Preparing an effective presentation

At various points throughout a project, you will likely be required to deliver a presentation to team members, key stakeholders, senior leaders, or customers. Use the following tips and best practices to help you prepare an effective presentation.

Preparation 

Get clear on your goals and the purpose of your presentation.

Be clear and specific about what you want to get out of the meeting, then frame the discussion with that goal in mind. For instance, “We need two engineers who have worked in this industry before,” instead of “We need more resources.” 

Seek input and set expectations.

Ask your manager or check with stakeholders regarding your presentation goals. Get their input and feedback ahead of time.

• If you were invited to present, make sure you understand in advance exactly what the requestor is hoping to gain from your presentation.

Create a delivery plan.

Identify a headline for each slide, which is the one-sentence main point that you are trying to illustrate with that slide.

• Create a couple of supporting points that add interest to the headline, such as anecdotes, charts, data, etc.

• Build in signposts. These are ways to clue the audience in to where you are going and what to expect with your presentation.

• Limit the number of slides in the main presentation. At the same time, consider creating backup slides for potential challenges, difficult questions, trade-offs, or alternative solutions. You can hide these backup slides at the end of your presentation if you don’t need them, or add them into your presentation if you do.

Be mindful of your audience’s time.

Invite only participants who need to be there.

• Send the presentation ahead of time, if possible.

Develop a strategy for making your presentation memorable.

Use stories and repeat key points. 

• Start with a strong intro. Spend extra prep time on the beginning. The beginning is when your nerves are typically the highest, and delivering the introduction successfully can help you quickly gain confidence.

Practice

Guide your audience through your presentation.

Help them notice what you notice, and transition between slides by using phrases like “Building on this point . . .” or “As I mentioned before . . .”

Do a mock presentation with your team.

If there will be more than one presenter, coordinate what each person will cover and how you will manage handoffs.

• Practice a question-and-answer (Q&A) session, anticipating the kinds of questions your participants might ask so you are prepared with a quick and confident response. In addition, practice what you will say if you are asked a question that you don’t know the answer to.

• Be prepared to run the whole meeting yourself. If a co-presenter fails to show up, are you prepared to step in?

Schedule time to practice.

• Once you’ve outlined what you want to say, practice it—ideally in front of a mirror—or record yourself. This may help you identify awkward phrasing that could be improved and other issues.

Be prepared for surprises.

Show that you can adapt and that you know your subject matter. 

• If time runs short, can you quickly summarize the key points?

• Can you pivot the content according to what is most important to your audience?

Presentation and pace

Get right to the point.

Identify what problem you are solving and state it up front.

• Tell the audience why you are in the room with them and what you will be covering.

• Lay down the ground rules. For example, how do you want to handle questions and comments? Will you take them throughout your presentation or afterwards?

Check your pace.

Be mindful of clues from your audience and adjust accordingly.

Follow up

• If appropriate, send a follow up email with summary notes, action items, and time frames.

• Debrief with your manager or key audience members on what they heard from the presentation.  Ask them what went well and what could have gone better.

• Review next steps.

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Business Framework no. 3: Marketing - Product Life Cycle

An overview of the framework, every Framework contains:

• The purpose of the framework,
• A brief overview of the outline,
• Case example - to illustrate the use of a frame in the real world
• Conclusion - take-out key

 

The product life cycle is a four stage process that products or services offered by organisations go through, namely, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. It is used as a tool to identify the current life cycle stage of a product, forecast future sales and plan new strategies suitable for a particular stage.

Stage 1 Introduction: 

At this stage, the product sales are low as potential customers are unaware of the product. Hence, there is major focus towards product awareness and generating trials through huge investments in marketing campaigns and advertisements.

Stage 2 Growth: 

Based on positive outcomes from the introductory stage, the product moves to the growth stage. At this stage, product sales increase due to growing demand. As the demand grows, the product production and its availability increases.

Stage 3 Maturity: At this stage, the product production and marketing cost decline. The product sales are the highest in comparison to the previous stages, however, they are flattened in nature. Hence, there is a need to rebrand and reposition these products.

Stage 4 Decline: At this stage, the product witnesses low sales due to stiff competition from similar products offered either at a low price or with certain improvements. Hence, in order to sustain in the market, products can be differentiated or can be replaced by another one.

Sample Example:

In Spite of the emergence of digital cameras, Kodak neglected to change as per the market situation and decided to continue with the film roll business. As the popularity of digital cameras grew, people stopped using film rolls as they were no longer required. As the products did not go through any changes based on the market changes, the film roll business declined.

Let’s understand the journey of Kodak’s film role business:

Stage 1 Introduction: Kodak’s film roll business started in the 1980s. Huge investments were made to develop the film roll and to create awareness about it through advertisements. However, the product sales were low.

Stage 2 Growth: The advertisements that took place during the introductory stage, helped in building trust in customers' minds for the film roll. Further investments were made to promote film roles with an aim to increase its sales.

Stage 3 Maturity: The emergence of the digital cameras led to a decrease in use of film roles, thereby leading to decrease in its sales. An incorrect strategy was chosen to not make any changes to the core product. However, in this scenario, other product avenues could be looked at to make decisions to sell which product to the customers.

Stage 4 Decline: Customers moved to digital cameras and stopped using film roles. No initiatives took place to differentiate or replace the film roles, which led to the end of the film role business. However, in this scenario, had other product avenues been analysed, decisions on selling the right product to the customer to satisfy their needs would have been made. This could have also led to a case of selling mobile phones with cameras in place of film roles.

Conclusion

Based on the market scenario, companies need to change their marketing strategies and their product to stay relevant in the market.

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Business Framework no. 2: Marketing - Perceptual Mapping

An overview of the framework, every Framework contains:

• The purpose of the framework,
• A brief overview of the outline,
• Case example - to illustrate the use of a frame in the real world
• Conclusion - take-out key

A Perceptual map is a tool used to identify a customer’s opinion about a product or service, in order to analyze product conditions in the market and identify potential market gaps translated into a business opportunity. Competitive market analysis can be based on both or additional features which may be quantity or quality in nature.

Case example:

Ab Inbev, the world's largest brewery, is well-known for its brewery. However, that has always been the case has seen a decline in India's income due to fierce competition. To analyze and reduce situation, Ab Inbev decided to use a Perceptual map.

• Ab Inbev conducted market research to understand customer preferences and what he could do they found that the Indian market prefers the taste of heavy beer.
• With this market research and map competitors, you find that it is small competition in the heavy and premium category
• Based on the map effect, it has decided to introduce a type of heavy beer: Budweiser Premium and Budweiser Magnum.

Conclusion:

Businesses can use the Perceptual map to test themselves on customer feedback competition and staying relevant in the market by isolating ourselves from competitors.

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Business Framework no. 1: Marketing - STP Framework

 

An overview of the framework, every Framework contains:

• The purpose of the framework,
• A brief overview of the outline,
• Case example - to illustrate the use of a frame in the real world
• Conclusion - take-out key

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STP Framework: The STP model (Separation, Identification, Position) will help you choose and get closer parts of multiple customers. It is a method used to find the right part of the customer, create and refine marketing strategies, and invest in effective marketing resources.

Separation: One product cannot meet the needs of an individual. So, it is important identify different types of clients and divide them into responsive 'segments' in the same way about marketing activities, to help them successfully with the right product. Divisions can be made on the basis of many factors such as location, behavior, etc.

Identification: Identification of posts, ‘targeted’ parts of companies can provide. Identifying is the process of selecting the right customer component based on it attraction, influence, and company resources. Many segments can directed at a given time.

Position: Position is the process of developing a vision in the mind of the target section about a product or service. This step took place to attract attention a specific component of a product or service, which may lead to a purchase decision.

Case Example:

Daniel & Co. they produce a soap of beauty and fragrance. The company uses essential oils, flower components and small amounts of cleaning chemicals. Due to the intense competition for established soap brand, the company loses money due to low sales.

To make sure it delivers the right product, in the right category, in the right way, decided to use the STP framework.

Separation: In conducting further research, focusing on a variety of factors, the book of Daniel & Co. divide its market into the following categories-

• Young Adults (40%) - College students who like to try new, fashionable, economical products.
• Middle Ages (40%) - Active people who taste the best, natural products.
• The Oldest and Most Wise (20%) - People in leadership positions who use luxury products.

Identification: Daniel & Co. tagged part of the 'Middle Ages' as the company's current products

fits well in this section. Additionally, the section is attractive because it is large in size.

Position: Daniel & Co. put themselves in the right place to sell premium eco-friendly soaps.

Conclusion:

Companies categorize the needs of the customers and the services available. Their target part

they can change over time, therefore, they need to change their marketing strategies continuously.

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Introduction to False Positive and False Negative

Classification algorithms predict the future outcome of specific events using existing data.

But are these predictions accurate?

How can we determine the accuracy of these predictable models?

Customers churn / customer retention refers to the loss of customers over a period of time. Separation algorithms, such as retrieval items can help a business predict whether a customer will stay or not.

But the results of such algorithms are never completely accurate, and they have some degree of uncertainty / potential attached to them.

Business conditions with only two effects are known as binary conditions.

For example, whether the customer will renew their subscription at the end of the year, or if the customer will respond positively to the marketing campaign.

Such situations can be easily portrayed as a 4x4 matrix, with each result labeled as follows:

True and negative real cells represent the accuracy of speculative models used to determine future conditions.

The values ​​in these cells show that the effect is exactly the same as predicted by the retrieval model, and can help us determine the reliability of the model.

The results of the false cells and the false cells show the opposite effects of the predictions made by the prediction model.

Any situation with binary results will always have the potential to have negative and negative positive consequences. According to the business application, the business leader must determine whether it is acceptable to have more false than false or vice versa.

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Customer Lifetime Value

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The company needs to determine the level at which it should acquire new customers. A good business plan focuses on having multiple jobs from one customer. When a company loses a customer, it not only loses its existing revenue but also has to find a new customer.

The total amount of money received from a customer over a period of time is known as the lifetime value of the customer.

In order to understand which customers produce the most profit, we need to understand the 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto goal. Rule 80-20 states that 80% of profits are generated by 20% of customers. Therefore, it is important to identify these customers and keep them, as losing them can lead to huge losses for the company.

Data from such customers is invaluable to the company, as illustrated by the Sports Authority, which was funded and later acquired by Dick's Sporting Goods in 2016. At this discovery, the Sports Authority customer list is estimated at $ 15 million. . The value of this list was based on the lifetime value of the customer who will convert to Dick's Sporting Goods upon receipt.

Such purchases are common in business, where the larger company gets smaller to move customers to their destination.

Customer lifetime value is a function of these elements:

1. Annual customer sales (or annual customer revenue)

• Refers to the expected revenue from a customer
• ACS = Expected number of transactions x Average transaction size

2. Customer Retention Rate (RR)

• Refers to the probability of retaining customers each year

3. Sales Margins (M)

• Refers to the total profit out of the yearly revenue
• Margin = Revenue - Costs

4. Discount Rate (DR)

• Refers to the rate at which the present value of the future revenue is calculated
• Value of money received in the future is less than the value of money received now
• Since the customer lifetime value is the present value of expected future revenues, we multiply the entire term with the discount rate to obtain the present value of the money that will be received at a certain date in the future.

5. The sigma (Σ) symbol in this formula represents the addition of the value of a customer across multiple years.

• Theoretically, the number of years can go until infinity.
• Practically, we calculate the customer lifetime value for three to five years.
• The net present value of the customer relationship decreases every year.

These values, when used in the formula for CLTV, give us the customer lifetime value for all the customers whose sales are being considered under ACS.

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Recency, Frequency and Monetary Model

Customers can be segmented into high, medium and low with respect to their recency, frequency and monetary value.
 

• Recency: Refers to the latest customer and product interactions

  • It is tracked by tracking the date of the last purchase made by the customer

  • Recency is dependent on the product category

    • Not compatible with slow-moving categories, for example, cars and white electricity

    • The recency is very important in the FMCG industry as people buy these products regularly

  • A customer who has not been in contact with a product in the last 6 months or so is considered a sleeping customer

• Frequency: Refers to the value of customer-product interaction at any given time

  • It is tracked by counting the number of different tasks per customer in a given time

• Monetary: Refers to the amount of money a customer spends on product and product services

  • The sum of the total of all debts during the customer's time varies with the value of the customer 's cash.

There are three categories (recency, frequency and monetary) and each category is further divided into high, medium and low level.

Thus, customers can be divided into twenty-seven categories, based on the recency, visit frequency and their amount of money.

 

Through these stages, a business can understand the following questions:

1. Who are the best customers?

2. Which customers have been around for a long time?

3. Which customers have the highest value for money and should be kept?

4. Which customer segments have the lowest cost and should be ignored in future marketing campaigns?

RFM model, which allows us to understand different customer categories based on recency , frequency, and price values.

Each of the three phases (RFM) is further subdivided into upper, middle, and lower extremities, giving us a total of 27 phases. 

 

RFM allows us to understand which customers are most important to the business and which ones contribute the least to the business mindset. This knowledge allows us to develop strategies to keep customers of high value satisfied.

RFM is widely used in the fast-moving consumer goods industry and e-commerce. It allows managers responsible for product success to monitor their customer usage patterns using the latest lens, frequency and price values.

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Are Personal Interviews way more Personal?

 

So, you are all set to face your first round of the interview? Your excitement level is at Peak, you've prepared yourself for all possible questions an interviewer can ask you. The final day comes, you enter the Room, you see a panel sitting in Front. You're a bit nervous but confident also that you have done work in your Professional life, so nothing can stop you.

Questionnaire begins, Panel starts with your family background, they ask you about your childhood then your life in school, colleges and at Home or when you are out may be at restaurant. 

You don't feel anything awkward because this is the way you have accepted already in your mind that this is the actual structure of this or any Interview. If you will raise any objection, then you may offend the Panel which could lead to rejection. You keep answering about your personal life and hope, that Panel will soon switch to something Professional questionnaire.

But, guess what? you have just shared everything personal about your Life with people who are not close to unknown. Its just they are wearing a company lanyard, it makes no difference though. They know things about you now. This feeling gets worse, when you hear that you have not been selected. But, did you think for a minute what would happen with the information you shared with the Panel. Is it safe? Can they use it in some other way? 

If you feel relaxed about this, then, why you become so nervous when all this happens on social media platforms? The plus side of social media is they use those information for users good. Say, you like a cuisine you see on social media. Now, social media will try to share as much information as possible about that cuisine in the coming days, so you can make a better decision about it. Knowledge is the new currency today, those who don't have it, they are doomed. Anyways, lets go back to our Personal interviews.

If you don't want to feel cheated after your Personal interview rounds, then learn to say STOP where you feel, it's not relevant to Job you are applying for. Or, you may also ask the Panel, how This Question will help them gauge what they are looking for? But, from next time, please don't just open your Life Book in front of strangers for just a Job.

Recruitment agencies have to learn new ways to check the capabilities of the applicants. Past life can never tell everything about the Future. May be an AI can help, but AI is not taking the Interview, Yet !

Are leaders doing their Job right?

Are you frustrated from your Job? Has this idea started growing in your subconscious mind that, your current Job is not attractive to you anymore? Do you wait for your week off more? Do you get easily fed up from the work you do at Job?

Not just these few reasons but , there are many more which are the signs telling you, you should start looking for other workplace where your Hardwork, Honesty, Creative thinking or your Work ethics will be valued more. At least, somewhere they will listen your Voice. First and the most important Announcement for you, "You're not alone, everything will be alright. You're on right Track to build your astonishing career. Congratulations !"

Second thing is, don't blame yourself even a little bit. All this is not your fault. You're a victim of a play played by people who came to your Life unknowingly and changed you from within. You got emotional and they moved on/ahead of you by being practical. Self criticism is what we do when something like this starts to happen. I'll not tell you go out, dress well, eat good, meet people, changing scenery will not change the Mindset. These do help but not while you're at same toxic place. You have to get out of the bottle first to fly afterwards.

This all starts when there is a change in Approach with new Leadership. Leadership is a word which has been abused for so long. Who is this Leadership exactly? In the end they are human like anybody else. Its just a position they are given which is above than rest of the employees. But, calling them leader just because they have that position is abusing this master Skill, 'Leadership'. Leadership takes time to gain trust of their people First. Then comes achieving targets. But, today, its all about numbers and meeting targets within deadline. If anybody comes in between or becomes a reason for delay, sack them or give them unnecessary work place tension so they can quit later at some point.

Companies hire new employees so they can bring unique perspective with them. This is changed by the Leadership who are there already to change them and make them like old employees. Leaders not giving room to grow to employees. They are all busy impressing their Boss with fake commitments. The flaw in companies growth is not whether they are selling the Good item to Customers but its in the internal departments. Companies do all sort of analysis but forget to do a deep check on the leadership people 'regularly'. Owners and Founders should check if the Leadership they hired a long time back, are they still functioning same? Are they learning anything new with Time? How are they coping up with the Young mind around? Are they giving employee enough space and room to think and bring ideas on table? Are they treating employees well?

"Once Hired, forget for Life" thing needs to change. People at high positions should be audited regularly, feedback should be taken anonymously from the direct reports. If found guilty, actions should be equally harsh as well.

Companies hire consultancies to improve their processes but we can stop letting this thing becoming a problem in the first place itself. Solution is, Check "How" people at High positions doing their Job. Founders and owners, shouldn't only see if they are delivering the results or not. Once, this aspect is set in place by Founders or owners of the company, they can create a fantastic work place for everyone in it. And, we all know, what wonders can happen when employees are happy with their Jobs, right?