Don't lose your audience attention in Technical Presentations

Most technical presentations lose people in the first 15 seconds. In this episode, JP Warren breaks down the two moments that matter most — your hook and your bookend — and why leading with tasks and data (instead of meaning) is what makes audiences check out. Includes a simple challenge to sharpen your next presentation before you deliver it.

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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, and straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to a new lead with confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. And I have been on a little personal time, a little hiatus, taking some much-needed vacation with friends and family. So apologies for the gap in these episodes. Now, I am actually resurfacing right now. I just finished a free course for students and interns that's called Launch with Confidence. If you're interested about how to launch your career with confidence when it covers elevator pitch, building out your network, navigating career fairs, things like that, head over to connectioncrew.com and you can download that, download that course for free and you get a certificate at the end. So that's an added bonus. And it's only less than two hours. So I highly recommend you take that if you need a launch with confidence. Launch your career with confidence. Now, today I am talking about something that's actually is kind of related to a real world example. I recently got asked to train a group of interns on delivering their end of summer presentations. This is something that pertains to a lot of people out there. And this hopefully is a wake-up call for those out there. If you do have a presentation, whether it's a pitch in front of potential customers, or you have the opportunity to speak at a large industry conference, how to not sh to shut your audience down, how to keep the conversation going after you deliver your technical presentation. Because I have seen this through and through throughout my career. If you're not connecting with your target audience, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. And a lot of people lose their audience within the first 15 seconds. And so today we're talking about how to have a technical conversation that sticks. In today's episode, we're talking about starting off and ending a technical conversation, what works and how you got to frame that up. And then the future episodes, we're going to kind of dive in more of the story side of it. But I want you to understand something real quick. This is something I talked about with the interns with the technical presentations you're giving don't have to suck. It might be very technical in nature, but there's a way to start the conversation and there's a way to end the conversation where you come across where people want to engage with you versus people kind of dismiss, check their phones, use the restroom, grab a snack, close their eyes, get a little nap in the room. So we're going to be talking about how you start off your presentation and how you end your presentation. All right. A lot of times you got to think about this. A lot of, I'm going to take the interns, for example. A lot of times when I ask the interns to go up there and kind of talk about what they did or, you know, what the project was all about, they often list, and I see this again, I see it's a professional settings. They start listing the tasks. We did this, resulted in this. We did this, resulted in that. That is not a story. That is kind of a task list. That's like your resume as an elevator pitch. You're not going to list the features, you're not going to list the items, you're not going to talk about the tasks you did because nobody really cares. You have to make people care about what you're actually talking about. All right. And the whole what we did, what was the result, that's that's not thorough. I mean, maybe to you that's important because that's, you know, you're in the weeds with it. But a lot of times we need to put ourselves in the audience's shoes. What does the audience want to hear from us? Do they want to hear kind of a laundry list of tasks that we did and the results were found? No, you have to somehow get their attention right off the bat, showcase that your presentation is something worth listening to, something worth putting your phone down, getting on the end of your seat, and leaning into. And how do you do that? Well, you got 15 seconds to in the first in the beginning of your presentation to do that. So let's talk about kind of how to do that. And a lot of times, listen, people think, listen, it might be great data, it might be great this, but data does not tell the story. Data supports your story, but does not tell the story. So we're gonna talk about how to start your presentation, we're gonna talk about how to close your presentation, because these two are probably the most important things in a presentation. If you nail these, the rest, meet in the middle. That's what's gonna keep people going. So let's talk about getting that perfect bread for your presentation, okay? We talked in this in this intern seminar workshop that I did, we talked about kind of starting off the presentation. People come up, then introduce themselves. Today we're gonna talk about this, today we're gonna talk about that. You know, we did this and all that stuff. You're gonna lose your audience in the first, again, 15 seconds. So you gotta think about this. Whether you're scrolling Instagram or TikTok or anything like that, there might be really good information in those reels. There might be really good pertinent information that may change your life. But if they're not capturing your attention with the first four seconds of that uh reel, you're gonna keep scrolling, you're gonna keep swiping. Let's get people tuning into you, all right? So the first thing you have to do is open up with that hook. Open up with the meaning. What did you actually do? What did you actually accomplish? What risk was actually avoided? What money or what money or resource was actually saved? Open up with something that's gonna perk people's ears up, okay? What did it prevent? All right, what did it save? What did it, what did it advance throughout maybe your industry, okay? And then you got to ask yourself this. This is how you kind of got to prep the that the opening hook. If you wanted your audience to walk away with one sentence, all right, with one sentence that they remember from your presentation, what would that be? Right? It wouldn't be, well, we built a spreadsheet or we built this Excel spreadsheet. It wouldn't be anything like that. It would be we saved on average $40,000. We found $40,000 per month at the comp that our company was wasting. We don't want that to happen to you. Let's dive into this. So again, you're not listing your task. You're listing that end result. The one sentence they want to remember, your name and tie that to. Okay. Now, data, a lot of people will lead with data, but data follows the point. It does not replace a lot of, you know, a lot of people argue. I mean, you think about this when it comes to politics and all that stuff. Let's let's pour out our hearts for that. But then people counteract that with data, right? That doesn't actually really sway people. You have to lead with a story, lead with the emotion, lead with the risk, lead with what the money was saved and all that stuff versus the data behind the curtain. Okay. So think about whenever you are getting up there, write down your hook. Okay. Write down what do you want this group of people to walk away, to walk out that room and remember. Is it, wow, JP built an Excel spreadsheet? No, it's JP identified $40,000 that the company was leaving on the table every month. That's you want people to keep the conversation going with you. You don't want to kind of give your presentation. Next thing you know, people walk out, kind of dis, you know, not connected and you want people to walk out thinking, I need to connect with that person. I want to learn how that person did this. Okay. So let's talk about the bookend. This is the end hook, okay? This is the closing side of your presentation, okay? Your hook and your clothes really kind of the only two things your audience is gonna walk away with remembering. So they both need to have as just as much importance as your your your the meat in the middle of the buns, all right? Your meat in the middle of the uh the bread. So the hook is you're so what? Why are you here? What what are we all in the room for? And your clothes just kind of reinforces it, okay? So everything in the middle that you're talking about is evidence. And again, I strongly encourage you, maybe the next episode we're gonna talk about is we're not gonna list the tasks, okay? We're not gonna list we did this, we did this, we did this with this result. Okay, so we're gonna talk about kind of how to create the story from technical information, but for right now, we're talking about the hook and closing out your presentation, okay? So write down the hook. What do you want them to take home and talk to their boss about? What do you want to take home and them to talk to their team about? Hey, I saw this really interesting person uh that gave a presentation that's that on average saved companies $40,000 a month that maybe we didn't see. Let's bring that person in and keep the conversation going. All right. So write that down word for word, and I strongly encourage you to practice this. A lot of people take the first five minutes of a presentation, kind of warm up, kind of get in the groove, and then they start flowing. When I say start flowing, I've been in a lot of these conferences. It's when I say start, it's really just them listing their tasks and providing percentages and data and efficiencies behind it, but that really still kind of tunes me out. But write down your hook. Ask your team, hey, does this sound good? Does this keep you engaged? And get some honest feedback about that. If you get your hook down, that's gonna be much more powerful than if you get up there and just kind of warm up and then getting your presentation. All right, even with your bookend. Have your bookend solid and reinforce that hook so people are walking away remembering what you actually talked about or what risks you actually did, or what money that you actually saved your the companies that you're working with. Okay. So whenever we're talking about this, you want to lead with attention, lead with the uh with the risk or lead with the result, okay? Give them a reason to lean in and at the end, just reinforce that. Have that be a little reminder of what you did out there, okay? So the challenge I have for you is if you do have a presentation coming up, if you do have a demo or a luncheon learner or something like that, write down your hook, write down your bookend, ask your team about this, ask your manager, maybe even ask your friends in your circles, hey, how does this sound? Would this be something that interests you? And get try to get some honest feedback. Push back a little bit, ask for constructive criticism, all right? So I ask you, nail, don't lose your audience's attention, get them involved, get them hooked in by actually studying and practicing your hook because you get up there and wing it, people are gonna know that, people are gonna get on the phones or walk out the room. I don't want that to happen to you, okay? So write it word for word, practice it, make it come across genuine, and remember there is power in your voice, in the tone and the pitch and cadence that you use. So utilize the silence, utilize enunciating and using the tone and pitch of your voice to really dial people in. All right. So lead with the meaning, lead with the meaning, back it up with data, and you'll be the person in the room everyone actually remembers. And your goal is to keep the conversation going. Your goal is to have the conversation after the presentation. It's not to spill everything during the presentation, it's to intrigue people. You have enough confidence and confidence that they actually want to engage with you after the presentation you deliver. So good luck out there. Get your hook down, get your clothes down there, clothes her down there, not your clothes, get your hook, get your clothes, get out there and crush it. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.