Stop Presenting Data. Start Telling the Story Behind it.

Why Your Technical Presentation Isn't Landing — And the 4-Part Fix

Ever sat through a technical presentation that felt more like a task list than a story? In this episode of Launch with Confidence, JP Warren breaks down why most technical presentations lose their audience — and the simple, four-part framework that fixes it.

You'll learn the Story Arc: Context, Stakes, Action, and Result — a structure that turns a data dump into a presentation that actually persuades people to keep the conversation going, whether you're in a lunch and learn, a product demo, or a packed conference room.

In this episode:

Why listing your tasks makes you sound less professional, not more

The one thing you must establish before your audience will care about your data

How to "story arc check" your own slides before you present

Why fewer words on your slides makes for a stronger presentation

This week's challenge: map your next presentation using the four-part framework

Your data isn't the story — it just supports it. Tune in to learn how to make people lean in instead of check their phones.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Lee with Confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. Today we're going to dive in on how to make a technical pray it technical pre a technical presentation actually land with your audience. A lot of times people think a technical presentation is just a report. It's just kind of a process on what you did, but that's not really the case. A technical presentation persuades your audience to actually engage in conversation with you, to want to do business with you. And I don't want to see you have the opportunity, whether it's a lunch and learn, whether it's a product demo, or whether it's a large industry conference, to lose your opportunity to further the conversation. So let's dive into actually what makes a good technical presentation stick with your audience. And that is using a four-part framework called the story arc. All right. Most present presenters also, this is something also, a lot of people have the result at the end of the presentation, right? It's just like watching a reel on TikTok or Instagram. There might be some really good information. There might be some life-changing information for you, but if it's at the end of the reel or the end of the presentation, you're going to lose your audience the entire time before. And honestly, they might not even stick around to listen to the finding, the result, or the conclusion of your presentation. The last episode, we talked about how to engage your audience with a hook and also a bookend to the close of your presentation. Now we're going to talk about actually how to fill in this, how to turn your data into a good story. Your data is not the story, it just supports the story, okay? All right. And lit and a lot of times I just got done with an intern uh workshop about this. We we talked about delivering a technical presentation, all that stuff. And a lot of times people feel that, well, if I list my task, it'll make me sound like a professional. No, it won't. If you're not engaging what matters most, the problem that you set out to solve or the risk that you're trying to avoid, you're gonna lose your audience. Okay, so let's do a four-part story arc framework on how to deliver a presentation that actually resonates with your audience. The first part is this set the context, set the stage. What are you doing there in the first place? What is the common industry challenge? What is the challenge that your customers are keeping up at night? Why are they banging their head against the wall? So set the context first. That is a great, just like a Walt Disney book, once upon a time in a far, far in an enchanted kingdom, and all that, set the context, okay? You are there to solve a problem. The problem is what is keeping your industry up at night, okay? The second thing you need to do is name the risk, okay? What is the risk of doing everything status quo? What is the risk of continuing business without changing anything? That is the second part of the story arc framework. And the third part is the action. This is where you come into the picture. This is what you did. This is actually your approach. Why did you approach this challenge? What are you actually trying to solve? Why did you actually come to the table to start kind of uh getting into whatever you're trying to do? All right. And the fourth part is your result, okay? This is what changed. This is your findings. And if you can quantify this with a number, uh, that's great. Whether it's a dollar saved, whether it's a percent of efficiencies, or some other tangible method of what was changed at the end. So the first part, again, remember that's your context. You're setting the stage, you're getting people dialed in. This is why we're all here today to tackle this industry problem. And the and the second part is putting down the stakes. You know, what happens if we kind of go business as usual? We don't change anything. Are we gonna be stuck here uh with the same problem, same challenges the next decade, two decades down the road? No, not us. This is what we came to this is what we came in to do. This is our approach. This is how we kind of solve this problem. And in the end, this is the result that we found. This is the efficiencies that we that we saved. This is the money that we took off the table. This is what we did. And if you quantify that with numbers, that is a great thing you can do. Again, it's real simple. Context. Stakes. What was the action that you took? And what was the result at the end? All right. And remember this: your stakes come before data, okay? Nobody really cares about the result or the findings until you identify the risks or the tensions uh that were set up in front, okay? Once you set out the challenges and the common industry risks and all that stuff, people will lean into that a lot more. And then you quantify that with your results, okay? And we talked about this in the last episode. You have to name the risks early. You start naming the risks early, people are gonna just be much more inclined to get on the edge of their seats, put their phone down and listen to you and dial in, all right? Stakes create the reason to listen, but data is just the proof, okay? Now, the story arc check. Next time you have a presentation coming up, all right, read your slides out loud. Okay, and I often say this. Oftentimes people like overloading their slides with a lot of words, a lot of tasks that they do, the processes that we have and all stuff. That just disconnects your audience. I like taking a minimalist approach, kind of like think of like an Apple launch, right? What they do, if you ever look at their launch and their presentations, they have few words on the slides. Why? Because people can people get disconnected if they start reading the slides too much, right? You just need the slides there as sort of a safety blanket or as a soundboard in case you get lost. You have to know the story and not the slides, okay? Because the people are there to listen to you. And at the end of the day, if you can email your slides out to everyone, why even get up there and talk, right? So you have your presentation, start reading the slides. Does it read like the story? Are you telling the context? Are you telling the risk? Are you saying how you got involved? And at the end, what was that result? Try it out. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but you start playing with it, you start trying it out and start rehearsing it, it's just gonna get a lot better each time you uh get up there and actually give a presentation, okay? And if it sounds like a task list, like, hey, we did this, and this is the result, we did this, this is the result, we did this, this is the result, then that's not the story arc, okay? It needs to sound like a story, it needs to sound engaging. What would a classroom of fifth graders take away from your presentation? If you can speak on a fifth grade level to your audience, it's much more consumable. You're not having people figure out what you're trying to there, what you're what you're there to actually try to solve. Uh, who what are we talking about in the first place? So think about your audience like a fifth grade class. And if you can tell the context, you can tell the risk of, hey, here's the risk of not doing anything. Here's the risk of not addressing this problem. This is why we came in. We actually came in and we solved the problem by taking this approach, and here's the result of our findings. That is a much more enticing, engaging conversation than if you get up there and just kind of list your task, and then you just kind of give uh the the percentage improvement or the money saved or the efficiencies that you found. That is not really an engaging presentation, okay? So add some stakes, add some risks to your story. Hey, if nothing changed, this is the danger. If nothing changed, this is where the missed opportunities are, okay? So now your weekly challenge is this: take any technical update, presentation, product demo, it doesn't matter. Take anything that you're about to actually give in front of an audience and map out these four parts. See if it's a fits in the context, see it fits in the stakes, see if it fits in the action, and see if it fits in the results. Share it with your team, get some feedback, ask your spouse, ask other people around you is this makes sense? Does this make sense to you? Is it clear what we did? Is it clear the stakes that we were trying to solve and what the result is? All right. So I ask you, don't disconnect your audience by just listening tasks and feature dumping, because that has people check their phone, that has people tune out, walk out, walk out of the room. Start off by practicing the story arc. And even if it's like, even if it's something basic like ordering pizza for your team or something like that, see if you can kind of play in your mind the story arc. Start playing with it in your day-to-day lives. Once you start tying it to your day-to-day lives and start just like telling, utilizing this the four-part story arc and random things uh throughout your life, throughout your day, it's gonna be a lot easier to come to the table and actually tell that story. And sometimes you have to take a step back and actually look at this from your audience's point of view, saying, Do I want to listen to this? What are the stakes here? Why does this affect me as a customer? A lot of times as a business owner, as a founder, or someone that works in the weeds, we always get granular, right, with what we do. We always get granular with kind of the process that we did, or, you know, this is kind of what we're doing and all that stuff. Pull back from that. That is a further conversation down the road. Your goal for a technical presentation is not to kind of show, you know, pull back the curtain and showcase your the inner mechanics of your company. Your goal is to showcase why we should be working with you or what you're there to change. And hey, after this presentation, I want to talk to that person. I actually want to further this conversation with that person. So that's it with a four-part story walk on lead with confidence. Get out there, don't bore your audience to death and have some fun out there. And again, practice this, okay? You may not have it the first run, but that's why you need a team around you. That's why you need to soundboard uh with other people that will give you honest feedback, okay? Give that context, give the risk, give the action that you took and that result. And if you can quantify that result with a number, that's just gonna stand a lot higher. And then at the end, you hey, you reinforce the hook. You reinforce the risk with the result. All right, so good luck out there. Don't bore your audience to death. And thanks for tuning in. Lead with confidence. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.