About 30% of people see a presentation every day at work. We almost forget the frequency because they are just constantly present in companies, big or small, internal or external. Moreover, they have a big impact on different performance aspects. Companies care a lot about presentations when a high-stake meeting is coming up and contact a professional. But those last-minute emergencies are just a tip of the Impact Iceberg. We’ve listed some of the biggest impacts of presentations on your company and what happens when best practices are used.

1. Securing meetings

The high-stake presentation: client meetings, conferences, investor meetings, etc. presentations are needed in a lot of cases because they can open a window to future business. Creating an effective document is essential… and complicated. First think of a professional, modern-looking design. However, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Focusing on design only, without tackling the foundation of the presentation and its storytelling, won’t get you far. But telling a story, without having the visual, won’t make you excel either. So all of this should be handled with care in order to maximize changes to a successful meeting.

Strong documents will convince clients…
By having all aspects in place to help secure these meetings, and excel from potential others. An effective meeting should become a discussion focused on win-win. Storytelling will help you to connect to your audience and really convince, because it explains in a natural way how you  will transform your client’s life, or even your company’s bottom line to a VP’s. People are very visual, so a professional design will create the overall company look, but should also help tell the story.

2. Overall company productivity

Each workday has about 480 minutes, that’s not that much if you think about it. For a lot of people sitting in meetings takes up a big part of their time and sometimes they just aren’t useful. Imagine a weekly 20min non-efficient meeting, with 5 people wasting their time. Leading to 100min of lost minutes a week or 10 workdays lost a year. In other cases people lose time developing presentations because they can’t delegate to others efficiently or rebuild decks because you didn’t receive right information.

Presentation meets time productivity
By focusing on what you do well and delegating to others. It’s all about giving the needed tools, spreadsheets and templates to better develop together or even train new employees and free up time. Inefficient meetings can be avoided by preparing with strategy: there should be an objective, a to-the-point story and a “what’s in it for you” for all participants.

3. Employees’ skills

Who hasn’t lost a lot of of time creating presentations by adding and deleting slides in PowerPoint? Or getting ready last minute and noticing that you are not able to present all pages because of ongoing discussions? Or people don’t seem to get material or people have told you, your design isn’t doing it.

Teach those rare presentation skills
Seen as essential leadership skills by CEO’s, but still rarely taught. You can start by showing best practices on effective preparation and giving the processes and tools to help them. Ways on how to analyze the meeting in depth like actions required, your audience, discussion time, storytelling, meeting take-aways, etc. But also demystify good design practices because there is a big difference between the Ted Talks apple does vs client meetings vs internal meetings.

In conclusions, little investment with a big return

Effective presentations will have a big impact on successful client meetings, saving time and money by increasing internal productivity and creating future leaders. When thinking on solving some of those issues in your company, stop thinking cost, but think investment. Investment in improving your sales documents, your employees’ training or a productive PowerPoint template. You will increase your chances of immediate success with some changes, but others will equally make a difference in the long haul. Think what your company really needs and how you could improve this by focusing on real solutions with a clear process, strategy and working tools.

At CVC we have chosen to make business presentations our core… or well maybe they chose us. It has become a calling, a passion to transform people’s knowledge and attitude towards them. That’s why we created the CVC Approach, a three-step approach focused on industry’s best practices and which helps create the real results companies want and create an excellent return on investment, whether it’s about training people or helping set up your next sales pitch. Check out our services our contact us with questions on how we can help.