The Compelling Communicator Mastering the Art and Science of Exceptional Presentation Design

Here's the bottom line: I read this book, and then ordered 10 more copies to give to my best friends. It's that powerful, and for anyone in business making any kind of presentation, it's simply essential reading. If you read one business book this year, read this one. This book provides the most clear and compelling path toward presentation excellence I have ever read. It effectively diagnoses why most presentations underwhelm and how presenters can avoid those pitfalls. Pollard breaks his book into two key themes: "Understanding the Skill We Need to Master" and "Mastering Presentation Design." Pollard really nails why most presentations -- especially sales -- fail to impact audiences like presenters hope. PowerPoint silliness, long-windedness, needless repetition, poor (or no) organization or flow -- I've witnessed and cringed during all the major presentation sins. Probably you have too. Here Pollard gets to the key idea of the entire book -- a presentation succeeds when a presenter properly and forcefully land a small number of critical big ideas. Powerfully landing a small number of key ideas (or insights or teaching points) has a number of positive benefits. First, it sends a clear signal that you respect the audience and their time. Second, the presenter must keep the audience -- and its needs and challenges and problems -- at the fore. (Again, which enormously respects the men and women whose precious time and energy you are taking up for your presentation.) Third, to deliver these small number of key insights, the presenter must carefully consider what the critical teaching points are, their logical interactions, and their impact on the audience. The presenter must distill the presentation to its essence -- a far more rigorous intellectual exercise than most presenters attempt in today's business world. Fourth, the presentation can serve as the catalyst for (potentially) enormous action. The benefits of this approach -- and the resulting presentation -- can literally change the fate of people and companies. In the rest of section one, "Understanding the Skill We Need to Master," Pollard dives into some of the science around why a few number of powerful ideas stick with audiences more effectively than, say, "show up and throw up." Done well, such a presentation sticks with humans better because of the way our brain processes, stores, and recalls ideas. And then Pollard outlines what an effective presentation looks like. In section two, "Mastering Presentation Design," he digs into the nuts of bolts of creating a tremendous presentation. He begins with a powerful tool, called the Initial Presentation Profile." I'd never seen such a tool. It's incredibly simple, and using it would have saved me headache and heartache numerous times in my career. Pollard proceeds by examining how a presenter can select the "Right Content," put it in the "Right Sequence," and secure the "Right Engagement" with the audience. Simple, logical framework - and completely overlooked by the vast majority of presenters. Throughout the book, Pollard offers a ton of useful approaches and ideas that fit into his framework and augment presentations enormously: 100 Pennies; audience seniority; driving at audience action; rational and emotional engagement; weak and strong words; practice and rehearsal; handouts vs visuals; and the Pyramid of Planned Outcome. And these topics are not diversions. They fully and directly reinforce Pollard's critical lesson: powerfully land a small number of big ideas. Again, I rarely read a book then go buy 10 more copies for friends. But that action indicates how strongly this book resonated with me and radically altered my own approach to my own presentations (in the residential real estate industry). Pollard has written a masterpiece. Read more

I was curious if this book was worth my precious time and mental effort, particularly because I am not in the world of business, keynote speaking, or of giving presentations or sales pitches. The answer is a resounding, "YES"! In fact I wish that I'd had this book six months ago! I work in the field of education and my mental processes are firmly fixed in the world of practical application. This book has transformed my thinking with regard to communication in all its facets as I approach my job, whether that be giving lessons, interactions with students or parents, or even pitching new ideas or programs to my staff. This book is so infused with practical, useful tips, that it has already impacted my professional and personal life. Tim Pollard has created a work that is smooth in flow, transitions, and cadence; while simultaneously providing rich insights into the structure and design of communication and presentations. His consistent theme of "Powerfully land a small number of big ideas" invoked a paradigm shift in my thinking. The insights he provides in presentation design are then fleshed out in entertaining and powerful illustrations that land perfectly while creating strong connections within the mind of the reader. This is a book that I will easily read multiple times and will be reused and revisited with frequency as I prepare future lessons, meetings with parents, and even when I pitch ideas to my spouse (shhh don't tell). Word of warning: you won't be able to sit through mind-numbing powerpoint presentations that you've always known were a waste of time, but that you can now intellectually eviscerate based on poor presentation design. In other words you will have even less patience with poor presenters- as this book will make YOU "The Compelling Communicator". Read more

I read this book in an afternoon, immediately rewrote a presentation I gave the next day—and won the follow-up meeting before I'd gotten halfway through! This book offers a path to present a clear, thoughtfully articulated message -- in a way that actually connects with the presentation's attendees. Why? Because this book shows it's not about how well you speak, it's about how you speak, about what you say -- from the perspective of how people listen, see and learn. Not how you cram stuff into PowerPoint and cover 60 minutes of slides in 20 minutes. PowerPoint turns so many business presentations -- be they sales or general business -- into a thin gruel of content that still manages to take far too long to digest. Here's our company: we're big and important. Next here are our products: there are so many and we can customize in so many ways that you're bound to find something useful. After that bulleted list after bulleted list. In other words, it's all about the speaker and not about the listener. Throw everything in there about your company and product and hope something sticks. In contrast, Pollard uses the metaphor of the carbon atom -- a nucleus with six electrons -- as a model for crafting effective presentations. And at the nucleus is what so many presentations ignore: the audience's problem (which the presenter will solve). How many presentations have you suffered through that miss this simple point? But without it, a presentation is really nothing more than "corporate tourism:" a parade of fun facts and "nice to knows," in page after page of bullet points. It turns out that when it comes to your audience less is more: focus on an important problem you can solve for your audience, then...focus like a laser on that alone. Simplify, defoliate, tell an actual story and engage the "whole person" of your audience member. Buy this book and devour it. You will see immediate improvement -- as I found out, your audience will thank you! Read more