The Marketing Review, 2002, 2, 357-372 [Link].

com

Michael J. Baker
Glasgow Caledonian University

Making a Presentation
Although it is frequently said that “The pen is mightier than the sword” the
spoken word is much more commonplace. It is also more likely to have an
immediate impact on more people than written communication. Indeed in
societies with low levels of literacy spoken communication may be the only
effective means of mass communication. Further, with the development of
broadcast media and telecommunications it is now possible for a single
speaker to address an audience of millions simultaneously. It is for these,
and many other reasons, that effective oral communication is considered an
essential skill in most walks of life, and nowhere more so than in academic
and business communities.
In this paper we outline some of the important factors to be borne in mind
in preparing and delivering an effective oral presentation. While the primary
emphasis is upon structure and content, reference is also made to the use of
audio-visual aids, the actual delivery and the handling of questions.

Keywords: presentations, structure, content, audio-visual aids, delivery

In the Beginning …

When preparing an oral presentation (hereafter simply a ‘presentation’) two

basic scenarios may be encountered. First, one has prepared a written report
and has been asked to present it orally to a specific audience. Second, one
has been invited to make a presentation on a specified theme to a specified
audience. In the first case one already has a structure and content; in the
second the proverbial blank sheet of paper!
In an earlier article in this series (‘Writing up and Getting Published’) we
offered advice on the structure and organisation of written reports. While this
was intended primarily for students preparing theses and dissertations the
same advice is generally applicable to persons making written reports for
other purposes. To save you the trouble of finding the earlier paper the key
points will be repeated here. (You should still refer to the earlier paper if
looking for extended advice on written reports). This same advice is also
relevant to persons preparing an oral presentation de novo as, invariably,
one will need to prepare a written draft or script to ensure that the
presentation covers the essential points in a logical and interesting way
within the time limits set down.
Like Caesar’s Gaul, all effective communication may be divided into three
parts – the beginning, middle and end. In primary school when being told
ISSN 1472-1384/2002/0300357 + 15 £4.00/0 ©Westburn Publishers Ltd.
358 Michael J. Baker

how to write our first essay the teacher will stress the importance of following
this structure. And, in telling us, the teacher will usually:

Tell us what they are going to tell us;

Tell us, and
Tell us what they have told us.

In other words, there should be an introduction or agenda informing us what

is the subject of the communication and how it is to be developed. Next,
there is the communication itself – that which the communicator wishes to
convey to us and, presumably, what it is we came to hear about. Finally,
there is a summary reminding us of the key points made and the conclusion
the speaker wishes us to draw from the presentation.
While all presentations should conform to this basic structure, depending
upon the circumstances the length of a presentation will vary enormously.
Doctoral theses often have a word limit of 80,000 words and Master’s
dissertations a limit of 20,000 words. A major textbook may well have half a
million words or more! Lectures are rarely more than an hour long and
conference presentations 15 to 20 minutes. Obviously, the number of words
or time limit is a major determinant of the scope and content of a
presentation. Further, with an oral presentation one cannot set it aside and
come back to it later nor refer back to remind oneself of an earlier point that
has a bearing on new information. Indeed the rule of thumb for a
‘presentation’ is that it should contain no more than five pieces of
information.
This advice is derived from two important and related concepts – the
attention span and short-term memory. According to Foxall et al (1998) “In
psychological terms, attention refers to the amount of mental effort or
cognitive capacity allocated by an individual to the stimulus environment or
task in hand.” (80). To begin with it is reasonable to assume that persons
being addressed will pay attention to a communication. But, if the
communication is not sufficiently interesting to hold their attention then other
stimuli – both internal and external – are likely to distract them so that
effective communication ceases to occur. The longer a presentation the more
difficult it becomes to retain the audiences’ attention.
The main reason that one’s attention begins to wander is that the short-
term memory can hold only a limited number of bits of information before it
begins to suffer from overload. To make room for new incoming information it
has to discard some of the existing content either by sending it to long-term
memory, from which it may be recovered later, or by rejecting the information
altogether. According to research by Miller (1956) the short-term memory has
a capacity of between five and nine bits of information with seven – the
‘magic number’ – representing the average. It is probably for this reason that
experienced presenters suggest that one confine a presentation to five key
points or issues as this should be within the information processing capacity
of all members of an audience. Of course this assumes your bits of
 Making a Presentation 359

information are more interesting than other available stimuli!

The recommendation that a ‘presentation’ contain five bits of information is
echoed by Chad Perry’s advice on the writing of a five chapter PhD (2000).
According to Perry there are five major parts in a PhD each of which will be
the subject of at least one chapter, namely:

The Introduction
Literature Review
Methodology
Findings and Results
Conclusions and Recommendations

As we shall see, most academic presentations will need to address the same
five issues. It is also apparent that the introduction will outline what the
presentation is about while the conclusions will remind us what the
presentation was about. The remaining three elements are the heart of the
presentation and should cover:

1. What is already known about the subject and what it is desired to know
in addition to this?
2. The methods and techniques used to acquire the information
necessary to fill the perceived ‘gap’.
3. The scope and nature of the actual information acquired and the
interpretation to be placed upon it.

From this brief review it is clear that our presentation should comprise five
elements organised into three parts – introduction or agenda, the substance
or subject matter, and the summary – and our blank sheet of paper should be
divided into three sections with approximately 10% of the space for both
introduction and summary and 80% for the subject itself.
If you already have a written report then you can disaggregate it into the
three sections. If you haven’t then we will have to begin by addressing four
main questions (you should also bear these in mind if you have already
prepared a written report as the guide as to what to include and what to leave
out.) These questions are:

1. What is the topic or subject to be presented?

2. To whom. I.e. who will comprise the intended audience?
3. With what objective in mind?
4. Within what constraints in terms of Time, Place, available Aids etc.?

We will deal with each of these in turn.

The Topic
If you have been invited to make a presentation there is an implicit
assumption that you know something about the subject and that this is worth
360 Michael J. Baker

listening to because this knowledge is not widely known. Alternatively, the

subject matter may be familiar but you are offering a new or different
interpretation of it. Yet a third scenario is that as someone who has written
authoritatively about the subject the audience is keen to listen to the pearls of
wisdom from the author him/herself (few of us achieve this ‘guru’ status!)
There is, of course, yet another scenario – you don’t know much about the
subject but have been selected to research it and present your findings.
Those of you preparing student assignments will be familiar with this
situation.
In all cases you will have been given a word or phrase that defines the
subject matter on which you have been invited to speak. For the purpose of
this paper let us assume the subject is ‘Market Segmentation’. If your name
is Hooley, Saunders or Piercy then you fall into the ‘guru’ category as you
have written a definitive text book on the subject and your problem is going to
one of data reduction – how to select from all you know that limited subset of
information that best answers the other three questions posed above. If you
work for a market research company that has just developed a new
technique then it is likely that it is this that you are expected to talk about. For
most of us it will be a question of establishing what is known about market
segmentation and then researching and selecting those parts that satisfy the
other three questions. However, in order to satisfy the first requirement of
‘telling what you are going to tell’ the best way to start is by defining just what
your presentation on Market Segmentation’ is going to cover. To do so it will
be helpful to offer a generic definition – preferably from an established and
well-known authority – and then any qualification you wish to make to
describe the intended scope of your treatment. Thus, Kotler (2000) offers the
view that:

“Market segmentation represents an effort to increase a company’s

targeting precision.”

Actually, this is not a very helpful place to start. It doesn’t tell you what
market segmentation is and it invokes another concept that you may or may
not know anything about – targeting. Sorry Phil!
The Westburn Dictionary of Marketing (available free at
[Link]) is rather more helpful when it tells us that

“…the concept of market segmentation rests upon recognition of a

differentiated demand for a product, while its use as a marketing tool
depends upon identification of the most appropriate variable or variables
with which to subdivide total demand into economically viable segments.”

On the other hand, you may prefer to go back to the original source, which
first identified market segmentation as an alternative to a strategy of product
differentiation. This view had dominated thinking for decades since the
Industrial Revolution and the introduction of mass production. In a seminal
 Making a Presentation 361

article published in 1956 Wendell Smith specified the primary features of a

‘production orientation’ and its strategy of product differentiation, which is
“concerned with the bending of demand to the will of supply. It is an attempt
to shift or to change the slope of the demand curve for the market offering of
an individual supplier”. By contrast market segmentation reflects the
sovereignty of the customer, the marketing concept and a marketing
orientation in that “Segmentation is based upon developments on the
demand side of the market and represents a rational and more precise
adjustment of product and marketing effort to consumer or user
requirements”. Simply put, market segmentation is concerned with
identifying groups of consumers with similar tastes and preferences who
differ in these requirements from other groups of customers and for whom it
is worthwhile developing a differentiated product or service that meets their
needs precisely. If this makes sense then the problem, as usual, is ‘How do I
do that?’ Presumably, this is one of the things your audience will wish to
know.

The Audience
If you have read the preceding paragraphs about market segmentation
carefully, and you subscribe to the marketing concept, then it is clear that
your potential success in making an effective presentation will depend
heavily on putting these ideas into practice. If we can pre-identify the specific
interests and information needs of the intended audience then we should
design our presentation to satisfy these. Are these volunteers or pressed
men? Do they really want to be there or has someone told them to attend?
How much, if anything, are they likely to know about the subject already and
how interesting/important is the subject to them? As advised elsewhere
(Baker, 2001) we should apply the ‘Kipling Test’ and remind ourselves that
there are six basic questions that call for an answer – who, what, why, where,
how and when?
It will be helpful if you write down your answers to these six questions and
keep referring to your list as you develop your presentation and as a final
check before you deliver it. If you can summarise the answers into a pen
portrait of the audience so much the better.
Where the subject of your presentation has been spelled out clearly in
advance and attendance is voluntary you may be lucky and attract a
homogeneous audience. Otherwise, it is unlikely that a single pen portrait will
describe all the members of your audience and you will have to decide who is
the primary audience, for whom the presentation is mainly intended, and
what interests are represented by the remainder and how you can try to meet
these without compromising your dominant theme. To solve this dilemma it
will be useful to consider the third point …

The Objective
Obviously, the objective of a presentation will depend upon the needs of
the audience and the purpose of the presenter. Suppose that one is
362 Michael J. Baker

preparing an introductory lecture to introduce the topic to persons with little or

no prior knowledge of it. In this case the objective(s) might be stated as:

1. Definition of the concept of market segmentation.

2. Overview of the main bases for segmenting markets – demographics,
geo-demographics, preferences, benefits, social character, social
grading, industrial and international.
3. Methods for segmenting markets.
4. The selection and use of segmentation techniques.
5. When not to segment.

For a more advanced class or executive development seminar the focus

might be on a specific technique such as perceptual mapping in which case
our objectives might be:

1. Definition of perceptual mapping.

2. The use of perceptual mapping in strategic marketing planning.
3. Qualitative and quantitative approaches
• Visual product mapping
• Attribute profiling methods
• Multidimensional positioning analysis
KYST
Kelly Grids
Cluster analysis
PREFMAP
MDPREF
[Link] the ‘ideal’ segment.

And, for an even more specialised presentation, one might focus on just one
of the techniques identified under point 3.
However, while the detailed objectives will vary considerably, all should
begin with a definition of the topic to be dealt with followed by a listing of the
objectives which constitute the agenda or Table of Contents for the
presentation. As to what is feasible then we must answer the fourth of our
original questions …

What Constraints Apply?

In addition to the needs of the audience, their existing state of knowledge
and the desired objectives to be achieved, a number of other physical
constraints will have to be taken into account. Of these the most demanding
is the actual time available.
Initially, most inexperienced speakers wonder how on earth they are going
to find sufficient to say to occupy the time allocated to them. However, once
they begin to develop an outline for their presentation and collect material the
problem tends to become “how on earth can I fit all this into the time
available?” We will return to this issue below when discussing the Content in
 Making a Presentation 363

more detail.
The size of audience is also an important factor to be taken into account
when preparing your presentation. As a rule of thumb the larger the
audience the more formal your presentation will have to be and the greater
the use of audio-visual aids. It follows that you need to establish what is the
expected audience size, what kind of room will the presentation be made in,
and what facilities will be available?
When the audience is small it may also be necessary to prepare quite a
formal presentation, e.g. a report of work done for a sponsor, a conference
paper, an executive briefing. But, with a small audience, it is much more
likely that the audience will want to interact with the speaker, ask questions
etc. Such audiences are also more likely to expect a copy or summary of
your presentation, often distributed in advance of it. Clearly, these
expectations present their own challenges and a formal lecture to 500 first
year undergraduates may well appear much simpler once you have
overcome the initial stage fright. We offer some tips for dealing with
interactive audiences later in the paper. First, we must decide what to include
in our presentation, in other words the content.

Content

In the introduction to this paper we suggested two possible scenarios – you

have a paper or written report and need to convert it into a presentation; or
you have been asked to prepare a presentation from scratch. In the first case
most of your effort will consist of eliminating the ‘padding’ used in written
communications to lend emphasis, provide continuity and link new points to
old ones. In the second case your first task will be to write a report! However,
if you have taken the steps recommended earlier you should have a much
clearer idea of what is expected of you and not have to cater for the needs of
a heterogeneous and totally self-selecting audience that might constitute the
readership of a written communication. Accordingly, your research and data
collection should be much more focused and selective. However, you should
still follow the advice relevant to the development of a written communication
that was the subject of an earlier paper in the Marketing Review.
Two aphorisms summarise succinctly the best advice for anyone
embarking on a new venture:

“Look before you leap”.

“Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted”.

While there is always a great temptation to rush into activity, experience

shows that thinking things through before taking action almost always leads
to a better end result. This belief is reflected in the observation that problem
definition can account for as much as 90 per cent of problem solving. Only by
establishing clearly and precisely what is required can we define what needs
364 Michael J. Baker

to be done to achieve the desired outcome. Thus our ‘Objectives’ for a first
year undergraduate lecture on Market Segmentation was based upon a
review of the contents pages of some of the leading introductory marketing
textbooks that have been widely adopted for such courses. This examination
revealed a high level of agreement on both the key topics and the sequence
in which to present them. Accordingly this served to define both the scope
and structure for our presentation. The body of knowledge is well established
and well known; the presenter’s role is to communicate this in a clear and
interesting manner using examples familiar to the audience of students to
help reinforce the points being made and encourage further independent
exploration of the subject by them.
The above example describes a situation where the presenter is helping to
transfer ‘old’ information to a ‘new’ audience. Our second scenario is where
the presenter has ‘new’ knowledge and a ‘new’ audience. In order to express
new ideas clearly one should ask and provide answers to the following
questions:

1. What is the issue or topic to be addressed?

2. Who is likely to be interested in it? (Remember the pen portrait).
3. What benefits will they gain –i.e. ‘What’s in it for me?
4. What did you do? Why?
5. What new knowledge, insight or explanation has emerged ?
6. What implications do your findings have for future practice, research?
7. What, if anything, needs to be done now?

Obviously, the amount of material necessary to answer each of these

questions will depend very much on issues raised earlier such as the size
and composition of the audience, their state of prior knowledge, time
available etc. For example, if you are presenting an academic paper then, in
answering Question 1, you will need to establish your familiarity with the
subject and earlier work by citing the work of others active in the field. On the
other hand if you are making a report on a problem you have investigated
that is already familiar to your audience a simple statement of the known
problem will probably suffice.
To begin with Jennifer and Mike Rotondo (2002) recommend that one
perform a “Brain Dump” which they define as “The act of getting out into the
open everything you know about something. In terms of preparing for a
presentation, the brain dump would include whatever your participants should
already know about the subject, what they need to get from your
presentation, how they are going to use what you present, what’s likely to
interest them, and what questions they might have,” (14). Of course, you
must not take ‘everything’ literally – keywords will do. The aim is to see what
raw materials you have so that you can begin to develop clear-cut answers to
the questions set out above. Where gaps appear then further research is
called for. The Rotondo’s also suggest that in collecting content you should
organise it into two categories – Need-to-know and Nice-to -know. The
 Making a Presentation 365

‘Need-to-know’ information will appear in the presentation and will probably

form the basis of any visual aids or notes to be circulated to participants. The
‘Nice-to-know’ information is just that. It is useful to flesh out the key need-to-
know points, to demonstrate your command of the topic, meet the
needs/interests of the audience etc. It will be included in your own script or
notes but not in the materials given to participants.
Once the raw materials have been collected and classified the next step is
to prepare an Outline.

Outlines
The outline is the skeleton that will determine the form and structure of the
presentation. The Rotondos suggest three main outline styles in common use
and four others that might be appropriate, namely:

• Chronological
• Narrative (story telling)
• Problem/solution
• Cause/effect
• Topical – divides the topic into several sub-topics
• Journalistic questions – answers Kipling’s questions
• Spatial – follows a linear logic based on location, direction and space

The five Objectives listed earlier for a presentation on Market Segmentation

also constitute an outline. They also satisfy the recommendation that a
presentation should contain only five key points as this is all an audience is
likely to remember. But, bearing in mind the earlier discussion of attention
and short-term memory, this advice should not be taken at face value.
Several reasons support this view.
To begin with while you may have an opinion on five key points this does
not mean that they correspond with everyone else’s view of what the five key
points should be. While it may be true that if you offer ten key points only five
will be remembered, it is probable that different people will have quite
different lists of the five that are important for them. Hence, you should build
some redundancy into your presentation. Similarly, each key point may
provide a ‘peg’ on which to hang a series of sub-topics each of which may
also cover a number of points. The balance between insufficient information
and overload is a delicate one, but it is better to have too much material than
too little. You can always leave something out, but ad hoc improvisation can
seriously compromise a formal presentation.
Once you are satisfied with your outline then you can assign the content
from your ‘brain dump’, or the written document and other sources, to the
appropriate heading/sub-heading. Remember to cluster your material in
terms of what the audience needs to know and what it might be nice to know
if time permits. You now have the substance from which to craft your Script.
366 Michael J. Baker

Scripts
Reading from a prepared script can be an extremely boring business –
particularly for the audience! In most cases the audience would prefer to
have the script and read it themselves. Yet the paradox is that, however
spontaneous they may appear, most oral presentations are word-perfect
deliveries of pre-prepared scripts. So, other things being equal, it is not the
script that comes between a presenter and an audience it is the quality of the
delivery. We return to this later. The first task is to ensure that we have a
quality script
Reference has already been made to an earlier article, ‘Writing Up and
Getting Published’, that appeared in the Marketing Review, (Summer 2001).
In this we summarised Sharp and Howard’s ‘Rules for Writing’ as follows:

1. Plan. You should develop a detailed outline first to ensure that your
material will be presented in a logical and coherent way.
2. Introduce. Tell the intended reader what your purpose and objectives
are and how you intend to achieve them in a formal Introduction.
3. Motivate. Make clear what benefits the reader will gain if they read
the paper. It is a cliché but true that you only have one opportunity to
make a first impression. Some people (examiners, reviewers) have to
read your work even if it is dull and uninteresting but the rest of the
world doesn’t.
4. Hold. Maintain interest by concentrating on substantive issues and
don’t allow yourself to be distracted by lacunae.
5. Discuss. Demonstrate how the points you are making are relevant to
your purpose and objectives as set out in the Introduction.
6. Break. Use headings and sub-headings to break up the text into
manageable ‘bites’.
7. Illustrate. Use graphics to present complex data.
8. Illuminate. Give examples to reinforce the argument.
9. Summarise. Remind the reader of the key issues with which you
have dealt and any conclusions and recommendations arising from
them.
10. Conclude. Indicate how your findings may be used in practice and
any new issues that deserve further research

(Adapted from Sharp and Howard, pp224-5)

Assuming that you have followed this and the other advice offered here you
should now have a script for conversion into a presentation.

Conversion and Delivery

Nearly all presentations contain a visual element. The most basic but often
most compelling visual element is the presenter themself. Why otherwise do
 Making a Presentation 367

people watch television, go to the cinema or theatre ? Unfortunately, few

people who are called upon to make oral presentations possess the skills or
personality of the professional performer and, to compensate, most of us use
visual aids and props to make up for this. The challenge is to prevent the
technology overwhelming the content.
This salutary lesson was brought home some years ago when delivering a
module on an Executive MBA on a Saturday some years ago. The computer
crashed and with it all my carefully pre-prepared Powerpoint slides. In the
absence of a technician there was nothing for it but to resort to ‘chalk and
talk’. At the end of the session the very well qualified and senior executives
were kind enough to say it had been the most enjoyable session they had
had in a long time. By comparison with the resources they had for developing
high-powered audio-visual shows most academic presentations were
distinctly amateurish and homemade. In fact the audio-visual trappings
detracted from the substance of the content. By contrast having an academic
‘create’ diagrams and crude drawings in real time while delivering his script
was real theatre and held their attention and involvement far better than a
‘canned’, ‘here’s one I made earlier’ delivery.
Clearly, the message, once again, is that you must tailor your presentation
to the needs of the audience. In a participative workshop type of environment
with well-prepared and motivated participants a rigid structure with lots of
slides is not the best approach (although they still wanted copies of handouts
that went with a formal presentation!). If you were presenting your latest
competitive paper at an Academic conference to your peers you would be ill
advised to think that you could do this without carefully selecting what you
want to say and supporting this with appropriate visual materials.
So, just what is ‘appropriate’? The answer, I’m afraid, is “That depends”.
Probably the lowest common denominator/key-limiting factor of all the
suggestions made so far is time. Clear speech could be anything between
120 and 180 words a minute – less is ponderous, more a ‘gabble’. So take an
average of 150 and multiply by the number of minutes available and you
have your word limit. Now go to Tools and get the word count for your draft
script – don’t be surprised if it’s way over the limit!
An alternative approach if you intend making extensive use of slides is to
bear in mind the advice given by Rotondo:

No more than 2 slides per minute;

One concept per slide;
Use key words and phrases (noun and verb);
Stay within the 8 x 8 rule;
Make your bullet points consistent in structure;
Capitalise properly.

(The 8 x 8 rule means that you should have no more than 8 lines of text per
slide and 8 words per line).
368 Michael J. Baker

By applying this advice we come up with 2 x 8 x 8 = 128 words a minute.

While this might be OK for a spoken presentation it would be a disaster if you
tried to deliver 30 slides of this kind in 15 minutes. Given that your audience
is literate, reading out the content of your slides will soon irritate and then
alienate them. It is likely to be even worse if you try delivering an alternative
text while they are trying to read what is on the slides. It follows that you
should use slides in moderation – they are not intended as an autocue!
If restricted to Key points, text on a slide can be a useful aide-memoir for
both the presenter and the audience. When used to summarise data in
Tables, Graphs, Diagrams they can convey much more information and more
clearly than trying to describe the data without a visual aid. Similarly,
illustrations photographs and video clips can all enliven a presentation in a
way no amount of words can do.
Bearing in mind that an audience has come to hear the presenter, my own
view is that slides should be used in moderation and only to summarise,
emphasise and complement the speaker’s text. It follows that unless you are
a very experienced and accomplished speaker you need to learn your
script. If you don’t you are very likely to digress, extemporise, overlook
something important and, worst of all, run out of time before you can bring
the proceedings to the intended climax. I know – I’ve done it often!
By ‘learning your script’ I do not mean literally memorising it word for word,
although this does help you get over the first couple of minutes when you will
be feeling most under pressure. Rather, we need to memorise enough to
ensure continuity without losing some appearance of spontaneity. Of course,
if you give a presentation several times you will probably get to know it by
heart and also learn how to vary the delivery to achieve the most effect.
The best way to learn your script and help commit it to memory is to
rehearse. Rehearsal is important to get the timing right. If you have prepared
a Powerpoint presentation with notes then the first run through can be done
at your computer, scrolling through the slides and speaking the script, while
keeping a careful note of the elapsed time. Once you have done this a few
times and adjusted the content to fit the time allowed then you should try to
get a rehearsal in the actual location where the presentation is to be made or
one as similar to it as possible. Conference and other organisers will be able
to tell you what kind of room you will be in and what audio visual aids are
available.
On the day itself you definitely need to recce the actual room in which you
will be performing. What kind of projector is to be used? Do you need to
connect it to your laptop or can you load your material onto the system’s own
hard drive? What controls are there? In many modern lecture
theatres/conference suites you will find a podium with sufficient knobs and
switches to launch a space shuttle. Find out what they are and practice using
them. If there is a technician supplied ask for and take their advice. And,
finally, if there is time go through your presentation again using the actual
facilities on site.
While natural ability is a godsend, all of us can improve our oral
 Making a Presentation 369

presentation with practice. Perhaps the first thing to do is see if you can get
someone to video you actually delivering a presentation. (Most academic
institutions offer this as part of the induction training offered to probationary
lecturers. It is less common in my experience for research or other students
who will be called on to make such presentations as part of their study
programme). Viewing yourself in action can be a salutary experience but one
from which much can be learned.
Two aspects deserve particular attention – speech and gesture.
The Rotondos discuss four important voice qualities – volume, pitch,
intonation and enunciation. If a room is wired for sound you should use the
microphone – having tested beforehand how sensitive it is to movement. If
the microphone cannot cope with movement and you have to remain rooted
to the spot then you might try without it and get someone else to let you know
if they can hear you clearly from different places in the room. Nowadays,
however, most microphones can cope with a certain amount of movement.
The pitch of your voice will also have an important bearing on how easy it is
to hear you. Once again you will need someone else to advise you what is
most acceptable from the audience’s point of view.
Intonation is important in giving emphasis: enunciation in ensuring clarity.
Both can be improved with practice and listening to tape recordings of you
own voice will indicate where improvements can be made. (The help of a
friend is also valuable. Apparently, I do not pronounce ‘g’s’ on the ends of
words – something of a liability for a Professor of Marketing – but I was
completely unaware of this until someone else told me).
The analysis of speakers’ effectiveness has confirmed that gesture is very
important in enhancing the impact of the spoken word. While politicians such
as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have a repertoire of hand movements and facial
expression to emphasise the point they are making such movements may not
be appropriate to presentations other than political speeches. Under different
circumstances gestures may become a distraction and, if repeated
frequently, an irritant. Tom Peters may get away with shambling round a
stage – I wouldn’t recommend you try it.
Remember it is the content of what you have to say that is of primary
interest – all else is trappings that may or may not add value.

Interactive or not?

An important consideration with any presentation is if and when to take

questions. Whatever your decision you should make it clear in your opening
statement what the ground rules are.
Taking questions as they occur to the audience can break up the flow and
totally destroy your carefully prepared time schedule. On the other hand, a
question may indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is you are
trying to say and call for immediate correction. Probably the best solution to
this dilemma is to tell the audience that you will be pleased to take questions
at the end of your presentation unless there is something of vital importance
370 Michael J. Baker

that cannot wait. By emphasising that an interruption must be of ‘vital

importance’ most members of the audience will wait until the end before
asking a question.
Questions usually fall into one of two categories – those that you are
dreading and those to which there is a simple answer. Now, if you are
dreading a question it suggests that you can anticipate it – if you can then
perhaps you should try and head it off by incorporating the answer to it in the
original presentation. If not then you should prepare an answer in advance
and hope you may not have to use it!
Anticipating possible questions is an important part of preparing a
presentation. Indeed, trying to anticipate what an audience would like to
know about a topic should be part of your initial research and inform the
selection of the content. If you are presenting ‘old’ knowledge to a ‘new’
audience –e.g. a lecture – then questions may occur on any part of it.
However, if you know your stuff, answering such questions should not be too
much of a problem. But, if you don’t know the answer to a question then
admit it. You could ask your audience if any of them know the answer, or
offer to find out if you can and contact the questioner with the answer later.
Don’t prevaricate – things will only get worse and put in question the validity
of everything else you’ve said.
Where you are presenting ‘new’ information then it is this that is likely to
prompt questions. Again you should try and anticipate these and prepare
answers. For example, you will probably only have presented your most
important findings. If so prepare some slides/notes covering the less
important outcomes , and have them ready.
An important ‘trick of the trade’ when fielding questions is always to repeat
the question. This serves several purposes. First, the audience may not have
been listening as intently as you, so this gives you the opportunity to tell them
what you believe the question to be, i.e. the one which you are going to
answer. This also provides you with an opportunity to rephrase a question in
terms you can answer or to defuse it if it is hostile! Second, it allows the
questioner to clarify or restate the question if they think you have
misunderstood them. And, third, it gives you a few seconds of precious
thinking time.
If no one has any questions you may wish to encourage them, especially if
you have allowed time for feedback. You could say something to the effect
that “In my opinion the big question is …..” “What do you think?” Or “Where
do you think we might go from here?” On the other hand, you may sense
everyone is as keen for a break as you are so thank them for their attention
and leave while you are in front.

Summary

In this paper we have addressed some of the more important issues to be

taken into account when preparing an oral presentation. To begin with we
identified two possible scenarios. First, you have written up a report or other
 Making a Presentation 371

formal document, such as a thesis or dissertation, and have been asked to

make an oral presentation of this to a defined audience. Second, you have
been asked to make a presentation on a specific topic but will have to
prepare this from scratch. In the first case we are going to have to reduce a
possibly voluminous written document into a short and highly focused series
of points; in the second we are going to have to prepare a script from which
to develop the presentation.
All presentations should be divided into three parts – a beginning, middle
and end. We need; briefly, to tell the audience what we are going to tell them
– the subject of our presentation. Then, occupying about 80 percent of the
total time available, there is the middle, which contains the substance of what
we want to communicate, and, finally, like this, there is a short review of the
key points to remind the audience what these were.
The content of a presentation should be restricted to about five main
points; otherwise we are likely to exceed both the interest and attention span
of the listeners. However, we suggested that as it is unlikely each member of
an audience will have exactly the same interests or information needs as
every other then some redundancy should be built in. Specific advice was
offered as to how you might do this.
Stress was laid on the importance of preparing a clear Outline based on
the perceived needs of your audience, i.e. what is it they have come to hear
about? Ideally, this should comprise our five or more key points organised
into our three sections. Then each of the key points should be amplified by a
series of sub-headings or points necessary to explain and reinforce them.
Subsequently, if you are preparing audio-visual aids, these are likely to be
the key elements of such aids.
The Outline also forms the basis for our Script. In our view preparation of
a written script is essential. Only by doing this can we ensure that we will
take maximum advantage of the time available. Scripts are not for reading
from (unless you are making a radio broadcast!), they should be memorised
and rehearsed until you can deliver them spontaneously. If the worst comes
to the worst and you dry up then they are there to get you back on track.
Once you have refined your script then you have to consider how you are
going to deliver it – who will be in the audience, what are their expectations,
how much time have you got, where will the presentation take place etc.?
Most presentations will benefit from the use of visual aids but it was
recommended that too many may distract rather than inform your audience.
Finally, we looked briefly at the question of audience participation and the
handling of questions.
While very few of us will achieve the presence or delivery we take for
granted in top actors and actresses we can do a great deal to ensure that our
oral presentations are effective. Preparation, rehearsal and practice will go a
long way towards achieving the desired outcome – an interested and
satisfied audience.
372 Michael J. Baker

References and Recommendations for Further Reading

Baker, Michael J., (2001), “Writing Up and Getting Published”, The Marketing
Review, Volume 1, No, 4, Summer, pp. 441-471
This earlier paper summarises the main points to consider when preparing a
formal written document. Much of this advice applies to writing your script for an
oral presentation
Foxall, Gordon R., Goldsmith, Ronald E., and Brown, Stephen (1998),
Consumer Psychology for Marketing, 2nd. Edition, London: International
Thomson Business Press
Hooley, Graham J., Saunders, John A. and Piercy, Nigel F. (1998), Marketing
Strategy and Competitive Positioning, 2nd. Edition, London: Prentice Hall
Europe
Kotler, Philip (2000), Marketing Management : Analysis, Planning,
Implementation and Control, 10th Edition, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall
Miller, George A., (1956), “The magical number seven, plus or minus two:
some limits on our capacity for processing information”, Psychological
Review, 63, (March): pp. 81-97
Perry, Chad (2000), “Presenting a Thesis”, [Link]/writing/
[Link]
Comprehensive discussion of the ‘ Five chapter PhD’ and writing up
Riley, Michael, Wood, Roy C., Clark, Mona A., Wilkie, Eleanor and Szivas,
Edith (2000), Researching and Writing Dissertations in Business and
Management, London:Thomson Learning.
Contains a Chapter on ‘The oral presentation of dissertation findings’
Rotondo, Jennifer and Rotondo, Mike Jr., (2002), Presentation Skills for
Managers, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Offers lots of practical advice on preparation and delivery, including the use of
PowerPoint
Sharp, John A., and Keith Howard (1996), The Management of a Student
Research Project, 2nd. Edition, Aldershot:Gower
Smith, Wendell (1956), “Product differentiation and market segmentation as
alternative marketing strategies”, Journal of Marketing

About the Author

Michael J. Baker is Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the University of

Strathclyde and a Visiting Professor at Glasgow Caledonian, Monash,
Nottingham and Surrey Universities. He is President of the Academy of
Marketing and founded the Senate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing of
which he is now an Emeritus Senator. The author of more than 30 books
and over 100 academic papers, Michael is the founding editor of the Journal
of Marketing Management and the Journal of Customer Behaviour.