter. Breaking away from this format of presentation is essential for any presenter.  Again if you are unsure about the quality of a presentation and specific rules then ask a professional, they will guide you through this process.

3. Perception

Training should not be perceived as negative.  Continual Professional Development (CPD) is an important feature of any successful organisation.  Perception by staff should be one of involvement and wanting to improve.  With the right training, staff will develop skills that may have being beyond yours and their expectations. The confidence generated and knowing they can compete in key areas can only filter through to an increased pitch rate.

4. Measure

Training staff is all well and good but remember to have a measure in place that allows you to easily quantify the improvement against cost. Economic and market forces would need to be considered within the equation so a simple increase in pitch success may not be sufficiently tight enough. Consider though the number of pitches generated by pre sales presentations, the cost of generating a pitch (time and materials), advertising coincidence and spin off publicity.

5. Coaching

Already mentioned in the introduction is that virtually everyone can benefit from presentation training, the level of training is the key factor.  Even the best presenters maintain a level of coaching which allows them to maintain a high level of CPD.  This coaching can be through direct meetings or via video analysis. Remember bad habits can easily manifest themselves over a period of time. A regular 'check up' will negate this possibility.

To summarise virtually everyone can benefit from presentation training, the hard part is admitting it and being honest to yourself. Once that initial step is taken there will be no looking back and your presentation style, technique and ability will grow with each successful presentation.

Consider

1. Individuals

2. Presentation

3. Perception

4. Measure

5. Coaching

The first step can be in buying a copy of The Presenter's Handbook, followed by a selection of courses from the 60 modules we have available which offer a truly customised course for your CPD.

ISBN 978-0-9571909-0-0