Creating a ‘goal-oriented presentation’ sounds simple, but it’s actually not easy to execute. I’m sure we’ve all experienced those presentations where someone talks for hours, constantly going off-topic, never finishing, and ultimately wrapping up hastily. At the root of this problem is the presenter who is essentially just having a casual chat using slides - what we might call a ‘small talk presentation’.
This purposeless presentation is usually the biggest killer of audience interest and time, and has a strong negative impact on the proposal’s intended goal. Therefore, through the ‘proposal guidance technique’, setting a clear goal for each presentation before creating it is the most fundamental way to solve the problem of aimless presentations. The goal typically set for after the presentation is usually to have the audience ‘follow our instructions/make a decision/take an action’, which we call a ‘CTA (Call-To-Action)’.
A good CTA should be carefully designed to enable the audience to act immediately according to your instructions.