How to Develop an Effective Presentation Narrative – and Why it’s Important.

Are you wondering why a strong narrative is so important in a presentation – and how you can develop your own?

In today’s market, no business can afford to squander face time with a customer by not being clear and succinct about what they do and the value they deliver. This is why interactive presentation software and sales enablement tools are so important as they help you to create more focused presentations.So whether you’re looking to create a presentation for a face-to-face sales meeting, virtual sales pitch or a touchscreen at an event or customer sales centre, read on to find out more about the importance of a strong presentation narrative.

Citrix’s interactive sales tool is easy and intuitive to navigate, allowing their sales teams to meet the ever-growing needs of their broad customer base with tailored and consistent sales materials.

Do my presentations need a narrative structure?

If your presentations aren’t getting the traction you need, it could be for a number of reasons.

• Your presentations might be too generic and not relevant to your customers
• Your messaging may not be clear
• You’re not personalising your message to the audience
• Maybe it doesn’t help customers make sense of their own requirements and guide them in making a more informed buying decision

Whatever the reason, it’s never a good feeling when your presentations are letting the side down – and narrative plays an essential role in developing customer-centric interactive presentations that resonate with and engage your audience. Without it, they tend to switch off and lose track or never quite understand why you’re relevant to them.

Yet, people tend to overlook the narrative and can forget that at the end of the day, there is a customer who is going to be sitting through your presentation and has a requirement that needs a resolution. Walking in with a generic deck and presenting in a linear style – skipping slides or moving back and forth without a clear narrative – can confuse your audience and disrupt engagement.

That’s why we’re going to explain more about the importance of a good narrative below, as well as giving you some helpful tips on how to develop yours.

“Our new sales tool has made life so much easier. The tool allows me to access and browse all the sales materials I need in one place so that I can easily show, or send them to my customers and colleagues. The app is easy to navigate, looks really professional and allows me to deliver sales material in an effective way.”

Katie Bell, Senior Territory Manager, Coloplast

What makes presentation narrative so important?

What makes narrative presentation so important?

The narrative is the heart of any good presentation. Without a clear narrative, there is no story for your audience to understand and latch onto. This means your audience will have to work hard to try and figure out what is being said, where your presentation is going, what you need them to do and think and why you’re the right partner for them. It makes it hard for them to recall your key messages and retell your story to other decision-makers.

With the wealth of information out there you need to help customers make sense of all this information so they can make more informed buying decisions, narrative is key to persuading them.

A narrative means you’re telling them a story with a clear, simple and logical flow. You’re conveying to them an idea and telling it in a compelling, engaging and meaningful way that builds towards a clear action point for them. It grabs your audience’s attention and, ultimately, gives them a deeper understanding of your products or services.

Without a narrative, all you have is confusion. There’s no story for your audience to understand, and you’re left talking at them – instead of having a meaningful and mutually beneficial conversation.

“Your job is no longer to convince customers to buy, but rather, to help them buy”

Forrester

Remember: a presentation is all about getting your audience to take the action you need them to take – such as adopting an idea, moving to the next stage of their buying process etc. – therefore you must have a clear narrative argument that lays down why they should do what you want them to do. This is central to the whole idea of narrative.

How to develop a good presentation narrative

1. Action

First things first, in order to develop the best narrative for your presentation, you have to establish the action you need your audience to take afterwards. This is essentially the main idea in narrative writing.

Don’t underestimate this step.

Your entire presentation should be based on moving your audience to take the action you need them to take. It must be specific, clear, achievable and fit with their processes. For instance, every company will have a buying process and stages they need to go through with a new partner, so make sure your presentation clearly recognises this and don’t jump the gun. It’s rare that any deal will be signed off the back of a presentation so think carefully what can be achieved in your presentation to move the customer one step closer to signing a deal with you.

2. It’s all about your customers

Now you have to align this with your customer’s position:

• The problems they’re trying to solve, their challenges and goals
• Look at their job roles, the market they’re in, and the current trends impacting their sector
• What is it about your products or services that they need?
• How do these things affect them in their everyday life?
• What opportunities or insights can you bring to them when you partner? 
• How will you mitigate any risk in them adopting your solutions?

You need to put yourself into your customer’s shoes and critically review what you will be presenting to them. And, ask yourself the most important question “So what?”. If you apply “So What?” to one of your value propositions and you can’t succinctly answer that question then you need to look more closely at your proposition.

Once you’ve taken everything above into account, these points can be brought together as a content map or storyboard, the first step to building the narrative and your presentation. This phase is about laying out your argument and proof points in a logical order. You could use sticky notes, each note or slide should represent a message or key thought or proof point. Don’t cram everything into one page give your argument room to breathe.

Now, there will be a number of ways you can build your presentation narrative, you may have ideas for different starting points e.g., do you start with the about us section, industry trends or customer problems? 

There isn’t really a right answer. It very much depends on the customer, their knowledge of you, their challenges and where they are in the buying process. A big advantage of interactive presentations is that you can have different routes into the content you don’t need to start at the same point each time.

At POPcomms, we go through these exact steps with all our customers.

Tip: For more advice, check out our video guide: ‘How to Tell a Persuasive B2B Story With Your Presentations’.

Advice on developing a presentation narrative

If you’re looking to develop an effective and compelling narrative for your own presentation, we’d recommend you carefully consider the points above. We find that working through the above with our customers has quite a dramatic effect on how they approach important presentations and meetings and really helps them to refine their proposition and messaging.

There’s nothing to stop you from following this approach yourself, however, you may feel more comfortable engaging with an outside resource – even if it’s just to get a different bit of perspective which can be crucial in sense checking your proposition.

As an example of the process, one of our customers, Isotrak, had lots of old sales presentations with no consistent narrative or message and a focus very much on the product. So, we held a workshop to go through the presentations and talk in-depth about their customers. From here, we created the content map which went a long way in helping them to focus on their key messages and proposition.

We then created a storyboard which enabled the entire sales team to review and practice the presentation to ensure the narrative and messages were spot on; at this stage, they were all focused on the content and narrative, without having to worry about the final design. You can see the final result in a more detailed case study.

What narrative writing tells us

Narratives are fundamentally a written construct, but we don’t expect you to become Shakespeare overnight. However, it’s worth looking at some of the different elements used in narration, and how they can contribute to the narrative structure of your presentation.

Structure

Above all else, stories need a beginning, middle and end. This highlights the importance of an introduction, main body and conclusion in your presentation.

In your introduction, you can set the scene for your audience with regard to their real-world pain points and challenges. This will engage them before you move towards a resolution with guidance on how you can help. Finally, you can conclude by bringing it back to your audience, providing insights on how you can help them specifically.

Rising action and falling action

These two terms dig a little deeper into the art of storytelling. Rising action refers to everything that happens before a story’s climax. Falling action is everything after the climax, moving towards a resolution.

In a presentation, you want the climax to be your solution. Great storytellers use rising action to build up to the climax. Here, we’re talking about really engaging with your audience. Not just describing their challenges, but really painting a picture and empathizing. 

As for falling, you want to focus on the resolution after you’ve mentioned your brand. You can use real-world examples, animations, and more to illustrate the features and benefits of your solution.

Characters

Characters are another key part of any narrative structure. You don’t have to present your audience as the damsel in distress or yourself as a knight in shining armor. However, as the narrator of the story, there are some tricks you can use to present yourself more objectively.

Rather than coming across solely as a salesperson, you can position yourself as someone who’s there to support your audience. A lot of this is down to your choice of words.

While you might want to stress how your solutions can help them, for example, don’t use “we” too much. This can turn your story back into a sales pitch. Instead, focus on what the main characters (your audience) can do to overcome their challenges.

Develop an effective presentation narrative to hook your customers 

By now, you should have a good idea of where to start when developing a customer-centric narrative. You can follow the advice above to create your own narrative, or work with a presentation consultancy for expert guidance. It’s completely up to you.

If you do decide to work with a presentation consultancy, they should be able to show you previous examples of their work, along with offering you some free, impartial advice and guidance – so you can make the right choice for your business.

Need help crafting a compelling presentation narrative? Discover how interactive touchscreen presentations can transform your storytelling. Get in touch today on +44 (0)117 329 1712 or hello@popcomms.com or book a demo. We’d love to hear from you.