Ten Major Causes of Powerless Presentations, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach

Every day in the business world there are millions of presentations made. Unfortunately too many of those presentations are “powerless.” In fact, we may even be so bold as to say a majority of those presentations are “powerless” due to one or more of ten major causes. In the opinion of Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach, the major causes of “powerless” ineffective and non-persuasive presentations are:

1. The presentation has no clear focused point. The point of the presentation is obviously “missing in action.”

2. The presentation lacks a logical and clear flow of ideas and the audience becomes lost, confused and unable to follow what is being presented.

3. The presentation is so detailed, fact filled and so overcrowded with technical terms that the meaning of the presentation is lost in what has become known as a “data dump,” which is an excessive and meaningless recital of data without a purpose or a plan.

4. The presentation is too long and not sensitive to the audience’s span of attention.

5. The presentation totally fails to indicate and convince the audience of some benefit from what is being presented. It fails to tell the audience what is in it for each of them and how they will benefit from what is presented.

6. The presentation is void of enthusiasm and persuasion. There is no call to action for the audience.

7. The technology with all the bells and whistles used in the presentation overshadows and overwhelms the content of the presentation.

8. The presentation totally ignores the needs of the audience. There is no consideration for what are the interests of the audience, what do they care about, what problems do they have, what frustrations they have, etc.

9. The presentation focuses on features rather than benefits.

10. The presentation environment has serious flaws related to the technical equipment, sound system, projection screen, lighting, timing, and the attire of the presenter.

Ten Major Causes of Powerless Presentations, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
By: J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr., Chief Executive of J. G. Ebersole Associates and The Renaissance Group (TM)

Understand Present Value Versus Future Value

In this article, we will continue the financial investing series with the discussion of financial market structures known Present value and future value in macroeconomics.

The concept of present value versus future value is like the concept that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar. In fact, a dollar invested today earning interest will grow in value when the interest is paid and if the dollar plus interest is automatically reinvested for a further period of time, new interest will be earned on both the dollar of original investment and on the interest already earned. As this is repeated over a period of time, we call the result of compounding interest. It is possible to determine the future value of money by using

1. Financial tables.

a) Present value represents the original investment that we have in hand today.
b) Future value represents what that investment will grow to when interest is earned on a sequential renewal of investment, where the original investment plus all interest earned, keeps being reinvested for subsequent periods until maturity.

Here is the formula

FV = PV (1+I) where
FV is future value
PV is present value
I is annual interest rate
n is number of compounding periods

2. Present value of a single sum
In order to determine the present value, we must take the final sum and discount it by the interest factor working backwards from our known single sum. Here is a formula:
PV= FV/ (1+I)
The definitions for PV, FV, I, n are the same as 1. above.

3. Present value and the amount of the annuity payment of an annuity
There are two types of annuities
*Deferred Annuity:
Receipts on payments are made at the end of the period.
*Annuity Due:
Receipts or payments occur at the beginning of the period.
Future value of an annuity helps to calculate how much money needs to be invested today, in order to receive a certain payment in the future.

a) The present value of an annuity is calculated by the formula below
PV = (PMT/i) ยท [1 - (1 / (1 + i)n)]
Where
PV= Present value
PMT= The amount of the annuity payment
i =The annual rate of interest
n =The number of discounting periods

b) The amount of the annuity payment is calculated by this formula below
Where
PV= Present value
PMT= The amount of the annuity payment
i =The annual rate of interest
n =The number of discounting periods

I hope this information will help. If you want more information of the above subject, you can find this series of articles at my home page:

The Importance of an Effective Homepage – How to Present Dynamic Website Content

Looking for a way to attract more attention to your website? Offer a fresh face and new content on a regular basis and you’ll find people will check back to see what’s new and you’ll have a tool to measure what attracts and what doesn’t. Here’s how to do it.

Your website homepage is your front door through which online browsers come to visit your business. Static, never-changing content is no more interesting to a returning visitor than a book they have already read. To keep your audience captivated and coming back you need to make your home on the web inviting and interesting.

Present a Dynamic Home Page

One way that you can present changing home page content is to design ten to twelve unique pages with different content and then rotate them every month. Take a couple of weeks to design different ideas and images. Create page promotions that include a message that is timeless or that has a seasonal or timely announcement such as “Holiday Specials.” When you consider different features for your home page and when it should be placed you’re forced to look closely at at your marketing strategy over a one year period. This will save you a lot of time since you then won’t have to think about your content through the year. It also allows you to plan your offers and gather the necessary content.

A web developer can put your home pages on a rotating script or use an automatic timer. You can then rotate your home pages to highlight a new tip every month or to promote a featured product. The home page of your website is much like the front cover of a magazine. People want to see a home page that has different photos and content at least every month, preferably every week. You won’t want all of the content of your website to be featured on the page as this will overwhelm your website visitors. So choose one or two features to highlight each month. The rest of your website content should be well organized within the rest of the pages of your site. When you’re ready to update your home page you simply grab content from your internal pages. This way you’re not having to create new content. You’re just reorganizing your existing content so that it feels new to your visitors.

Don’t Change Your Home Page Too Often:

Even though you want your website to be new and dynamic you also don’t want to change it too often. People take comfort from their favorite websites and want them to be familiar. If you change your home page too often or too much you may create confusion or give people the feel that someone else has taken over your site. You could also compromise your positioning in search engines. So maintain some consistency.

When you make changes to graphics or content it shouldn’t make a major change to the way your website looks and feels. Regular visitors should be able to find the same information that they’ve always found on your home page and in the same place. As a rule, the headers and navigation tools on your page shouldn’t ever change without a complete redesign and announcing that to your visitors. Change content and images with other content and images while maintaining the sites original functionality. Home pages that are consistent lend a feeling of comfort to users. If your customers learn to expect consistency they’ll also learn to rely on your quality customer service. If you’re a small online business, gaining your customer’s trust is your most important step to success.

The Benefits of a Flexible Home Page

A flexible home page lets you test your off line marketing efforts. Before you spend money on a magazine or newspaper ad you can test it out on your website. You’ll be able to see how people react to the ad. It will let you determine which featured products attract the most interest. You can also determine which graphics generate the most attraction. Web analytics software (Google Analytics is great and free to use) can provide you with this type of information. It will help you obtain marketing data that is detailed and precise. You can see which graphics people have clicked on as well as what web page they were on just before they left your website.

Once you’ve mastered the technique of updating your home page, while at the same time keeping the core content the same, you’ll be well on your way to recognizing the benefits of a flexible home page.