In this Monday Mindhack, you’ll discover how to ensure you – and the points you’re trying to get across – are remembered.
Transcript:
Raj: Hi there! Welcome to another Monday, Mindhack. Today we’re going to be talking about something that’s pretty important if you’re presenting anything to anyone. And just as a reminder, what’s all these series about? Well, this is about psychological tactics that you can use to generate more demand, whether it’s demand for your products or services, demand from investors, looking to invest in your business, demand from acquirers, looking to get your business acquired. And today we’re talking about something really important, which is making sure that your message is actually received. You might’ve had this experience and you’re presenting whether it’s presenting for the sale of your products or maybe even negotiating for the sale of your business. You’re trying to get across some crucial points, but if you’ve got too many of them, people start to zone out. They’re really not focused.
You can see they’re not really paying attention. That’s because we can only absorb so much information at a time. When you just give a whole bunch of information that folks like, for instance, if you’ve got 10 bullet points on a slide, or you’ve got a bunch of slides, and you’re just going through bullet point after bullet point, and you could see that they’re not quite retaining it, this is going to help you. It’s a concept in today’s mind. The hack is a concept called chunking and chunking relies on the fact that we can remember things in really small numbers. So what you want to do is break things up into smaller numbers. Now, it seems obvious, but this kind of organization really matters. For instance, if you kind of slide putting no more than three bullet points on the slide will really help you get your point across.
I’ve seen this several times in pitches where they’ve got bullet point after bullet point, if they’re will point, they just kind of read them down, and everyone tunes out instead, break it up, break it up into like a really high-level thing. Point one 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, that you want to actually convey at a big level and then the supporting items underneath each one. That way you can make sure that the brains of the people that you’re actually presenting to can process them in a sequential manner and understand each one before moving on to the next. It’s not having those breakpoints, which makes it all just turn into a blur, and people’s eyes glaze over. So again, the concept is chunking and it’s about putting things into smaller components, in smaller groups to make sure you’re actually conveying it properly. Go back and look over your slide decks, look over your presentations and think about this. Are you actually conveying things in pieces that are understandable, digestible, white people? So go ahead, use this and let’s see how you do better in your next pitch.
