How often are you able to recall the persuasive writing techniques you learned at school? While it may seem like a distant memory, the techniques you studied back in the day can significantly enhance your business presentations and help you engage your audience. Many of these time-tested techniques revolve around understanding your audience’s emotions and leveraging them to create a compelling narrative.

So, if you’re struggling to craft a persuasive and emotive presentation, it might be time to call in the experts. Presentation companies specialise in creating narratives that inform and persuade audiences, using proven techniques to hold attention and inspire action. This article explores how you can enhance your next business presentation and engage your audience.

Emotional Appeal

Humans are innately emotional. As much as we try to make decisions based on logic alone, emotions always play a role in decision-making, even if unconsciously. Emotions play a central role in the world of sales. If your pitch doesn’t tap into your audiences’ emotions, your chances of closing the deal are reduced significantly.

As you give your presentation, remember that the individuals sitting in front of you will be driven by various emotions, either consciously or unconsciously. As you outline your ideas, they might feel greedy, fearful, altruistic, envious, proud, or ashamed. To really tap into their emotions, tell stories that make them feel excited, curious, or sad that they weren’t aware of your venture sooner! But it’s important to remember that overdoing emotion in a presentation can backfire, especially if your audience doesn’t believe you’re being completely sincere. The best course of action is to balance your presentation between logic and emotion.

Be Logical, Too

We’ve established that emotions play a vital role in business presentations. But logic has to play a part, too. Your audience will not be guided by their feelings alone—especially an audience of businesspeople, where solid facts and logical arguments steer a hefty portion of their decisions.

Make sure your key points are backed up by evidence and data, but avoid complex formats such as tables, as your audience will struggle to digest the information quickly. Instead, opt for diagrams and graphs to make your point quickly but clearly. Backing up your points with facts and data will give the audience confidence in what you’re saying, increasing the likelihood of investment.

Foster Trust

Trustworthiness is an essential component of a good pitch. You will struggle to persuade your audience to support your venture if they don’t trust you. The best way to demonstrate your trustworthiness is to outline your expertise, share testimonials from past clients and customers and quote reliable sources when presenting your key points.

Be Clear and Concise

Nothing kills engagement quite like a long, drawn-out presentation. Instead of listening, your audience will be counting down the seconds until it’s over. This is the last thing you want! Instead, you should craft a presentation that is clear and concise, containing simple but impactful language. Industry jargon won’t do much for you here, as it may exclude audience members unfamiliar with certain terms. The goal is to make your presentation easy to follow.

Adopt a Conversational Tone

A great way to keep your audience engaged is to adopt a conversational tone. In a business setting, you may feel compelled to adopt a formal tone. However, this may come off as stiff and frankly uninteresting. To keep audiences engaged, you need to strike a balance between a professional and conversational tone. Speak directly to your audience and share personal anecdotes to back up your points, ask rhetorical questions and don’t be afraid to show your personality.

Call to Action

Every impactful presentation ends with a strong call to action which guides your audience towards a desired outcome. Let them know explicitly what you want them to do, like consider investing in your company or buying your product. For example, suppose you’re making an investment pitch. In that case, you may end your presentation with: “Join us as an investor to make the most of this game-changing opportunity.” In contrast, a sales presentation may end with something along the lines of: “Contact our friendly sales team to take advantage of this limited-time offer.” Don’t leave your audience hanging by forgetting to include a strong call to action!

In Summary

Don’t let those valuable persuasive writing skills you learned at school go to waste! While they may not have seemed unimportant then, they are vital skills that will help you connect with your audience. All of the advice outlined above, such as appealing to your audiences’ emotions, employing logical arguments, fostering trust, adopting a conversational tone and ending with a strong call to action, will help you craft a persuasive presentation that meets your desired outcome.